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
How to make 2024 the best year of your life
3 2 1 New Year’s resolutions. The helpful tool, or a stressful mandate that society seems to expect of us every year? Probably both! If you’re like me, you think about making a list of what you want to accomplish or the type of person you want to become …
Khan Academy and the Effectiveness of Science Videos
I want to talk about Con Academy. If you haven’t heard of it, you should definitely check it out. One guy, KH, has made thousands of videos, over 2,200 at the moment, on everything from math to history and also quite a few videos about science. There are …
Llamas Bring Happiness to Nursing Home | National Geographic
If you had someone and you said, “Let’s go look at a llama,” the llama’s coming in the building. My gosh! When does a llama come in the building? As soon as they see Travis in the building, everybody just wants to touch him repeatedly. Even when you come …
Dr. Luis von Ahn (Duolingo) & Sal Khan share tips for effective digital learning | Homeroom with Sal
Hi everyone! Sal Khan here from Khan Academy. Welcome to our daily homeroom. For those of y’all who are new to this, this is something that we started doing a few weeks ago as we started seeing the math school closures. Obviously, Khan Academy is a not-f…
Magnetic forces | Forces at a distance | Middle school physics | Khan Academy
Let’s talk about magnets and magnetic forces. Magnets are these neat objects that are able to attract metals like iron. Magnets are used in all sorts of things, from holding paper on your refrigerator to computers to compasses. So, magnets can be used to …
Why Does Your Company Deserve More Money? by Michael Seibel
Why does your company deserve more money? Sometimes the hardest conversation I have to have with the founder is when they’ve spent their 1 to 2 million dollar angel round but haven’t found product market fit. Unfortunately, I have to ask them a very unfor…