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
Robot Butterflies FOR THE FUTURE - DEEP DIVE 3 - Smarter Every Day 106
Hey, it’s me Destin, welcome back to Smarter Every Day. So before we start the butterfly deep dive, the one question I get more than anything else here on Smarter Every Day is, what’s your educational background? So, I figured I’d tell you. I got my Bache…
How I saved over $300,000 in 2017 - How to Save Money 101 (Five Steps)
What’s up, you guys? It’s Graham here. So, you know, it’s better than making and spending a ton of money; it’s saving and investing a ton of money. And no, I’m not talking about anything crazy like extreme couponing or dumpster diving. We’re going to Cos…
Comparative roles of women in Rome and Han China | World History | Khan Academy
I’m here with Iman L. Sheikh, Khan Academy’s World History fellow, and the question I have, Iman, is: history often focuses on men, but clearly women were playing a significant role. How much can we know about women, say, 2,000 years ago? When we talk ab…
Ecological succession | Biodiversity and human impacts | High school biology | Khan Academy
You look at a community that is in a given habitat. A natural question is to say, “Well, has that community always been that way? Has it always been there? Was there a time where maybe there was no life there?” And the answer is, well, yes, the communitie…
Debt: Good debt and bad debt | Loans and debt | Financial literacy | Khan Academy
So let’s talk a little bit about debt. Debt is just the amount of money that you owe, used in the form of loans. It could also be your balance on a credit card, which is really a loan from the credit card issuer. I would say there is good debt and there …
How to Build An MVP | Startup School
[Music] All right, uh today I’d like to talk to you about how to build an MVP or a minimum viable product. So if you haven’t seen this before, this is a meme that we love to talk about when trying to help founders with their MVP. It’s called the midwit me…