The Lies That Keep You Unhappy

And that number can be addicting. It gets to the point to where we stop saying what we really want to say and instead start saying the things we know will get us the most likes. Before you know it, you're posting certain thoughts, photos, and writing specific statements to get that attention and validation from others.

How many times have you seen your favorite influencers and creators online suddenly sell out, where it feels like they're no longer authentic, only doing or saying the things they know will please the algorithm? I made a video about Unit 731 and the despicable things the Japanese government did in the Second World War. However, because it was not advertiser-friendly content according to YouTube, the video didn't perform extremely well, and that's fine.

This is the kind of air and social conditioning that makes people fall in line and stop saying anything that might offend the people with money. It's like they tell you there's freedom of speech, but only when your microphone is turned off. Growing up, I always felt different. Of course, I had friends and wanted to be part of the social group, but I had questions about the universe that people just didn't like to discuss.

Who wants to talk about death and the afterlife on the school playground, after all? Because of that, I felt different from everyone else, like a piece of a puzzle, but from another set. And so I grew up worried that everyone would look at me as weird and different, so I tried my best to hide my existential dread to fit in like everyone else.

If you're watching this video right now, there's a high chance that you were also once a kid like me, who was so worried about being disliked that you shielded the real you just so you wouldn't be thought of as different. If you're still in that position, listen: stop caring so much about what other people think and start living your life authentically.

Yes, caring what others think is healthy; however, it becomes harmful when we try to change ourselves just to be liked by others. You would enjoy your time on this floating rock far more if you choose to live your authentic self, and if someone rejects you because of it, you'll know that they were never meant for you in the first place.

Now, if that sounds like a lofty dream and not really grounded in reality, I understand, because the sad truth of this entire thing is that we do need to be judged fairly by others. At its core, that's what makes our society work. We agree that something is law, and whoever breaks it gets judged. We agree on certain moral principles, and whoever breaks them gets socially ostracized.

We're judged at our places of work, in school, in our society as a whole. As sad as it sounds, gossip and ostracism help the greater good of the group. In 2014, Stanford Professor Rob Willer led a study that explored the relation of gossip and ostracism to the harmony and functionality of experimental groups.

In this study, Rob found out that groups that allowed their members to gossip and root out underperforming members were able to sustain cooperation and prevent selfishness much better than groups that weren't allowed to do so. When we think of ostracism, we almost always see it in a bad light; however, this study proved that it does have a much more important role in preventing the weak and vulnerable from being bullied and ridden upon.

Have you ever been in a group for a school project only to quickly realize that there's one person who just wouldn't do anything because they know the group will pick up their slack? How does that make you feel? Now imagine you could remove these people from the group and then gossip to other groups about how bad of a team player they are.

It might seem harsh at first, but because of our innate fear of being ostracized, more often than not, these people would see the reality of what they're doing and actually act better when reinvited into the group. It also prevents these selfish people from exploiting the more vulnerable people in the group and allows them to reach their full potential without fear of being taken advantage of.

The researchers concluded that exclusion compelled participants to conform to the more cooperative behavior of the rest of the group. So yes, we need to be good team players for the proper functioning of society. However, being part of a group should never be at the expense of our own individuality.

We should never get so scared of being ostracized that we do not say the things that matter to us for the fear of being judged. We need to realize that we will get to a point in our lives where we'll begin to assess everything that we've been taught as children.

When you start to outgrow old beliefs and walk into new ones, do not be held back by the fear of what everyone who you grew up with would think. Caring about what other people think is necessary for the proper functioning of society, but when caring what other people think affects our ability to make decisions for ourselves, that's when you need to pause and reconsider.

You're a person with your own thoughts, ideas, dreams, and goals. Don't let the fear of being disliked hold you back from expressing that you want to drop out of school to become a comedian. What would people think? You want to start a YouTube channel? What would people think? You want to be with someone from a different culture or religion? What would people think?

This one question holds so many people back from doing what they love. It's like a chain that binds our neck and leaves us no room to breathe. We're like circus elephants held back by a rope that might only exist in our imagination. Ultimate freedom is having the courage to be disliked, the boldness to stand firm in what you believe in, even when the crowd is saying something else.

The courage to stand when everyone else is sitting and run when everyone else is standing. The courage to be your authentic self, regardless of what everyone around you tells you to be. Instead, developing the courage to be disliked is not easy. Remember that it's in our nature to care what other people think, so to stray from that even minutely would mean going against our very own biology, and that's never very easy.

But the good news is that we can actually do it. The first and most important thing to realize is that everyone, just like you, is worried about their own insecurities. When we go out into the world, we're often so consumed with our own insecurities that we feel like everyone else is thinking about us and condemning us.

But the reality is more often than not, just like you, people are so worried about themselves that they aren't really thinking about anyone else. And when they do speak out against us, they're often projecting their insecurities on us, trying to bring us down to feel better about themselves. Don't let them do that.

The difference between ostracization in early humans and what we have today is that with early humans, it was only your closest relatives and members of your clan that could cast you out. However, today, because of social media, anyone and everyone can have an opinion about us, share that opinion, and we're forced to take notice of it.

The problem with this is that we're taking criticism from people we wouldn't take advice from. Think about it: if you wouldn't let the stranger into your house for fear of invading your privacy, why would you let them into your head, the most private place of all? Sometimes, the people judging you and not letting you live your true potential aren't strangers; they're childhood friends and relatives.

When that's the case, we need to remind ourselves that the consequences of living outside the group are not as sinister as it used to be. You have the tools and resources to thrive away from your primary group, and in fact, you can find another group to join—one that would accept you for who you are and not try to force you into being something you're not.

I know I've said some negative things about social media in this video and many others, but there are some positives as well. In this scenario, where you no longer feel part of the group you were born into or grew up in, the internet offers you a community of people who are willing to accept you from all over the world. You just have to take the time to find them.

Lao Tzu wrote, "Take care about people's approval, and you will be their prisoner." The courage to be disliked is the key that opens the prison doors and sets you free to be the person you've always wanted to be.

In 2012, Drake made a song titled "The Motto," but what most people remember from it is YOLO. YOLO tells you to live in the moment, enjoy the life you have today, and not worry too much about tomorrow because, at the end of the day, you only live once.

While Drake certainly popularized the motto, he wasn't the first to use the phrase, and he certainly wasn't the first to come up with the idea of enjoying the pleasures of today without worrying about tomorrow. This idea has been around since the 4th century BC as what philosophers call Hedonism, a school of thought that was created by Aristippus of Cyrene, a student of Socrates.

Hedonism is the idea that the end goal of all of our actions in life is to, one, pursue pleasure and, two, avoid pain. Aristippus believed that the only good cause worth pursuing was one that would ultimately bring you pleasure. In today's society, we're taught that the way to succeed is to suffer today so you can enjoy tomorrow.

To save for the rainy day. Once we get out of college, we're encouraged to find a job and work hard at a 9 to 5 for many years, live modestly, and save as much as possible so we can enjoy our retirement 50 years later. Aristippus didn't believe in any of that. He didn't believe in the idea of delayed gratification, and he always advocated for people to simply get pleasure from what is present and available.

He was completely against the idea of suffering in the present in order to get something that only might be pleasurable in the future. So instead of telling students in college to study hard for their exams so they can land a good job after school, for example, Aristippus would encourage them to fraternize, drink, and party lavishly because these are the pleasures that are readily available to them.

On the one hand, you can see him as stupid and lacking foresight. After all, if you squander everything you have on the pleasures of today, you'll quickly run out of resources, and all of that pleasure will turn into pain, from people losing everything they had because of an addiction to people living in poverty as a result of their own laziness. We've seen the results of solely focusing on the present pleasures.

But on the other hand, there's some wisdom to the school of thought because truly, tomorrow isn't promised to any one of us. What's the point in working hard at a 9 to 5 for 50 years, ignoring all of the pleasures of the time, only to die a few years before retirement?

And let's say you do make it to retirement. The sad reality is that one in four people will have a disability by the age of 60, and the older you get, the chances of that happening increase drastically. Knowing all of this, is it still foolish to think that we are all better off just enjoying the pleasures that we do have in the present? Socrates and other philosophers of the time certainly believed so.

A lot of philosophers hated the idea of Hedonism because saying that the end goal of the entire human existence is simply to pursue pleasure and avoid pain just sounded vain. This opposition combined with the rise of Christianity in ancient Greece at the time meant that this extremely rash idea of Hedonism died with Aristippus many years later. Epicurus, who was considered the father of modern-day Hedonism, redefined what Hedonism was, and to do that, he had to start by redefining a certain word: "pleasure."

For Aristippus, pleasure was a state of ecstasy and excitement—the amazing feeling you have after biting into your favorite food or after that first sip of coffee in the morning. And for most of us, this is how we define pleasure. But not Epicurus. For Epicurus, pleasure was a state of tranquility.

Instead of encouraging people to indulge themselves in constant gratification, Epicurus believed that the true meaning of pleasure was to kill the fear of both death and God, because only then would you truly be able to fully enjoy what this life has to offer. While Aristippus simply encouraged people to pursue pleasure, Epicurus believed that all human beings do everything to gain pleasure and absorb pain.

He didn't encourage it, because according to him, that was our natural state anyway. To defend this point, Epicurus asked everyone to look at how babies view the world around them. They don't really understand how the world works yet, but they do understand two things: when something feels good and when something feels bad. When something feels good, the baby is joyful and happy. When something feels bad, the baby cries because it wants that pain to stop and it wants to return to said pleasurable state.

I'm sure at this point you're wondering if we're all solely pursuing pleasure, then what about selfless acts? Acts that are done solely because they are virtuous or valuable for other people and not ourselves—how do we describe those? Well, in hedonistic ideas, it's simply because those things make people feel heroic, which ends up being processed in your brain as a pleasurable feeling. So at the core, it is still pleasure they're chasing, just not the kind we might be thinking about.

According to hedonistic teachings, there are two types of pleasure: there's moving pleasure and there's static pleasure. Moving pleasure is when you're in the process of satisfying a desire. When you're hungry, you eat; when you're thirsty, you have a drink; when you need a timeout, you take a nap. Static pleasure is the tranquility you feel once you're done satisfying those needs. At this point, the adrenaline has finished coursing through your veins, and you're left with a sweet feeling of satisfaction.

In that moment, you feel a sense of tranquility, and you keep feeling it until it is sadly replaced by pain because according to Epicurus, there is no in-between: the absence of pain is pleasure and vice versa. But even with this more modest way of explaining Hedonism, a lot of people still disagree and even frown at the idea.

This is because of one thing: the idea that pleasure is the only source of intrinsic value. Think about it for a second: if pleasure is the only intrinsic value, then what do we make of things like finding meaning in life, achieving great things, building and maintaining long-lasting relationships, becoming a legend in a particular field, or even something as simple as living religiously or upholding a set of moral beliefs that we hold dear to our hearts?

Fists might try to argue that all of those things do not hold any value themselves and that they're only valuable because we get pleasure from them. But something like upholding religious beliefs isn't always pleasurable; in fact, most times it restricts the kind of pleasure you can get. But still, it gives people a sense of fulfillment that for them is better than the pleasure they're forsaking.

If self-pleasure alone is the aim of human existence, the people who benefit from the wrong that happens in our society will never fight against it. People would never fight for the common good when it might affect them negatively. But yet, every day we see people put their own desires on the side to help other people. People get excommunicated from their families, rejected by those they love, because they chose to speak up and fight for what's right, even if the issues don't affect them directly.

If we're all chasing our own pleasures, that would never happen. We'll all be too busy enjoying our broken society because it benefits us and not worrying about trying to change it for someone else. Another huge stumbling block that Hedonists face when trying to argue their beliefs is the worth of reality. If pleasure is the ultimate goal, then it shouldn't matter whether that pleasure is real or imagined, right?

If we say that people always intrinsically pursue things that are pleasurable, then if there is an option for unlimited pleasure, they should never choose anything else, right? To answer these questions, Robert Nozick created a thought experiment, giving people two options. He asked them to choose between being plugged into a pleasure-giving machine for the rest of their lives and living their current reality with the pain that exists in our world. People always picked this reality because, in the end, living a life that's not real is pointless and meaningless.

Even with the option of the most pleasurable thing in the world, people would rather have pain that's real—whatever real means. As I've said previously, the best memories are the ones you remember with both pleasure and pain. Twenty years after he left his childhood home, Abraham Lincoln came back only to see the entire place in ruin. As he looked at it with tears in his eyes, he said, "My childhood home, I see again and am saddened with the view. And still, as memories cloud my brain, there's pleasure in it too."

This beautiful mix of pleasure and pain is something that the hedonistic view of the world simply does not account for. When you're graduating high school, you're excited for the adventures that await you in college. You'll probably be leaving home for the first time, and you'll finally be alone, able to enjoy what the world has to offer. That feeling is pleasurable, but the feeling is also painful. You'll miss your high school friends and the simplicity of childhood. You'll miss your parents, your siblings, and the community that you grew up in.

And though these painful thoughts cloud your brain, there will be pleasure in it too. Hedonism is frowned upon in modern-day society because it opens the door for a trap that you can easily fall into. Pleasure is an insatiable desire. If you get hungry and fill your belly, it only takes a few hours and you're looking for something else to eat. It's an unending pursuit.

So if that becomes the entire reason for your existence, it can quickly become difficult to control. This is how most people become addicted. It starts out as just a fleeting pleasure, and before you know it, the reason you're doing those things stops being the pursuit of pleasure and starts being an unquenchable and uncontrollable thirst for those things—a trap that's very difficult to come out of, one that many people get stuck in for the rest of their lives.

But this isn't to say that we can't learn some things from hedonistic principles. Because, as much as we might not like to think about it, it's true that tomorrow is not promised. So we might as well make the best of today. Things like making a conscious decision to enjoy the little everyday pleasures can help us lead a happier life. If your car breaks down and you have to walk to school, don't be in haste. Embrace the journey; walk with a friend, make jokes with them, and always leave each other on a good note.

Craving a cup of coffee? Head out to your favorite coffee shop and order your favorite drink. You've earned it! You don't have to wait until you're retired before you can start reaping the fruit of your labor. Take those vacation days! The promotion can wait a few more months. Stay on that call with your friends for an extra hour—missing an hour of study probably won't make you fail because even if seeking pleasure might not be the ultimate goal of human existence, it's certainly a worthwhile pursuit.

In the city of Cyprus in 300 BC, there lived a very wealthy trader called Zeno. While on a voyage from Phoenicia to Perus, his boat sank along with all of his cargo. Because of that single event, an event that was entirely out of Zeno's or anyone's control, this very wealthy man suddenly became poor in an instant. Imagine you were Zeno. How would you react to your entire life's work getting flushed down the drain by the sheer force of nature? What is the proper reaction? Would you be angry? Sad? Would you feel life has cheated you?

For most of us, these would all be normal reactions, but not for Zeno—the father of Stoicism. One small change lasts in eternity, and one small reframing of your mindset can cascade into larger and more impactful changes later down the line. The core of Stoicism is the very definition of acceptance and indifference. After reading the works of Socrates and other great philosophers, Zeno created and taught Stoicism.

According to Zeno, although we don't have much control over what happens to us, we do have control over how it affects us, and we must use this control to great effect. Rather than crying over spilled milk (or, in this case, drowned goods), Zeno focused on maintaining his composure over the situation, remaining calm and neutral despite his predicament.

Today, people inadvertently view Stoics as people who cannot be broken—people who don't often linger to the emotional extremes, going through things like fits of rage or bouts of anxiety. But the original idea behind Stoicism was much more than that. Rather than just a way to describe people who are unemotional, Stoicism was a way to view, describe, and understand the world. It was a way of life, and that way of life has lasted for centuries.

Stoic philosophy can be applied to situations today the same way it was applied thousands of years ago, and its benefits are just as impactful. Stoicism allows us to process these negative emotions from negative experiences and turn them into the thoughts that give us a unique perspective of the world. Perspective is everything, and everyone in the world has different experiences and thus different perspectives on things.

Since the Stoics gathered, discussed, and taught philosophy in a public place, their general philosophy was widely known. They believed that the Stoic principles could greatly benefit anyone and everyone, and so it didn't make sense for them to hide that knowledge behind the four walls of a school or of the palace courtyards. As a result, everyone from slave to emperor could learn and become a Stoic, and they did.

Some of the world's most notable Stoics include Epicurus, which translates to "acquired," as he was once owned as a slave; Seneca, who was a well-renowned statesman; and Marcus Aurelius, a Roman emperor and one of the most powerful men to have ever lived. The early Stoics practiced what they preached, avoiding all forms of segregation and leading the fight against inequality. They even invented the word cosmopolitan, which literally means "citizen of the world."

When people hear that word now, we think of cities like New York, Toronto, Dubai, and London because of how diverse they are. This was the type of unity and togetherness that the Stoics preached, even at a time when it wasn't popular. Women were allowed to freely learn about Stoicism and become Stoics themselves.

So why do so many people adopt Stoicism as a way of life? In a world full of unexpected turns of events, our emotions can tend to get in the way of things. In reality, we don't really get sad because bad things happen to us; we get sad because unexpected bad things happen to us.

Rain is a good thing! It helps to water our plants, provides water for living things, and keeps the temperature cool and humid. But the truth is when that dark cloud catches you outside without an umbrella, it's never a good experience. So why don't we start crying once it starts to rain? It's because, although the situation is bad, we've learned to expect rain. It's something that is unavoidable.

We can't control the weather; although it sucks, the rain passes and the light returns. Stoicism teaches us that in the same way, we should expect that everything bad that can happen will happen. Picture the worst outcome and be content knowing it could happen.

One of the Stoic exercises is known as voluntary discomfort—an exercise aimed at increasing feelings of gratitude. Sleep on the floor of your kitchen; take cold showers when you normally take hot ones; eat nothing but potatoes for a few days. Things like this, this exercise helps you to understand that no matter how hard it gets, you'll still survive and potentially thrive if your mindset is right.

By being able to withstand these uncomfortable situations, we indirectly prepare our mental state for future misfortunes. With the current state of the world, where advertisements are constantly being shoved down our throats, we're made to believe that if we don't have the next best thing, look a certain way, or make a certain amount of money, we will never be happy.

This message is more important now than ever. We enter the world not knowing much of anything. We grow up being taught things at home, in school, and by observing the world for ourselves. The thing is, a lot of times, all three of these sources of knowledge teach us in different ways. The question is: Do we need to internalize all of this knowledge?

If we do, we could unknowingly be setting unrealistic expectations for our lives, leaving us ultimately disappointed and unsatisfied in the end. That's no way to live! We should instead focus on improving ourselves for ourselves. We should do things for ourselves and only for that reason.

Attaching any external hope or secondary attachments to the actions we take almost always leads to disappointment. Most of the time, we end up trying to fulfill that emptiness with external things, blowing all your money on a fancy car, the house, or even starting a family.

Sometimes we do all of these things for their external value and not their internal value. But Stoicism teaches that if you approach life this way, you place your happiness in the hands of external forces—forces that can always fail. Cars almost always break down, natural disasters wipe away entire cities, and divorce rates climb higher and higher each year. But even the free things in life come at a cost—the cost of space, both physical and mental.

A Seneca once wrote, "Learning to live with lust will create space in your life for the things that truly matter to you." Instead, we must place our happiness on our intrinsic value as humans and on nothing we have or can physically acquire. We must choose to do our best to keep a cool head, regardless of what life throws at us, because regardless of what it is, we want at the end of the day we don't have any control over the majority of things that happen to us, but we do have control over how we react to those things.

That is the dichotomy of control, the most important principle in Stoic philosophy. Stoics teach that we must learn to separate what we control from what we cannot control. We need to determine our value not from things we can't control but from the things we can. Striving towards goals is a good trait, but breaking down when those things don't go your way is, in a Stoic's point of view, useless.

Making YouTube videos is, well, a lot easier than being a Roman emperor, but it can still prove to be challenging sometimes. First, you must form your idea, which takes forever, then research that idea, scrap it because it sucks, start over, script the video, create the video, edit it, make the title, the thumbnail, and everything else before you hit upload. Everything up until the point where you click upload is all up to you.

However, once you click that upload button, the power shifts to the YouTube algorithm. Still, a lot of people judge the success of their YouTube channel or Instagram account based on how many views and subscribers or followers they have—metrics of which, for the most part, are beyond your control. Stoics teach that instead, you should judge the success of your work based on the amount of effort you put in and not on the outcome of your external hopes.

Trust the process. Think about a person who has been working hard at their job for the past six months. He now feels he deserves a promotion, and so he walks up to his boss with this performance report. The boss says, "Thanks," doesn't grant him the promotion, and he goes home thinking he must suck at his job.

He doesn't consider that the boss might have simply woken up angry, someone else might have been better qualified at the time, or maybe the company was just losing money and couldn't afford it. He doesn't know the reason, but he's still upset. If he simply placed his value on the quality of the performance report he turned in, kept doing what he was doing to earn the promotion he wanted, he could have been much happier overall.

With the right perspective, his goal wouldn't have been diminished, but just postponed. It's this reframing of your mindset that is crucial. A true Stoic does not view their successes based on the financial gain of their ventures but is comforted by the fact that they can live a comfortable life without all the things money can buy.

These are the four main virtues of Stoicism: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. Wisdom is being able to separate between what is internal and what is external and the ability to choose our reaction to the things that happen to us. As Victor Frankl said, "Between stimulus and response there is a space, and that space is our power to choose our response."

Courage is two words: persist and resist. Temperance, or moderation, is what I just did there—doing more with less, saying more with fewer words. While Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are fighting at the top of the Forbes list, Stoics believe that the limit of wealth should simply be having what is essential and then having what is enough.

Justice is the most important of all the virtues. It instructs that no one should do harm to another because we were all born for each other—to do good to one another and not to ourselves. Nelson Mandela was one of the most famous African leaders in the world. While he was fighting against apartheid, he got sentenced to life imprisonment, where he stayed for 27 years before finally being released.

When he was released from prison, he was elected president of South Africa, and thus many people thought he was going to brutally punish all the people that had anything to do with apartheid or his imprisonment. But of course he did not. Throughout his time in prison, Mandela read the works of Marcus Aurelius and learned many of the core values of Stoicism, all of which he practiced throughout his life.

Instead of calling for the heads of the wrongdoers, Nelson Mandela urged his people to instead seek the opposite—to relax and rebuild. He stressed that the past was now beyond their control and that the only thing they could do was find a way to move forward and build a better nation. This is the way of the Stoic.

In modern-day medicine, Stoicism is at the core of procedures like Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy and Logotherapy. REBT helps patients identify negative thought patterns that might be causing emotional and behavioral issues. It allows you to challenge the reasoning behind all these negative thoughts with logic, and when you realize that many of them are unfounded, you can then replace them with more productive and healthier beliefs.

Logotherapy, on the other hand, is based on the Stoic principle that humans are driven by purpose. Even in the darkest of situations, we can fill our lives with meaning and happiness by simply finding out what that purpose is. As many of us know, though, this is easier said than done. It's a process, much like everything else.

We have to rewire the way we think: out with the old, in with the new. To fix our problems with happiness, we must practice forth by redirecting our definition of value to the things that we can control. We can stop getting fixated on the things we cannot control, and overall, we can lead a much happier and more fulfilling life.

Stoicism helps us steer through past and present storms into calmer and more peaceful waters, and if our ship sinks and we all drown, we can take peace in the fact that we lived a good life, albeit not as long as we had hoped. Because remember: everything has its met. Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Have you ever met someone who calls themselves a nihilist? Maybe you have a friend from college or a family member who says they're a disciple of nihilism. At every opportunity, they love to wax poetic about the meaninglessness of life. Briefly indulging them in their philosophical ideas can expand your mind and help you to see things you never would have.

But the truth is, outside of philosophical discussion, leading a nihilistic life is bleak. Think about it. If nothing matters and we're all just specks of dust floating through space and time, what's the point in trying at all? Building healthy relationships with friends and family doesn't seem worth it because, in the end, everyone you know will die anyway.

All attempts at self-improvement are futile because in the universe's grand plan, none of it matters. Even if you're not all doom and gloom, there will be days when getting out of bed will seem pointless, where life itself will seem kind of pointless. And the current state of the world, with issues like the climate crisis, the rise in extreme politics, and economic instability, doesn't help with our psychological state.

This glimpse into the void might dissuade you from wanting to do anything with your life. You're staring down nihilism, the belief in nothing, and framed like this, it makes life sound pretty awful. But there's another way to look at nihilism—a way that teaches you not to see the glass as half full or half empty, but instead to throw the glass away and drink straight from the faucet until you're satisfied.

This is optimistic nihilism, the realization that the universe's meaninglessness is the most liberating thing in the world. It's the type of nihilism you get when standing on the precipice of a huge mountain or watching a mother bird feed her young. It's the profound smack of insignificance you feel when faced with the miracle of your existence—the amount of luck and chance that it took for you to get here in the first place.

Optimistic nihilism doesn't mean we're doomed to live in a meaningless universe; instead, it allows us to experience the universe in our own unique ways. One of the best ways to experience the universe is to understand how it works. According to nihilism, you and I don't matter—nothing does. Religious morality or societal norms don't restrict your existence. You are entirely free and in control of making your life mean something.

Once you accept the meaninglessness of your life as a gift rather than a burden, you find peace with the life you have because life is brief and fleeting. It's precious. Writing in the late 19th century, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was worried about modernity. He was very critical of the traditional European morality and the religion of his time, which placed Christian beliefs at the center of social and political life.

In his 1882 book, The Gay Science, he proclaimed the infamous line, "God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him." Here, Nietzsche didn't make an argument for atheism; instead, he observed that believing in one true Christian God was no longer central to European society. People's lives no longer revolved around the church's calendar or teachings.

Industrial means of production gripped Europe, flooding the pockets of factory owners and enforcing a standardized workday on everyone else. With that, personal freedom and agency became core values in society. People no longer yearned for a higher power to guide them through life, explain what comes after death, or show them right from wrong. Increasingly, people took these matters into their own hands.

While Nietzsche was critical of religion, he was equally skeptical of what society could become without it. He understood that without Christianity as a guiding principle, people might move through life confused and disoriented. A world without God creates a void of understanding in our lives, and humans aren't psychologically capable of a pure belief in nothing.

We're always searching for purpose in anything, even when we're not aware of it. Think about how you start your day. Imagine you wake up and look out your window to see a beautiful owl perched on your balcony railing. You might associate that with having a good or bad day, depending on the culture you were raised in. We're constantly making connections and associations like this in our lives, down to the most mundane things.

People aren't built to remain in a constant nihilistic state. It's only a phase that allows us to gain perspective on the structures that govern our everyday life. According to Nietzsche, we fill the void where God once was with ourselves. We become our own tiny gods, so to speak. We give ourselves the authority to distinguish right from wrong and determine our individual meanings in life.

If nihilism from a Nietzschean point of view interests you, we made an entire video on nihilism so you can check that out by clicking on the link in the description. The existentialists who came after Nietzsche, like French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, expanded on this idea. To Sartre, we have complete freedom over our lives in a world without God or objective meaning.

But with great power comes great responsibility. You have the power to shape the life you want to live. Let that sink in for a moment. Yes, you can make good choices for yourself, but how are you supposed to know which choices are good? How often do you do things that are against your own self-interest?

In good moments, when things are going well for you, you might feel empowered and in control. You may get the promotion you deserve or marry the person you love. You might move to a new city and establish a community of friends that you couldn't imagine life without. You've invested time, energy, and love into making a meaningful life for yourself without following arbitrary rules or some intangible plan ordained from above.

All the good things in your life have come from you. Yet in the trenches of everyday life, it can seem overwhelming, especially when you're in charge of making sure you have a good one. To give our lives meaning, we create internal narratives about ourselves, and this is where we start to run into issues.

We tell ourselves we're hard workers, and consequently, the importance of our jobs and the identity they provide us with start to weigh us down. It's the same at school. Students get sick with anxiety about test scores and grades, as if getting into the perfect college will finally confirm their life's worth. Similarly, you inject meaning into your love and family life. You strive to be the perfect parent, child, or partner because of your belief that these relationships will make your life meaningful.

This is what keeps people in unhealthy or toxic relationships. They've attached this idea of meaning or worth to something that's ultimately meaningless. Having to constantly reaffirm who you are—because there's no higher power to do that work for you—can be exhausting. But we have the freedom of total control, which also bogs us down.

What happens when you're busy shaping a life you think you want, yet you're still unhappy? All this meaning-making, trying to make sense of your life, contributes to a plague of depression and anxiety, especially among Millennials and Gen Z. People are burned out, stressed out, and exhausted. So why do we chase meaning even with this feeling in the back of our minds that none of it matters?

There's a contradiction between our pursuit of meaning and the reality of a meaningless universe. It's devastating to confront the idea that all the hard work we put into making our lives mean something is for nothing. Optimistic nihilism is the solution to this anxiety that we inherit when we're forced into the position of making meaning out of our lives.

Yes, nothing matters, but isn't that a relief? You can find yourself responding to the seemingly urgent work emails at 3:00 a.m. or obsessing over your Instagram caption, but in the moment, it feels like the weight of the world rests on these things. You spend late nights tossing and turning, all of your mistakes and wrongdoing spinning until you've convinced yourself that you're the worst person on the planet.

But embracing that none of these things ultimately matter is freeing. Forgive yourself for your past mistakes and look forward, excited to experience the future. When we're the center of our own structures of meaning, every choice we make, good or bad, becomes weighted with significance.

When you find yourself in one of these mindsets where your life feels too big to handle, remind yourself that you're small and insignificant. The universe is indifferent to your worries, struggles, and mistakes, and in the end, none of it matters. You'll die one day, and in the future, no one will remember your brief flight on this planet. There's no use fretting about trying to create the perfect life because the energy spent making your life mean something is worthless.

When it's all said and done, you're dust. It's completely normal to allow the squirming sensation of your insignificance to wash over you for a moment. But staring nihilism in the face is only uncomfortable if you let it be.

If you call yourself an optimistic nihilist, it's probably good practice to confront all the different emotions your meaninglessness makes you feel. Otherwise, you won't reap the actual benefits of optimistic nihilism. Instead, it'll be a bandage to your problems—something you just tell yourself to believe in order to get through the day instead of a true guiding principle.

You need to sit with your nothingness and accept it for what it is. Then use the objective meaninglessness of life to relieve yourself from the pressure that meaning-making entails. Take a look at your life and all it means to you: your relationships, the values you hold close, the things that get you out of bed in the morning.

You have to be willing to part with all of them and embrace the void that they leave behind. Suddenly, the choices you make, the problems you face every day—things that take up so much of your mental capacity—don't seem so overbearing. Optimistic nihilism frees you from the crushing burden of meaning-making.

Of course, it doesn't absolve you of wrongdoing; your actions still have consequences, and you shouldn't give in to all your impulses for the sake of it. Continue creating a life that you love, one that you're excited to live, whatever that means. But just know that in the end, everything you've made will dissolve into the ether, and you'll leave nothing behind in the face of this reality.

Take advantage of all the sweetness life offers. The good things in your life are made all the more beautiful because of their fleeting insignificance. Sharing a meal with those you love, the smell of blooming lilacs in spring, and even petting your cat—it's such a miracle that you're here, able to experience anything. So shouldn't you spend your life enjoying yourself instead of worrying so much about making your life mean something?

Life is precious, beautiful, and awe-inspiring despite its chaos and disorder. It's a wonder that you can find goodness amid a void of meaning. You need to end the hopeless search of meaning-making and dive headfirst into the void. And when you emerge on the other side, you'll find nothing but clarity and brightness—a guiding light into a better yet fading life.

What would you do if you won the lottery? Personally, I'd pay off my debt, quit my job, and move to Japan. It's a fun scenario to think about, even if it's never going to happen. Statistically, you're more likely to give birth to quadruplets or be crushed by a meteor than win the lotto—that is, unless, of course, you're Evelyn Adams.

In 1985, Adams won a $3.9 million jackpot from the New Jersey State Lottery. Just four months later, she won again, bringing her total payout to $5.4 million, nearly $15 million in today's money. Adams was basically the first person in American history to ever win multiple million-dollar prizes.

Basically overnight, she went from working in a convenience store to being worth more than some CEOs. With her newfound wealth, Adams paid off bills, set up a college fund for her daughter, bought a car, and lavished friends and family with gifts. You'd think a story like this would come with a happily ever after finale, which it did not.

Soon after winning, Adams noticed her privacy rapidly disappearing. She felt that she couldn't go anywhere without being recognized, and while some people celebrated her good luck, others resented her for it. Still more came to her asking for money. She put a stop to her plans to go to school and study music, made several bad business deals, and ended up giving away a substantial portion of her wealth.

By 2012, she had lost her entire fortune after gambling away the last of it at the casinos in Atlantic City. Today, she lives in a trailer park. Adams would later say about her experience, "I won the American dream, but I lost it too. It was a very hard fall."

The story of Evelyn Adams isn't unusual. Multiple lottery winners have found their supposed good luck quickly turned sour, as the sudden influx of cash ruined their lives. I guess the saying is true: money can't buy happiness.

Except it isn't. Scientific research has demonstrated a positive correlation between wealth and individual happiness. The key, it turns out, is knowing how to use that money to buy happiness and not just having it. But to understand this, we need to answer the question: what is happiness?

You'd think it would be fairly simple to define, but from a psychological perspective, happiness is actually quite complicated. There are hundreds of different neurotransmitters that contribute to our unique understanding of what feels good. Each one plays a specific role and is responsible for a range of different emotional experiences.

But by far, the most important of these are dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. Dopamine is strongly tied to our reward center. Serotonin helps us relax. Oxytocin helps us bond and form relationships. Taken together, these three molecules could be called the happiness trifecta—a potent chemical cocktail responsible for feelings of excitement, bliss, contentment, and every other positive emotion.

Neurochemistry aside, our subjective interpretations of happiness can roughly be divided into two categories: pleasure and purpose. Pleasure is the short-term, day-to-day happiness that we get from a good meal, spending time with friends, or going for a jog. We might refer to this more simply as mood. Purpose is the harder-to-define sense of fulfillment we gain when we feel that our life has meaning.

This delineation goes all the way back to Aristotle, and scientists today still use it as a way of evaluating an individual's overall happiness. There is a significant difference between pleasure and purpose, and just because a person has one doesn't guarantee the other.

Take a new college student, for instance. They may experience frequent daily pleasure in the form of spending time with friends, attending social events, and enjoying a much greater level of personal freedom and independence. Yet this same person may struggle to figure out what exactly they want to do with their life. This causes them stress and contributes to low levels of life satisfaction.

Conversely, a successful CEO or entrepreneur can feel that sense of purpose in their work while having low amounts of daily pleasure. The burden of running a massive company weighs on them, sucking the joy out of even their favorite hobbies. Happiness then is when we experience both pleasure and purpose simultaneously. A truly happy person is someone who is able to find enjoyment in their daily experiences while also working towards larger goals to give their life meaning.

If we're going to use money to increase our happiness, we should then consider using it to enhance both our pleasure and purpose. You may think the simple solution is to just make more money. I mean, if I have more money, I can spend it on things that give me pleasure while using those same resources to pursue my purpose.

Well, kind of. You see, there's actually some evidence that supports this. Unfortunately, once you really start digging into the data, the picture gets a bit messy. A now-famous 2010 Princeton University study has often been cited as finding that there's a limit to the amount of happiness money can bring us—specifically, that $75,000 appears to be the ceiling and that beyond that the benefits plateau.

Except this isn't what the study found at all. What it actually demonstrated is that while daily pleasure caps at $75,000, overall life purpose continues to grow alongside income. It's a classic case of the media focusing on the sensational while ignoring the larger context. And here, especially the larger context is key.

Another study conducted in 2018 reinforced the original $75,000 figure for pleasure but also reported that a second ceiling of $95,000 for purpose. It's important to note that the 2010 study only evaluated around 450,000 people in the United States. The 2018 survey, meanwhile, included 1.7 million individuals from around the world and found substantial variation between cultures.

In wealthier countries, for example, caps appeared higher, and in certain regions, incomes beyond this limit were actually associated with decreased happiness. As if all of this wasn't confusing enough, a more recent 2021 study from the University of Pennsylvania reportedly found no ceilings whatsoever.

However, this survey drew from a relatively small sample size of just 33,000 Americans, and it also placed a greater focus on pleasure than the previous studies. What all of this data supports, though, is that the more money you currently have, the less that the future increases in wealth will contribute to your sense of pleasure and purpose.

Essentially, every dollar you earn buys us a little less happiness. Think of it this way: if a person earning $20,000 a year and a person making $200,000 a year both get a 10% raise, each will experience a similar boost to their happiness. For the first person, a $2,000 raise represents an increase in their standard of living and potentially their level of comfort.

But for the second person, $20,000 is a proverbial drop in the bucket, with a much less dramatic effect on their daily life. What this means is that while there is a positive correlation between money and happiness, it's one with diminishing returns. Once you've passed a certain threshold, it takes increasingly larger amounts of money to trigger the same neurological release of feel-good chemicals as when you had less.

So if chasing money for money's sake isn't an effective strategy for buying happiness, then what is? Well, in a few words: spending what you already have wisely. Positive psychology is an entire school of study devoted to quantifiably figuring out what makes life worth living. Its goal is to analyze positive experiences, traits, and institutions with the aim of improving quality of life.

Not incidentally, it is extremely concerned with happiness. In terms of the best way to spend money, the school of study divides potential purchases into two categories: pleasures and comforts. In some ways, this reflects the hedonistic distinction between pleasure and purpose.

Pleasures, by their nature, are transient and short-lived, like biting into a chocolate bar. Comforts, on the other hand, are more permanent but are largely taken for granted, like running water and electricity. We tend to not notice them until they're gone.

In general, investing in comforts tends to be a sure method of raising our baseline level of happiness. They help to prevent and alleviate suffering, ensuring you're able to focus your attention on other pursuits rather than spending all your time simply trying to survive. Things like a reliable vehicle, a house in a safe neighborhood, and access to quality healthcare are all comforts essential for improving an individual's quality of life.

Perhaps the most important comfort a person can invest in is leisure time. Time is, after all, the only resource we can't get more of. As such, it has a much higher value than any currency. Having leisure time means we're free to pursue the kinds of experiences that give our life both pleasure and purpose.

Studies have found that these kinds of activities are a more reliable source of happiness than any material purchase. No matter how excited you were when you bought that new smartphone, eventually it'll age, the screen will crack, and the battery will die, and a new model will come along and become the new object of your desire.

Just watch my entire video on planned obsolescence, and you'll kind of understand what I mean. On the other hand, a once-in-a-lifetime trip to a foreign country will be remembered for years afterwards. What starts out as a trip will become a story you share again and again, providing you with a continuous source of joy.

Of course, you don't have to spend a fortune on an overseas vacation just to find a little happiness. Going to a concert, taking a hiking trip, or simply getting dinner with friends offers the same benefits. Perhaps the best experiences to invest in are those that allow us to improve ourselves at the same time.

Learning a new skill or taking classes at a local university creates feelings of personal growth and progress. In fact, skill mastery is an important tool used in cognitive behavior therapy to help combat a variety of mood disorders, from borderline personality disorder to depression. This strategy can be adopted by anyone in order to boost our self-confidence and sense of purpose.

If you can participate in these kinds of experiences alongside loved ones, because far and away what makes humans the happiest is their connection with one another. We are innately social creatures. We want to feel like we belong, that we're loved and accepted.

The best way, then, to spend our money is by using it to nurture our relationships. A great way to do this is through experiences where we can spend time with those we love, engaging in hobbies and other fun activities. But what's even more powerful is giving. You don't have to give all your money away to reap the rewards.

So be smart with what you give, and make sure that it's well within your means. Psychologically speaking, the benefits of giving can be observed in children. Prior to the age of two, before many of us are even able to walk or talk, we already understand the joy of sharing.

This isn't just some hokey feel-good sentiment; rather, it's directly related to our neurochemistry. When we give someone a gift, we're rewarded with a surge of oxytocin. This improves our mood, decreases stress, and gives us feelings of security as we strengthen our social connections.

Oxytocin also has the added benefit of boosting serotonin and dopamine, further contributing to an overall positive emotional experience. This process is an evolutionary adaptation meant to promote the kinds of pro-social behaviors that contribute to the overall well-being and survival of the tribe. This, in turn, helps ensure our own personal survival, as we are seen as valuable members of the group.

Giving, then, is kind of a life hack for happiness. Buying a gift for a friend or donating to a charity produces a dependable source of both pleasure and purpose. These don't have to take the form of grand dramatic gestures; everyday acts of kindness can allow us to reliably tap into this natural biological process.

Considering this, maybe the adage should be: money can buy happiness so long as it is spent on someone else. Keep this in mind if you ever win the lottery. But even if you don't, even if you never found a Fortune 500 company or come up with some revolutionary new invention, the money you do have can still make you happy by investing more in comforts and pleasures, spending more on experiences, and nurturing the relationships around us.

We might just discover that we're richer than we could have ever imagined. Imagine you're an Olympic athlete. You could be a track star, a distance swimmer, or a figure skater—whatever sport you choose. Chances are, you've been training for it since the moment you could walk. You have your gym routine down to a science; you've hired specialized coaches to help you along the way, and you eat a specific meal plan that ensures you perform at your best physically.

You're at the peak of your sport, and you've done everything you can to be one of the best athletes in the world. But to win, your game needs to extend way past the physical, and mentally, you have to believe you will win no matter what. Crouching at those starting blocks or mounting the balance beam, you must think: at the end of the day, you will end up on top of the podium with a gold medal around your neck.

Otherwise, what's the point in competing in the first place? The problem is that every athlete you're competing against shares this belief, and you know that. You also know that there can only be one winner, and so statistically, the chances of you coming out on top are pretty low. Yet you must go against your own logic and believe that no matter what, you will win.

This is naive optimism—the belief that good outcomes are more likely to happen to you than bad ones in any given situation. You must keep yourself unaware or naïve of what could prevent you from your goals and forge forward as if you will achieve them regardless of any external factors. No matter the circumstance, you believe things will work out for you, even when the odds aren't in your favor or when certain obstacles are in your way.

To be a naive optimist requires a suspension of disbelief. You must adopt a positive stance or perspective in every situation without familiarizing yourself with its nuances or details. It's like walking around with blinders on, ignoring everything that could go wrong. Or in the professional athlete's case, using naivety to forget about all your competitors and the statistical likelihood that you'll lose.

The ignorance of the naive optimist can serve them well. Have you ever felt anxious before a party where you don't know many people? You run over all your insecurities and the hypothetical social blunders that could occur, and it might feel comforting. You go through all the scenarios that could go wrong in your head: what will you do if you spill your drink all over someone or forget the name of a person who swears you've met before?

But is it really comforting? Or do you just end up feeling anxious and worried throughout the party, forgetting to enjoy yourself or meet the new people? The naive optimist would go into the night assuring everyone will like them and everything will go off without a hitch. While this might not be true, awkwardness is almost a given when meeting new people.

When you have positive expectations, you stop anxiety and catastrophic thinking in its tracks. You go into the party with a more open demeanor, making it more likely that you will make a good impression. You could have a similar attitude when interviewing for a job. Believing you'll do well and achieve the desired outcome makes it more likely to happen.

Blocking out the negative possibilities helps you focus on all the good things that could happen. It prepares you to confidently communicate your credentials and why you would be the best choice for the role instead of worrying about why you might not be. To take your naive optimism to the next level, you would prepare for the interview as if you already have the job, despite the other candidates interviewing for the same role.

As someone who overthinks, I sincerely understand just how difficult naive optimism can be. Mental health issues like anxiety and depression, and even just regular worries and life struggles, can prevent us from seeing the bright side of anything. From the outside, it can be easy to conflate naive optimism with manifestation.

Both methods constitute an unwavering belief that you will achieve what you want, but that's about where their similarities end. Manifestation is putting an intention out into the universe and expecting the universe to grant you that wish. It relies heavily on energy and things like journaling and visualization. At least how it's been popularized, it suggests that something will happen even if you don't work for it.

On the other hand, the naive optimist knows this mindset doesn't guarantee all their wants and desires will plop into their lap. Asking the universe for the winning lottery ticket or your dream home won't get you those things. Naive optimism is about tangibly working towards your goals and believing you will achieve them because of that work.

It's being optimistic about the results of the work you've put in, regardless of the challenges you might face. Sadly, our society has gotten to a point where being optimistic is now seen as wrong, and to an extent, I kind of understand. Our shared culture is riddled with political discourse, climate change, rampant inflation, and a general fear that we're headed towards doom.

As a result, it's hard for most people to see or even imagine a light at the end of the tunnel. As a result, naive optimists are often ridiculed for being arrogant or even stupid. And what these people don't realize is that a naively optimistic outlook might open up a new perspective in these conversations.

While everyone is so focused on what could go wrong and the problems we face, you could be the person focused on making the best possible outcome a reality. Another critique is that naive optimists lack the perspective to see the nuances in complex situations. It's a frustrating perspective to work with when solving complicated problems with tangible barriers.

Optimism is good when doing focused detailed work like policymaking or engineering, but naivety can hinder you from confronting genuine issues in large-scale projects. The naive optimist does have their place, but it's also necessary to balance that perspective with a more realistic outlook.

One of the best utilizations of naive optimism is at the outset of a massive project or challenge. Naivety is helpful in situations where confronting the whole picture could discourage you. Consider starting a business or writing a novel or completing a triathlon. If you begin a big project thinking about all the problems you'll inevitably have along the way, you won't be motivated to start.

Instead, it's best to be optimistic that you will complete the project without considering the obstacles. And even if you don't reach your goal, you'll still be further along at the end than if you had convinced yourself that it was impossible from the start. Naive optimism will always push you further toward success, even if you don't make it all the way there.

Each time it allows you to try new things and pushes you out of your comfort zone. Because you're not as focused on what could go wrong, you build confidence and trust in yourself by giving yourself that chance. However naive it might seem, it reminds me of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Usually, this phenomenon refers to the type of person with a low skill in a particular area who grossly overestimates their ability. Anyway, think of an audience member watching a ballerina on stage and thinking, "That doesn't look so hard; I could do that." And then fast-forward to them in a ballet class, struggling to do even the most basic steps with proper technique.

Often, the Dunning-Kruger effect has a negative connotation. People are so ignorant about their abilities that they don't even know how ignorant they are. But it's actually not that bad, because it is the Dunning-Kruger effect that allows people to take the first step to achieve greatness.

Yes, that audience member who watched the ballerina grossly overestimated their skill, but that naivety allowed them to enter the dance studio. And sure, they may have two left feet at first, but through perseverance and an unwavering belief that they can succeed, in just a few years of training, they too will be pirouetting and leaping across the stage while another audience member watches and thinks to themselves, "I'm pretty sure I could do this."

This is why kids learn stuff so quickly. If you've spent significant time around children, especially toddlers, you'll notice they're very optimistic about their abilities, and overly so. From dressing to pouring juice to cutting their hair, they think they can care for themselves despite their lack of life skills.

But their naive optimism is what builds those skills, that allows them to practice, so eventually one day, the orange juice ends up in the glass instead of all over the floor. Older children also tend to overestimate their abilities, allowing them to have zero fear when trying new things. They're like little sponges, eagerly soaking up information. They learn quickly and hungrily because they don't possess all the self-conscious baggage surrounding ignorance.

It might be helpful to adopt a childlike mindset when learning new things. It comes from a want to learn and forgetting how likely failure will be at first. Overcoming that initial mental hurdle is the most helpful thing naive optimism can do for you.

Another instance where naive optimism can aid you is when facing a difficult life decision. Maybe you or someone you know is dealing with a chronic illness, financial stress, or relationship struggles. A naive optimist would believe in their core that they will make it out the other side. They wouldn't spend time considering what might be in their way or the realistic likelihood that things might turn for the worst.

And I'm not trying to say that naive optimism will make these situations quickly melt away. Instead, this philosophy is meant to help you see a favorable resolution in cases where it's too easy to focus on the negative. As humans, we tend to have a bias towards the negative, and evolutionary, this makes sense. We're urged to protect and prepare ourselves for the worst that life can throw our way.

But an overemphasis on the negative isn't helpful. It can cause you to blow situations out of proportion and indulge in unnecessary worry, feeling overwhelmed by negativity. When life inevitably becomes difficult, it's normal. But just because you encounter a challenging situation doesn't mean you have to give up the idea that at some point things will get better and work out for you.

With a naively optimistic attitude, you can make better decisions with your future self in mind. Naive optimism takes practice, and as a chronic overthinker, it's not a mindset that comes naturally to me.

The key might be to fake it until you make it. If you act like a naive optimist, you will likely sincerely adopt the attitude over time. Start with the small things. "I will complete everything on my to-do list. The meeting with my boss will go well. I'll successfully bake a loaf of bread from scratch."

Then hopefully this attitude will seep into more influential sectors of your life. Even if you don't become the textbook example of a naive optimist, those thought patterns will get you further than if you didn't use them.

Remember your ideal Olympic athlete self. You must believe you will win the race to reach the starting blocks. And when the race begins, you are in places ahead of where you would have been without this belief. Even if someone runs faster and beats you, the idea that you would win still did more for you than the belief that you'd lose. And there's always the next race—the one you know you'll definitely win.

But if you're still in your head, unable to entirely give yourself over to naivety, it might be helpful to check out another theory: optimistic nihilism. This belief is that nothing matters, but rather than letting that be a reason for fear and anxiety, embrace it as a good thing. Why? Click the link on your screen right now to find out.

Are you the type of person to analyze every second of the interaction you just had with someone for hours on end? Or are you normal? Either way, you probably don't think all that hard about every single detail of the decisions you make in social situations. But believe it or not, there's an entire scientific field that applies to social situations and decision-making.

We're talking about game theory. Game theory can be used to analyze both economic and social situations. It's essentially the science of strategy. And just like reality is trying to model, game theory can get really complicated. Yes, although game theory is relevant to games as we typically understand them—such as poker—most research in game theory focuses on how groups of people interact.

Let's first define what a game is. So what exactly is a game? It sounds like a stupid question—like, who doesn't know what a game is? But games in the field of game theory are a slightly different concept than what you might expect. When it comes to game-theoretic analysis, a game constitutes any interaction between multiple people where each person's payoff is affected by the decision made by others.

Let's apply this definition of a game to a couple of examples. Is Sudoku a game? Well, in the traditional sense, sure. But in game theory, no. Sudoku is not a game because how you decide to complete the puzzle doesn't affect any other player. After all, there is only one player in the game—you.

What about tic-tac-toe? Is that a game? Two players can play the game, and each box that is filled by one of the players affects the other player. Winning requires both players to respond optimally to what the other player is doing. So yes, it is a game.

You could also have a situation where two shop owners choose from a finite number of positions where to strategically place their shops for maximum profit. They are each affected by what the other person does since they may be opting for the same market, and there's certainly a win-lose situation here. So even though placing your shop may not sound like much of a game, in the eyes of game theorists, it certainly is.

Game theory is the study of games like these, and game theorists try to model games in a way that makes them easy to understand and analyze. I say easy, but a lot of games can end up having pretty similar properties or reoccurring patterns, and more often than not, things can get pretty complicated.

Game theory has two main focuses: cooperative games and non-cooperative games. Most game theory models involve five conditions. It'd go something like this:

First, each player has two or more choices or sequences of choices. Think of these like typical moves in a game, like moving a chess piece.

Second, all possible combinations of decisions or plays result in a clear outcome. Basically, you can win or lose.

Third, it's clear how you can win or lose, and participants will gain or lose something depending on the outcome.

Fourth, the players know the rules of the game as well as the payoffs other players. This means everyone is aware of what is desirable to the other players as well.

And fifth, the players are rational and sensible people. Rational, here, means strictly that when they're faced with two alternatives, they'll choose the option that provides the greatest benefit. While players know the rules and their opponent's options, they don't know their opponent's actual decisions in advance. So players must choose options based on assumptions of what their opponents might choose.

Some game theory scenarios are zero-sum games, meaning one player's win is another's loss and vice versa. Others, however, allow mutual gains and losses; these games can involve multiple strategies. You can try to minimize the maximum losses that another player can cause and make decisions based on probable outcomes.

This all really just sounds a bit confusing, so here, let me show you. If life is indeed a game, then the first rule is to be skeptical of other people's suggestions. As we said, if it's a game, someone else is going to be competing, so there's definitely going to be competition and sabotage.

Perhaps a straightforward and well-known example is the prisoners' dilemma. The game goes like this: two criminals are caught red-handed and are arrested. Each has two choices. They can either stay quiet or testify against their friend. Upon arrest, they are each separated and offered a deal.

Testify against your friend and we'll let you off the hook, easy with one year in prison, and give the other person ten years. If both stay quiet, the cops can't really prove the more serious charges, and both criminals would spend only two years behind bars. If they both testify against each other, however, then both would get five-year prison sentences.

At first glance, keeping quiet seems like the best strategy. If they both did this, they would both be out after just two years. But right before they're about to testify, one of the two thinks to himself, "What if I stay quiet and the other guy rats me out?" Without knowing what the other person is actually going to decide, it's a reasonable worry to have.

The smartest solution to this would be to react in a way that is beneficial, regardless of what the other person does. A Nash equilibrium is actually a state in which no one person can improve, given what the others are doing. This means you're picking the best response to a particular strategy from your opponent.

A quick analysis of the prisoners' dilemma reveals they would both most likely testify, which is the Nash equilibrium for this problem. This is because regardless of what the other person does, testifying will lead to a maximum sentence of five years, with the potential for a one-year sentence.

Meanwhile, if you don't testify, you could end up with a ten-year term. It's easily the safest thing to do, considering neither party knows what the other is going to do. Even though both criminals are better off if they just stayed quiet, here the individual incentive wins over group interest.

Testifying is a better option because you know that you'll be in trouble if you stay quiet but your friend testifies. But if you can think of that, your friend can too, so he knows you're likely going to testify, given that it's the safer option for you. And you know he's likely going to testify too for the same reason, and you know that he knows that you're likely going to testify. You see the loop that's forming?

These types of problems are examples of non-cooperative games, which means the two prisoners can't convey their intentions to each other. If they were able to talk to each other, however, we would be in a cooperative setting, and that would affect the likelihood of certain outcomes.

As you can imagine, for example, it becomes much easier for them to agree beforehand that they're both just going to stay quiet. On the contrary, a coordination game is one in which everyone benefits from working together. There's no incentive for either party to cheat since it will result in a worse outcome than if they just cooperated.

A good example is driving on the correct side of the road. You win nothing by driving on the wrong side of the road, but sometimes you lose without even playing. The principal-agent problem is when one person is allowed to make decisions on behalf of another person. In this situation, the first person is likely to prioritize their own interests and pursue their own goals.

And, well, yeah—that's the basis of modern politics. Game theory can also be applied to biology, though. In fact, its application in the field of biology has allowed biologists to answer a lot of questions about evolution, which is remarkable since game theory was never designed for this. For example, it helped scientists explain biological altruism, where an organism acts in a way that is most favorable for the overall species, even if that action is harmful to itself.

A bird might warn the rest of the group about the arrival of a predator. Doing so risks its own life, since it essentially announces itself to the predator. But this trait can later help that bird, assuming it survives, of course, when other birds return the favor and warn it.

These concepts might help you anticipate some of the strategies others might be using to get one over on you. But who really knows what they're thinking? The concept of guessing others' moves is what makes the game so tricky. While each player is likely to be certain about only their own move, they still have to speculate about other players' decisions.

And more importantly, other players' conception of every other player's decision. Essentially, you are no longer making a decision based on what you think is right; rather, you're anticipating what your opponent thinks is right and simply reacting to it. But then again, your opponent is doing the same exact thing. So who's really making the decision here? Whose mind is the actual decision being made in?

Let's put it another way: Each player must know their own chance of coming out on top, guess everyone else's chance, and also guess what everyone else is guessing about their own chances of winning. Not only this, but you also really need to be able to guess what other players are guessing about your guesses about them. And now look, we're confused again!

Another problem is that although game theory has many benefits, it would be impossible to properly apply it in all situations. There will be times where rationality might not offer the right solutions, or mutual benefit might not be the most ideal outcome. When you come up against these, you have to not only recognize them but also decide whether using game theory would be the most helpful way to deal with the situation. By then, the moment could already be gone.

The assumption that everyone is going to be rational—a basic premise of game theory—is also a really risky one. Humans can be extremely unpredictable and emotional, and this makes the guessing work near impossible. There are a ton of real-life examples that illustrate the basic concepts of game theory.

Apple and Samsung are involved in an endless game of advertising. It's not like either company needs to advertise; besides, advertising can get extremely expensive. So why not just forego this task altogether and use the money for research and development? If both companies did this, then we'd probably have better phones by now.

But sure enough, Apple banks on the possibility of Samsung advertising and gaining an edge over the market, and Samsung does the same. That possibility soon turns into a certainty, which you and I have all come to accept.

Now, this is an extremely simplistic example that bypasses many other variables, but you see the basic concept. Another good everyday example can be found in the treatment of public goods and property. If everyone decides to be good citizens and not litter, society benefits as a whole.

But you're inevitably going to come up against one or more people who choose to essentially go rogue and behave selfishly by littering. This leads to society as a whole bearing the cost of cleaning up, all the while making not littering a less worthwhile decision. After all, if the road's already littered, the work to not litter is that much less meaningful.

You can probably now see how applicable this is to other situations in life, like every big important decision we're supposed to be fixing. But more on that later. As interesting as it is, game theory can still only analyze simple situations with well-defined constraints.

You must remember that any model is a subset of reality. No matter how good it is, it's essentially intellectual guesswork. The bottom line? We're all constantly in