Being Unhappy Is Very Inefficient

Besides, I'm too smart for it. The other objection is I don't want it to lower my productivity. I don't want to have less desire or less work ethic. Fact-check, and that is true. The more happy you are, the more content and peaceful you are. That's less likely you want to run out there and change the world.

But at the same time, being unhappy is very inefficient. The peaceful person doesn't have extraneous thoughts going through their head. If you are a driven, unhappy person, your mind will be on 24/7. What are the consequences of this? Your sleep is much worse, you're much more likely to react, to become angry, and dig yourself into a hole that you don't have to dig yourself out of.

Your decisions are going to be emotional, impetuous. You're much more likely to be in the busy trap, where you're busy all the time, running from one thing to another, because you can't mentally prioritize. You don't have peace of mind, so when it comes time to make judgments, you have too many threads going through your head. You'd have time to devote to making those judgments.

So, there's a trade-off. If you become the Buddha tomorrow, it's unlikely you'll also launch rockets to the moon like Elon Musk. But on the other hand, there are enough successful, optimistic leaders, scientists, and innovators, especially as they get older, that you see it's not necessarily the case that happy people have to be ineffective.

As I became much happier in my life, I actually became much more effective. I was able to form relationships with people that earlier in my life I would have kept at a distance. Whatever preconceived notion, I can make decisions much more clearly now because I see what the long-term outcome is going to be.

I cut straight to the chase. I don't try and negotiate an extra 20 percent here or there because I know that that's gonna make me unhappy long-term. It's gonna make the other person unhappy, and it'll make the deal less stable. So, I've actually been more productive even though I worked less hard because I've made better decisions.