yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Rant: The TRUTH about happiness


3m read
·Nov 7, 2024

I'm just going to rant a little bit about happiness because it seems like a lot of people are very hung up about buying a certain thing, achieving a certain level of success, achieving a certain level of wealth.

So many materialistic things that they think will bring them happiness. I'm going to share my thoughts about this: materialistic things are very much like a drug. It's like heroin. Buy that expensive thing; it will give you happiness, but it's a fleeting happiness. It's a happiness that goes away after a while, and then you have to seek something else to bring you back to that level of happiness.

For instance, for me, when I got my first Lotus, it was an insane amount of happiness. I was so excited about achieving this thing and buying something that I wanted for so long. I'm not going to lie; I was a 10 out of 10 in terms of happiness for a while.

Then something happened. After about a month or so, I was almost depressed, believe it or not. I thought, "Now what? I've got this thing, and now what? What's left?" It's very much like that with almost anything in life. Even with the house I bought last year, I was super excited to get this house, and then a few months later, it's just like, "Well, now what? I already have it. Now what left is there?"

I've noticed, too, that you basically just return to whatever your baseline is after a few weeks, maybe a month. You get something you're really excited about, you achieve something, you do something special, and your happiness elevates. Then over time, you just slowly return to baseline anyway.

Except the negative is that now you've already achieved this certain thing, so to achieve that same level of happiness, you need to achieve more than that. You almost build up a tolerance to what it is that you're doing.

What I found that actually gives you a lot of happiness are two things. One is just being content and being really grateful for everything you have in your life. If you think you're not rich enough, I guarantee just go to a poor area, and trust me, you will feel rich. There will always be someone who has more than you. There will always be someone who's better looking, who has more money, who has more success.

So you can never win in that game of having more because there will always be somebody that has more. But what I found, for me, that gives me a lot of happiness is actually doing something versus waiting for something to happen.

It's the process of doing something that brings you more happiness than getting the thing itself. For me, it was the process of getting a Lotus that brought me more happiness long-term than getting the Lotus itself. That makes sense?

So if you're someone who's not entirely happy or satisfied in life for whatever reason, it doesn't matter why, you will find more happiness in the process of achieving your goals than actually achieving that goal. As weird as that sounds, it's something that I found to be entirely true for me.

Maybe it's not. Maybe for you guys, like buying that house will make you so happy and like you won't regret it. But for me, it's like when you achieve a certain point of material success, where I could, within reason, you know, buy a lot of the things that I would want that would make me happy, I know that long-term, it's just going to be like a few weeks of like a heroin high, and then I'm just going to go back to what it's like normally.

So anyway, that's my rant about happiness and life, and yeah.

More Articles

View All
Homeroom with Sal & María Elena Salinas - Thursday, August 13
Hello, Sal here from Khan Academy. Welcome to our homeroom live stream! We have a very exciting guest today. Uh, but before we jump into that conversation, I will give my standard reminders to folks. One, uh, just a reminder that we are a not-for-profit …
Why Do Good Stocks Still Crash? (Mohnish Pabrai on buying Seritage Growth Properties)
And instantly, the stock went to six to nine dollars a share. So that was the price at which somebody else was willing to buy that seat, me being one of them. And, uh, I own, uh, one eighth, little more than one eighth of all the seats in that theater, so…
Example visually evaluating discrete functions
What we have here is a visual depiction of a function, and this is a depiction of y is equal to h of x. Now, when a lot of people see function notation like this, they can see it as somewhat intimidating until you realize what it’s saying. All a function …
DoorDash's Application Video for YC S13
Hey, I’m Stanley. I’m a Stanford CS major. I did find an engineer at Facebook. Hey, I’m Andy. I’m also a Stanford CS major, and I did platform engineering at Facebook. I’m Evan. I was on the founding team of Vivo, the music video service. And I’m Tony.…
Economic profit for firms in perfectly competitive markets
In this video, we’re going to dig a little bit deeper into the notion of perfectly competitive markets. So, we’re going to think about under what scenarios a firm would make an economic profit or an economic loss in them. Now, as a reminder, these perfec…
Meet Fred the Tap-Dancing Turkey | Short Film Showcase | National Geographic
Fred, oh my goodness, he just deserves such a flower. [Music] Introduction: In Northern California lies a place so divine, where rolling hills meet redwoods and the sun doth shine. Where animals who are rescued now roam free. Rancho Compassion is the na…