Naval 谈幸福：它不是目标，而是一项可以练出来的技能

00:00Hello and welcome. It's been 5 years since The Almanac of Naval first came out. And to honor that, Naval and I wanted to do a special edition for you. We spent the day together and recorded over 4 hours of our conversation. Now, we're sharing that here with you, updating and expanding the key ideas in the book. Like everything else in the Almanac of Naval, this version is being made available for free in addition to the audio book available on your favorite platform. This book has grown as a word-of- mouth phenomenon being gifted and recommended ultimately reaching millions of people all over the world in 40 languages. I hope you will help these good ideas continue to spread. Now, thank you for

00:43joining us. Let's dive in. Happiness. I really like the frame of it being a highly personal skill that can be learned like fitness or nutrition or as you we talked about wealth. Um, and that really seems like a very common thread of your ideas, like the combination of foundational principles and personal application. >> Yeah. I mean, look, happiness is it's one of those words that just means different things to different people. Some people will say, I don't want to be happy. Other people will say, what do you mean I'm naturally unhappy or I'm naturally not happy? Everyone has an excuse or a reason or interpretation.

01:18It's such a personal topic, it's very hard for me to talk about. I mean, my latest thinking on it is like there's no such thing as happiness. Right? And so I can give you 20 contradictory statements on it. Each one of them, you know, either you'll dismiss as a cliche or absurdity or will make you think. Hopefully it'll make you think. Um, but my latest thinking on it is like, I don't really care about happiness and I'm not even sure it really exists. You know, happiness is a construct of the mind. It's an idea >> and it's a you have thoughts that say, "Oh, I'm happy now." And then when those thoughts are gone, what's going on? Are you unhappy or are you happy? There's there's nothing there. Right? This is the old Buddhist thing of like no self,

01:58right? When you have a thought, that thought comes in. That thought claims to be the self. That thought emerges from somewhere from a an entity that we call the self that is very very poorly defined. And when you look for it carefully, it's very hard to make out what the heck that thing is. So in that sense, happiness is just like the self is itself is just a thought. So happiness is just a thought and unhappiness is just a thought. And so you can have happy thoughts or you can have unhappy thoughts. And there's certain behaviors and mindsets that will lead towards more happy thoughts. And there are certain behaviors and mindsets that will lead to more unhappy thoughts.

02:33However, if you identify with the thought, if you're like, I am that thought, it's me having that thought, then at that moment, you've created a mei that is happy while you're having that thought. And then when that thought disappears, there's no me there anymore. and there's no thought and there's no happy and then when the unhappy thought is there and you identify with it then you've created a thought that I'm unhappy and I'm having unhappy thought and that's me and I'm unhappy and then when that thought disappears there's no one there and there's no thought and there's no unhappiness and then that whole construct is created through thoughts that are kind of coming and going in your mind and I even hesitate to say mind cuz like where is this mind

03:09when you're not having a thought of the mind right it's like everything that we talk about here on this topic exists at the level of thought, but if you are not strongly into those thoughts or identify with those thoughts, then you're not going to have a concept of happy or unhappy. And there's certainly no happiness outside in the world. >> Both in very different meanings. One meaning is there's no happiness outside in the world cuz this is a mental construct you have internally. And so you can reinterpret your past, you can reinterpret your situation to often change those things or your habits. But the second is that there's no happiness in the outside world and that the outside world is incredibly impermanent and it's out of your controls and there are always reasons to be unhappy for the outside world. The same way there's no

03:55unhappiness in the outside world too. You're making that up in your mind cuz it's not going the way you want it to. >> Yeah. >> And uh the world itself doesn't care. And that outside world can't make you any more unhappy than you let it. Now there are obvious exceptions to this. Like if you're in physical pain, your body is unhappy. that will make your mind unhappy that will make you strongly identify with the pain and you will be unhappy right that's why in fact you could argue that the whole mind construct exists uh it's to feel that thing uh to to respond to pain you know one definition of love of pain is that uh pain demands a response >> right pain is a thing it's like pay attention to me right now drop what

04:35you're doing stop daydreaming pay attention to me right now and emotional pain is a variation on that >> um but so happiness and unhappiness These are these are very personal concepts. Um I would say my new thinking on this my latest thinking subject to change. I'm not an enlightened being. I'm not a perpetually happy person. So it's literally just uh one person's personal exploration. U my latest thinking on this is that I don't necessarily want happiness. I kind of want just you know the zen thing of being okay with things the way they are. And I think it helps to be in that state when my desires are few and consciously chosen. Um when I am doing things for nonselfish reasons and that is selfish in a way. Like if I do things that are

05:24larger than myself, then I will be more okay with whatever the ultimate outcome is. Like for example, if I'm genuinely trying to make the world a better place, I'm not saying I am, but say I was Mother Teresa or some equivalent and I was genuinely trying to make the world a better place. I wouldn't take it personally if the world wouldn't let me make it a better place, right? Because it's not a personal mission. The same way when like someone's doing it for God or someone's doing it for their children in a selfless way, it actually hurts less when you know things don't work out exactly the way that you want them to.

05:55So having higher motives is helpful that way. You know, depressed people are ruminating upon themselves. They're really thinking about themselves. So not thinking about yourself is, you know, is helpful. Uh, you know, my simple tweet on this was the more you think about yourself, the less happy you're going to be. It's that simple. Um, so, uh, I'm more interested in peace. Now, do I want peace all the time? I don't know. It seems kind of boring. There's one argument that boredom, this is a Schopenhau argument, that boredom reveals the emptiness of existence. Because when you're not doing anything, when you're satisfied for one brief moment, all your desires are fulfilled, you're kind of just sitting around. What happens? Boredom shows up immediately.

06:38Why? Because existence itself is somewhat empty. And so then you want to go and do something else. This is the pessimistic viewpoint. The optimistic viewpoint is actually that's the mind. Your mind is addicted to pleasure. And so it wants to jump up and go do something pleasurable because that's what it's used to. What may help to realize that the all problems are mind created for for good reason. I'm not saying the mind is a bad thing. It's there to protect your body, but we have a way of taking on problems that don't affect us. Politics is a good example. You know, wars halfway around the war world or political parties or so on. And your your mind just picks up problems and desires that are just not important.

07:22And so, yeah, if you're Buddha, you can live in no mind. But if you're a normal person, you can at least a rational person can find some level of peace by cultivating an in strategic indifference to things that are outside of their immediate control. Right? I've said this better in the past, but I'm I'm caveatting it a little bit now because I'm I'm actually reconstructing on the fly rather than quoting because I think you just have to catch yourself, right? The the purpose of meditation is not to get you enlightened. It's not going to do that. It's not even necessarily to make you happier immediately or to solve a problem or to calm you down. The purpose of meditation is just to become

08:00self-observant. And when you're self-observant and more self-aware, you catch your mind doing things that are not in your long-term best interests. And then you can reset it or you can stop and say, "Is this true? Is this something I really want to go through? Is this a really important desire? Is this something that I need to suffer over? What's easier? reinterpreting this or actually dealing with the underlying problem because we're always just picking up things to do. So anyway, you know, if I just wanted to be quote unquote happy, right? Again, I'm not sure there's such a thing. Like if I wanted to be peaceful, then I would just do nothing, but I would get bored. Uh now, is that a problem? Yeah, I think that's a problem. I don't want to be

08:40bored. Now, could I rise above the level of the mind and be like a zen monk? Maybe. But I also kind of like life, you know? I I like having certain gifts. I like uh self-actualizing. I like doing things. Um you know, let's say that the Buddhists are right, you know, and I am Brahman. Then why don't I just stay Brahman? Why did I come here? Right? It's the age-old question. Why am I here? Right? And I think the only practical answer to why am I here is to do what I do. And so if I just do what I do without overthinking it, uh then it's naturally going to lead me to a place of happiness. This is back to row row row your boat, right? It's gently down the stream. As long as I keep rowing and I'm doing gently, I'm kind of playing the

09:22game I'm meant to play. >> Yeah. I think one of the things that is really that seem to resonate with people about this book is the combination of principles about wealth and happiness. Like so many people talk about one or the other, but never the tension, the contrast between the two. And I think what a lot of people sort of look to you to for and whether you consider yourself a good example of this or not, I'll be curious to hear is someone who's engaged but peacefully. >> Yeah, I'm not sure I'm completely peaceful. Uh but definitely more peaceful than I used to be. I'm not as peaceful as a Zen monk. Uh but I'm probably way more peaceful than your average nervous founder. Uh some of it

10:00is a it helps to have money. I'm not going to lie about it, right? Um, but I think I got more peaceful before I'd made a bunch of money. Um, and it was because I was actually in a very high stress period and I just had to figure out how to deal with it. >> Uh, and I read some books, you know, Christian Morty and Osho and, uh, you know, yeah, I did some psychedelics, you know, like everybody else in the Bay Area. Uh, but not in a way where, you know, I think some people they do, they go to Burning Man, they do their psychedelics, and they live for psychedelics. No, it's it's a it's a message. you get the message, you hang up the phone. Uh, and then I did a lot of meditation. Um, I did a lot of

10:35reading. I did a lot of thinking. I did a lot of introspection. And I can't point to any single silver bullet. But all of it helped. It helps me be then and peaceful while I go about the thing, you know, not be miserable. Um, again, I kind of want the lazy man's solution to everything. So, I want the lazy man solution to enlightenment. I want the lazy man solution to wealth. I want the lazy mindset solution to art and creativity. And by lazy, I mean working on something that doesn't feel like work to me, right? So thinking doesn't feel like work to me. Thinking on the big questions, like it would be more work to not think about them than to think about

11:13them. Right? If I'm pacing around late at night and it's midnight, I'm by myself. I will naturally start just pondering like what is this all about? You know, why how could you not be curious about your existence? Right? And I think we all just give up. We're just like, "Oh, yeah. Okay. There was a point where I was curious about my existence. I got over that when I was a certain age. Uh, and now I'm just a monkey that's gonna, you know, do a bunch of things and then die." >> I suppose it has fun. It depends whether you're having fun wrestling with those questions or whether you find them torturous. >> I think they're inevitable. I think everybody wrestles with them. It's just not popular to acknowledge it.

11:48>> Uh, I think by the contribution that I made to Twitter was not by doing something unique, but by being one of the first to do it. Um, you know, now there's a lot of accounts that frankly say the same things or different things in in very interesting ways. I was just early in doing that. And I I think people we draw boundaries in life, right? One of the reasons why Steve Jobs was to me the apotheiois of entrepreneurship was because he was not just a business person, but he was also an artist. And you know, he did LSD and talked about it and he did his meditation. He almost became a monk. Um, and he was a Zen Buddhist. Um so he also

12:26tried to solve everything in life uh all the big questions and you know I thought it through and kind of what I came back to is I had a recent tweet on this actually forget the exact wording of this tweet but I know the principles which is what's important the principles are first you have to stay healthy you're born healthy you don't finish healthy and so the longer you can drag that out the better right so that's why we're inspired by people like Brian Johnson or you know whoever your fitness guru is or health guru is you got to stay healthy that's the baseline then you want to get wealthy. You'd be lying if you said you don't want to be

12:57wealthy. Everyone wants at least some level of wealth, right? Maybe not. Uh, okay. Yeah, if you're virtue signaling socialism, maybe you don't want it. Or if you're, you know, don't want to be too high above your peers, you don't want it. But you want some level of comfort and wealth. Yeah. You don't have to worry about money. >> Nobody wants less wealth. They don't want to go backward. >> That's right. And and you know, what's the old line? Uh, you know, money doesn't solve all your problems, but it solves all your money problems. So you want to solve all your money problems and then what remains right well every

13:27time I go around in circles on it I come back to just three things that I'm interested in and that is and it's going to sound cliched but I'll dive into them. It's truth, love and beauty. Uh and truth is just I want to know all the things that are true and I want to eliminate all the things that are false. And uh I want to know all the things that are true on a spiritual level, on a philosophical level, on a scientific level, on a technological level, on a human nature level. Truth is permanent. Truth is, you know, the closest thing to perfect. Truth has wide reach. Uh truth will make my life better. Even if it makes my life worse, I want to know the truth. It's very unique in that way.

14:05Truth and love are two things where even if it makes your life worse, you would still take them. like being and you know loving your kids even if it makes your life worse but makes them better off you want to love your kids because it feels good to be in love it feels fulfilling and truth even if the truth makes your life worse like if it turns out that yeah we are all Matrix brains in a bat you know you still want to know that it's like in fact in the movie the Matrix you know Keanu Reed's character Neo he breaks out of the Matrix and Zion is worse than the Matrix it's a shitty existence the real city and there's

14:38another guy uh I forget the name >> Cipher >> was that >> Cipher >> Cipher Yeah, Cipher. Cipher wants to go back in the Matrix cuz he'd rather eat the fake steak and drink the fake wine. But Cipher is a pathetic character. Cipher is a warning. Nobody says, "Oh yeah, I'm Cipher." Right? Everybody wants to be Neil because they know that you can't live a lie. So truth is super important and in everything that I do in every in little things and big things, I want to know the truth. >> You did say that the closer you get to truth, the closer you get to peace. >> Yeah. I think the way I said is the closer you get to truth, the more silent you become inside. M >> so and that's deliberately chosen um because when you know what is true you suffer less and you spend less time

15:19ruminating about falsehoods and most of the thoughts that are going through your mind are concerned with falsehoods and the Buddhists would argue that the ultimate falsehood is a notion of the self which is this very poorly defined partial physical partial mental construct that somehow persists across thoughts and just the more things you resolve as being true or false, the less mental chatter you should have. All the way to the point that like the super wise enlightened people are completely silent inside because they've seen through the illusion of self and they have no they have no separate self, no separate persistent self experience. So if your mind is chattering less, that is a sign that you're heading in the right

16:01direction. That said, I in my experience, your mind doesn't really chatter much less, but hopefully it it hopefully there's less anxiety. And this this happens in meditation. If you're doing meditation, you'll find that at least I find the first 20 minutes your mind goes berserk all over the place. And then at some point it calms down and you're for about 30, 40, 50 minutes in, it's just blank and it's actually a very blissful state. Um, or it can be different depending on how you meditate, but it's certainly not going to be chattering as much. And a lot of that's cuz you're resolving problems. And a lot of your problems don't need real world resolutions. They just need to be acknowledged. One of the classic practices is when you have an emotion,

16:43when you have a strong feeling, you just pay attention to it and you deconstruct it and you're like, "Okay, there's a little feeling associated within the body. Is that bodily sensation actually unpleasant?" Not really. It's just like a hollowess in the chest, for example, and doesn't feel that bad. And there's a thought associated with it. Well, is that thought unpleasant? Well, the thought itself can't feel pain. It's just that, you know. So, who's classifying as unpleasant? Well, you are. Well, what is you in that case? It's just another thought. So, it's, you know, one thought of your saying, I don't want this other thought here and then associated with a bodily sensation.

17:16But really, when you deconstruct it, you you'll realize like unless there's an actual emergency, there's not a whole lot there. Um, and when you get good at doing that or when you sort of start seeing that game, it will help you get through unpleasant situations. So, I had one very unpleasant situation a few years ago, uh, where I was extremely unhappy. Um, but I won't forget this. I there was also a part of me that was just watching that very unhappy part and just being like, haha, you know, it's a little act you're putting on to feel important, but there's nothing actually here. There's like there there there's nothing is being attacked, nothing is being hurt.

17:54You're not in physical pain, you know? It's just a situation that you're thinking through and you're you're conjuring up this deep unhappiness and you're creating a drama. You're you're creating a stage in a drama to feel important. And I think a lot of times when we're unhappy, we're just we're obsessed with this idea of feeling important. And it's back to this desire for permanence. We want to feel important. We want to feel permanence. We don't want to feel our own mortality. There's truth and there's love and beauty, right? So those are the other two things where >> Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And on love I would say that you know once once your health is taken care of once your

18:26material needs are taken care of you pursue truth love and beauty. We talked about truth. Love I think is important because people want to be loved because that helps them get over their mortality. It makes them feel a little safer. You know monkeys huddling in the dark around the campfire scared of scared of what's out in there in the woods. But one thing I've realized for myself is that it's better to be in love than to be loved. If somebody loves you too much, like your mom's coming up and hugging you all the time or you know some girl or some guy is obsessed with you, like it can get a little clawing, right? It feels like it's a burden. You

18:57almost don't want that. But when you feel in love with somebody, that's when you're high. That's when you're elated. And so that's counterintuitive, but falling in love with someone or something is actually very beneficial to you. It does involve sacrifice. It involves risk. But I think that people who give up on love in their lives, you know, it's kind of a sad life, right? You get too jaded too fast. You don't have to love people necessarily. You can love, you know, universe, God, animals, what have you. But everybody needs to find something in their life that they love more than themselves, their mission, their their family, their children, uh their religion. Otherwise, it's going to be a miserable life. And then lastly, you know, we are active creatures. So this is where I really diverge from all the Buddhas and all the

19:44Zen monks and so on. Yeah, the chop would carry water, but that's not human flourishing, right? This is where Deutsch comes in really helpful. We're universal explainers. We're meant to solve problems. We're meant to reverse entropy. We're meant to advance civilization in the universe and knowledge. And so we can create. Creativity is our highest art form. So we should be creating. And you can be passive in the face of death and say, well, none of it matters. Or you can be active and say nothing matters. I'm just going to create the best thing. I'm going to live the best life by your own definition. So I want to create things.

20:15And what do you want to create? Well, how do you know something is worth creating? Well, it's it's beautiful. It's it's hard to vary. It has deep explanations and knowledge embedded inside of it. Um people want to use beautiful things. So you want to create beautiful things that convey emotion that people want to use. And to me, that's why something like an iPhone is among the greatest works of art ever created because it is a beautiful object. It's like a piece of jewelry, but it's also incredibly useful. It embodies a lot of knowledge. It's very hard to vary. And it did change the world for the better. >> Yeah. The exact tweet was, "Stay healthy, get wealthy, seek truth, give love, and create beauty."

20:55>> That's it. That's what I want to do. The one I want to tattoo on my eyelids is any moment where you're not having a great time, when you're not really happy, you're not doing anyone any favors. It's not like you're unhappiness is making anyone else better off. And I don't know why I don't know where it was modeled to me or, you know, if it's just me trying to take myself seriously, but like there's something about cultivating unhappiness that brings like seriousness to a situation. like especially as a leader or a you know trying to take something seriously you sort of bring an unhappy version of yourself um I find and I know I know that's a mistake I should tweet this afterward this down >> uh tweet break

21:38>> yeah tweet break acute unhappiness is real uh or is useful but chronic unhappiness is an ego trip >> right because chronic unhappiness is you just want to feel more you. You want to feel separate. You want to feel important. You know, you have an identity wrapped up in it. Like the thinner your identity, the more you can see reality because identity is what often stands between you and seeing reality the way it is. It's it's the ultimate and motivated reasoning. >> When something contradicts your identity, you're going to fight it. You're going to fight it with your life. You know, if if you're white and I say white people suck, like that's your identity right now. You're going to fight that. or black people suck, whatever, right? So, it's that's that's the problem with racism. Like, people can't change their identity. And so,

22:27when you're racist, you make enemies out of them immediately. Um, and it creates warfare. So, you got to keep your identity thin. You don't want to choose your identity, right? Identity is like what you can't get away from. But any chosen identity is a straight jacket. It's locking you in. And that's true for happiness, but it's it's true for for truth. And here I would say like people who are unhappy like there was a time when it served them. I think I mentioned him earlier, William Glasser who was kind of my favorite psychologist type writer and he wrote a a series of really good books uh around something he calls choice theory. But one of his most controversial observations is that depression is really a choice or it's a

23:10series of choices that was made. It's a result of a series of choices that were made when you were a child that then became an unconscious habit and it's self-perpetuating. So when you were young, you know, as a as a baby, you start out you're crying to get your parents attention and every time you cry, they come and they respond and then eventually you figure out actually with strangers crying doesn't work. It just forces them away. So you start smiling or you start communicating but eventually you run into situations where you're trying to get someone's attention whether it's your parents or your teachers or your peers and they won't give you the attention. So you cry internally. You signal that you you are

23:44so unhappy that you're willing to hurt yourself. And that's what depression is. It's hurting yourself through your own unhappiness and you start ruminating on it. And it may be effective for a little period of time. It pulls some people closer together and it can lead to a situation where you are now unconsciously or subconsciously ending up depressed not realizing that this is a learned behavior. Now I'm not saying that there couldn't be a chemical component there. There obviously always is there chemical components to hunger there's chemical components to athleticism to intelligence you know genetic components but you can make it worse and saying that it's all chemical imbalances doesn't explain anything.

24:22That's like saying like why are we here? Well, it's because of particle collisions from the big bang, right? It's too reductive. So, the explanation has to be offered at the same level as the question. So, when we say like, why am I unhappy? Forget the chemical imbalance. You're going to change your brain, right? And doing drugs will just mess you up in other ways. Every person who takes like these long-term drugs on these things, they they end up giving up something else fundamental about themselves. Um, and hey, a lot of the best artists were crazy in other ways, right? So you don't want to average out your your mindset. So uh the depression may be the result of a series of bad choices that then became bad habits. And they do create an ego cuz they create a

25:02separate identity of me. And then you start identifying with that me so much. It's like well who else would I be? Well, I'm just an unhappy person. But that's also what makes me brilliant, makes me special and makes me interesting and makes me undiscovered and all that. So you can wrap a whole identity around it. And it's hard to undo that identity because then you're like, well, what what makes me unique, but it's worth doing. By the way, this is like if you read Jed McKenna, right, spiritual atalysis, what is he doing? He's going through his whole identity and stripping it away. >> I think he over dramatizes how painful that was. But it's kind of an interesting interesting method.

25:37>> That's a process that you went through. >> No. No. >> Deconstructing your identity? >> No. Yeah. Maybe a little bit. Not consciously. I mean I I just um I I don't think any of the techniques that anybody lays out will work for you. I don't think mental techniques work because the mind is infinitely complicated and capable of any thought and it's capable of reaching any point in mental space to any other point in mental space in one jump. Right? And because of that there's no pathway through another person's mind. So you can be inspired by other people um but the right idea can change you in an instant whereas the wrong practice you know done 30 years every day will not make a difference.

26:20>> I mean through that frame it's it's a very optimistic way to look at you know someone who's unhappy someone who's chronically unhappy like there's no limit to how fast you can change or how positive that change could be. >> That's right. The most important thing with getting wealthy and being happy is just realize you can do it. It's your choice. You can do both and you can be both and there's nothing wrong with trying to do both. >> The opening tweet of this whole section is uh the three big ones in life are wealth, health and happiness. We pursue them in that order but their importance is reversed. And I I was curious whether the order is should be pursued backwards or you think they're all like the optimal path is to sort of find balance and pursue them all in parallel.

27:04>> I I don't feel strongly about the order. I feel more strongly about the components, right? Um, you could pursue them in different orders. Like some people are just born happy, naturally happy, nothing destroys it. They're just always happy and that's the greatest gift, >> right? So that's why I think it is the most important. Like even there's some people who will be unhealthy and they'll still be happy. They do exist and you know they're blessed. So if you can get that one, you're pretty much set. Um because the others are just attempted routes towards those two things or prerequisites for those two things. But if you don't need the other two as a prerequisite, if you're one of these magical people, then by all means, just go get happiness right away and be

27:40happy. Um, in terms of the wealth and health, yeah, I think the health is more important than the wealth. Ask any old unhealthy guy and they'll trade you a lot of money for getting their health back. Or it's the old Confucious line, which I quoted before, but you know, um, a healthy manuh wants 10,000 things. A sick man only wants one thing. And it's very true. When you're sick, you'll, you know, you just want to get back up. So health is very important and then wealth uh you know it solves all your material problems is also really important. I wouldn't give up any of the three to be honest. That said if you can only choose one you know happiness would be the number one but you shouldn't have to

28:18choose one because you have three legs of a stool. Most people I think will want all three. And wealth is best pursued when you're younger just cuz you're higher energy. You're more flexible. You have less obligations. You're more malleable in terms of where you live and what you do and all that. You're just more optimistic. You can pursue it later. It's just harder. You know what does that old song go? Like for everything there is a season. And you know, if you're in your teens, you should be learning and doing. If you're in your 20s, you probably want to be uh working very hard and in the arena, so to speak. In your 30s, you want to start harvesting. That's when you have your contacts and you still have a lot of

28:50energy. In your 40s, you definitely want to be harvesting. And this is where you really want to be watching your health and you better be getting happy by now cuz there's not enough time left. And then when you're in your 50s and you can do your uh political gives backs and your uh you know contribution to society and be philanthropic and charitable and when you're 60s you can be a philosopher because enough experiences happen you've thought through enough things. So there is kind of a natural season to all these things. I think back in the Roman days I don't I don't read much about the history of Rome but my sense is in in olden times when you were in your teens you would study. when you were in your

29:2420s is when you would go to war. When you were in your 30s, you would do your business. When you're 40s, you would serve in politics. And your 50s, you do your philosophy. Right? Something like something along those lines. Maybe a few years here and there in each each bucket. Um so there is a season for everything. So you want to get wealth first. Health is a grant for granted when you're young hopefully. Then you want to preserve your health as you get older. And then you better figure out how to get happy when you're, you know, at a certain point because you don't want to be that grumpy old person who's just getting angrier and bitter, more bitter and more cynical at the world as

29:53you get older. We've all seen that in very old people. There's there's only two extremes that I see in old people. They're either the ones who are fine with everything. You know, they've made their peace with the world and the ones who are bitter about everything, right? Uh because we become more of ourselves in whatever direction we're in as we get older. CS Lewis talks about this where you know to him morality is you know and free will mean that every little action you make they compound and you are the product of 30 50 100 years of these compounding actions and you should take responsibility for each little action because it leads you closer to heaven or closer to hell and if you just keep making small bad decisions they lead to

30:35medium-sized bad decisions lead to large bad decisions very hard to come back and you end up having a failed life. So yeah, I I think if you follow the season's philosophy, for everything there's a season. You start with wealth, you preserve your health and then you get happy. But the importance kind of is the reverse where the people who have who are just naturally happy, they have the greatest gift. They don't need the others. And the people who don't have their health don't really care about their wealth. So that's why I kind of stand by the ordering, but I don't feel super strongly about it. >> Yeah. A failure mode that a lot of people fall into is they spend so much time pursuing wealth. They sacrifice happiness. They sacrifice health and then they find out way too late that they've way overshot, you know, their

31:16their wealth bar. They've earned way more money than they need or they've just become the identity become too enshrined for them to change. And you know, >> yeah, I feel like the the the health part everybody figures out as they get older. Nobody wants to be less healthy. Everybody wants to be healthier because the feedback loop and not being healthy is very tight. Pain demands a response and eventually the pain will show up. So everybody wants to be healthier and so I feel like people figure that out especially once they get wealthy then you know they're they have more control over their time they can devote time uh to health and these days frankly you know you have GLOP once so people can lose weight and obesity was probably the

31:54biggest mass market driver of unhealthiness so that is being solved but the happiness one is a tough one a lot of people don't even believe it's possible I would say most of my contemporaries who have made a lot of money they are not happy people and not even just not happy. They don't have an imagination that they can build their life on their own terms. They live very structured lives that are modeled after what they had in their youth and not necessarily in a good way. I would say they're in straight jackets like in terms of like, you know, kids are in school so I can't travel. You know, I don't I didn't hire help because, you know, we're supposed to do our own dish.

32:35These are like billionaires who who act like this, right? Um or they just they just don't think out of the box, right? They go to obligation obligatory meetings or functions or festivals or ceremonies that are just tedious. You know, it's like tedious meetings with tedious people, right? So I I just find too many of them are not able to hack their life the same way they hack their career or hack their business. I mean hack a good way, right? But >> agency. Yeah. >> Agency. Yeah. They're low agency about the rest of their life. They're very high agency about their work. And then their mindsets and temperaments, they're just not naturally happy. They're not able to enjoy themselves. They're not able to have a good time. They're not

33:13genuinely enjoying what they're doing. Or they have tough family lives or tough relationships. All of which kind of is is downstream of your own mental well-being. >> That's one of the things that sort of drew me towards everything that you had shared over, you know, in decades now is a sense of high agency over everything in life. >> I have an amazing life. If people knew how good my life was, I'd be run out of town. My life is really good. I mean, basically, at any given time during the day, I'm doing what I want to be doing. It's it's it's well thought through. It's considered. It's not obligatory. It's designed such a way that it does keep very good authentic relationships with my family and the people that I care about. But I'm not doing anything I don't want to do. And I'm enjoying what I want to do. And if I'm not enjoying

34:00it, I'm changing it very, very quickly. And yes, it is not living by anybody's rules. Like everything is built for me. >> You've called yourself lazy, but I think it's actually probably a focus on the effort to output ratio. >> Yeah. I I want the 8020 in everything. I want I want to actually I want the 95 99 one >> the fractal 8020. >> Yeah, exactly. uh I want to get the most that I can while doing the least but in every aspect of my life and then you know open up more business and actually even among the philosophers like I love Schopenhau because he's so truth oriented but he did not look like he was enjoying his life right whereas someone like in Osho even though he's a bit of a whack job and I don't agree with everything he says at least he was

34:43enjoying his life >> oh was objectively enjoying his life is the orgies and 17 rolls or whatever is in the documentary >> you know he I don't agree with any of that but he was definitely having a good time. Uh, and it it's more interesting to me to listen to an Osho or Steve Jobs >> uh rather than somebody who was uh, you know, very successful or even a lighten but just seems der or down or miserable. Yeah. >> Well, I think one of the sort of loadbearing pillars of the the happiness, you know, work, the happiness chapters, the happiness ideas is agency over perception >> or perception. agency over perception of of understanding that like there I mean

35:25your tweet there are no external forces affecting your emotions like no matter what it feels like you can control how you interpret the things that are happening >> yeah there changing your interpretation of the past you don't store memories of your past you store interpretations of memories of your past >> and so changing those interpretations or revisiting those interpretations can be painful but useful it requires a certain level of humility >> you know the ego is a thing that stands in the way the ego doesn't really exist it's just a concept, but uh the the the ego is just like you don't want to go through the painful thoughts of re-evaluating who you think you are and what you think makes you important. So,

36:00you're not willing to reexamine your past. Like let's say like for whatever reason, uh you know, you had conflict with your parents, right? And so now you have an identity and interpretation of your past where your parents were bad people and you didn't get along with them and therefore you're the situation that you're in. It's their fault. Well, that's probably not true. It's probably keeping you away from your parents. It's probably making your life miserable. It's probably making them miserable. And then when you have kids, your kids don't have access to their grandparents. And the reality is, if you just went back and tried to be very objective, you know, neutral, and give them the benefit

36:35of the doubt and realize they're genetically very similar to you. They just had different circumstances and they made the hard choices they had to make that perhaps it wasn't entirely their fault and perhaps you could be more charitable about it. And if you reinterpret that, then you could have an objectively better life with them. But it would require you to take the ego hit of no actually you weren't wrong. So that means some of the things that went wrong in your life were your own bad choices. Now seeing that truth might allow you to make better choices, but it does mean that you take a ego hit. You have to have painful thoughts. And this is where things like meditation or understanding the the nature of the self

37:12help because you realize those thoughts aren't you. There's gonna be a bunch of pleasant thoughts. There be a bunch of unpleasant thoughts and there'll be a bunch of pleasant thoughts. Again, these are just thoughts. Thoughts don't actually have feelings. Thoughts don't get hurt. Thoughts don't do anything. Thoughts don't mean anything. And it helps to disconnect from it a little bit to be objective about it. So that's part of the process of meditation. By the way, it also happens in psychedelics where people will reinterpret their past and they'll come out happier not knowing why, but the real reason is because they've worked through problems in the past and they've reinterpreted them. I think I did some of that. not not as a conscious deliberate exercise where I'm

37:45like, well, I'm going to go through my past and reinterpret it, but it's just that when I was open-minded about it and I was like, I just want to know the truth or, you know, or or even like you're mentally suffering, you just want to get over it. You just want to get through it. You're sick of it. You're done with it, right? You're done with the suffering. Then it helps to objectively re-evaluate those thoughts >> or even just to let go of them if they were, you know, the useful >> useful beliefs. Um, even if it's a like you can't let go of it being a correct or incorrect interpretation, like if it's useful to you for your future to reframe it.

38:20>> Yeah. That's what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is you forgive them because you reinterpret what happened. You're like, okay, maybe it wasn't entirely their fault, but another one is just like, it was their fault, but I still have to genuinely forgive them. This is hard, but I'm going to do it so that I can move on. So, it's not occupying my mind and my brain. Not I'm not sitting here spitting venom and blood and just feeling angry about the whole thing. Just feeling terrible because anger makes you miserable. Anger, you know, spikes your cortisol, gets your adrenal glands going, ages you, makes you feel bad. A lot of the vices and sins, the traditional ones, they make you feel bad. The punishment is directly on you.

39:00You you you feel the burden of it immediately and so you get over it not because of them not to forgive them but to forgive but to just get out of your own mind to clear your own mind. >> Yeah. If you can't get yourself to forgive out of selflessness you might be able to out of selfishness. A thought experiment I like to play with is which human being if we can measure everyone's sort of neurochemical levels over a month or a year like which human on earth is experiencing the most subjective happiness and who is that person and where are they and how are they living what do they believe and you know what are their habits I think it's

39:35highly likely that it's you know a religious plumber with a family of four or something volunteers >> well I mean one of one of the things that's amazing about the internet is that there are actual enlightened people out there >> and in the past they were inaccessible. You know there was you go to remote mountaintop and you meet the Buddha. >> They were a myth seems like. >> Yeah. Mythologically you would encounter thousand people total in your life. What are the odds you're going to find the current living Buddha? Well now thanks to the internet there's dozens of them on YouTube on Twitter. There were a couple on air chat. I've met probably close to a dozen of them. I've interacted with them. I verified to my own satisfaction that they're enlightened after spending enough time around them and you know I learned from them. So these people exist. This is all

40:20available. Like you can go find people who are they're not happy in a conventional dopamine pleasure sense but they're at peace at all times. Nothing bothers them. Like you know getting being told that they have catching get getting diagnosed with cancer to them is will invite the same level of fear and happiness that getting a parking ticket would. like they're funny with it, you know, and so these people exist. They're completely approachable. You can even hire some of them as your personal coach or you can watch infinite YouTube videos with them. I mean, I can name you 15 of them right now. >> Uh it'd be great if you name a couple.

40:54>> Oh, I mean there are better known ones like Rupert Spir and Muji or on YouTube. You know, they're they're not famous. There's a guy Nardinon who I spent a lot of time with. He's now semi famous. Uh he does Sidaya yoga. He's kind of more the classic guru type. There's personal friends I have. Steven Belchure who was on air chat with me. He's on Twitter too. Uh James Pierce, >> you know, he's tweeted a lot. Uh Effortless Stoicism, Kapal Gupta, who I worked with in the past. There's Ascendor who's on YouTube. I tweeted him out recently. There's another guy who works as a waiter at some restaurant in the Midwest. I forget his name. I tweeted him out. There's Saja. There's so many of them. I mean, my YouTube is filled with them. And I've watched enough of their videos, listen, and I know that these are the real deal. These

41:37are not fakers. Is it a palpable difference when you're in their in their physical presence? >> No, there's no like fancy aura where you're going to be floating on cloud9. Uh I mean, a lot of that is hyperbole, but I think what you find is that they have the persistent experience of no self. >> They uh they see through the fact that the self is just a thought. It's a constructed identity and there's no one there to actually really get happy or unhappy. So because of that they now live basically as pure awareness or consciousness and so they are essentially melded with their environment. They feel a sense of peace because your awareness is the one thing that's never changed about you your entire life. It is the one thing that is perfect and permanent in your life from

42:22birth to death. And they are no longer confused or think of themselves as a separate body mind construct. And so thing so nothing bothers them. That's kind of the common thing. And the way I usually figure them out out is I just spend enough time around them that I see something genuinely bad happen to them. You have to hang around long enough for something genuinely bad to happen to them and then you see their reaction and there's not even a perturbation and that's how you know. >> Interesting. And enlightened makes it seem >> enlightened is a super fancy word. I'm not sure there's such a thing. >> Well, it makes it seem binary. Is that but I I can't imagine that's how you see it.

42:58>> It is binary. It is binary because uh and this is a little counterintuitive. It's this not a path. It's not like a Osad Guru is another one by the way. Um I met a bunch of them. I I I should keep a list. I have a seekers list on Twitter which is open which tracks not necessarily enlightened people that has a couple of those on there, but also people who are working towards it. They care about it. They're genuine seekers. That said, I'm not sure there's any such thing as progress because it's either you believe that you are a separate self or not. It's that simple. Not not even believe. Believe is the wrong word. You know, belief is not strong enough.

43:31Belief will not suffice. So either you know that you're a separate self or you know that you are not. Uh the reality is everyone's agnostic. >> You know we there there are very few actual atheists and there are very few actual religious people. If you were actually religious, you' just be like, "Well, everything's in God's hands, so everything's fine." And if you were actually an atheist, you'd be like, "Well, none of this matters, so everything's fine." Right? But we're all agnostic. Do these people have like relationships and kids and >> Yeah, I it's it's actually that's a great question, right? Because you think

44:05of first of all, the word enlightenment is horrible. It implies that there's like some state that you end up in where everything is perfect and you're always happy. It's not the case at all. it's just that you disappear and all that's like there's a great old uh philosophical puzzle uh called the philosophical zombie problem and I saw it referred to not it necessarily but he starts off with like what are consciousness and all that right what is consciousness for it's exactly that question and the philosophical zombie problem basically says you know let's say you have to go through life you have to solve problems you you have to like react to the environment you have to think through things what do you need

44:43consciousness for Why can't like there just be a robot doing all of that? Why do you need to have this conscious awareness? Cuz a robot could be reacting to stimuli, could be solving problems, could be doing all of those things. Consciousness is completely unnecessary. And so the question is why consciousness? And this is a very western concept. Why consciousness? And all the enlightened people would tell you actually consciousness is the only thing there is. Everything appears in consciousness. It's made of consciousness and it disappears in consciousness and it's seen by consciousness. There's nothing other than consciousness. You don't experience anything in the outside world. You just experience consciousness as consciousness. So that's all there actually is. And the actual consciousness observes everything including your body and your mind. So

45:24it's not your body. It's not your mind. It's its own thing and everything is made of it. So that's all that exists and that's all you are. So they would reverse the answer and say why zombie? You know you're asking why consciousness? No. The answer is why zombie? There's no zombie. The zombie doesn't exist. There is no separate self. There's nothing else out there. And so this is a completely different frame on it. So in that sense, there is no enlightenment. There's no separate being to be enlightened. There's just life. There's just stuff happening. You know, there's just stuff happening. There are thoughts appearing. There are thoughts disappearing. They connect to each other. They talk to each other.

45:55They're valid. They exist. There are bodies. There are minds walking around. And there is an awareness of those things. And you're basically a localized awareness. What you think you are is localized awareness. And this goes back to the oldest question that I think you know Robin and Marshy used to talk about is just who am I? The one thing that I think the the way the enlightened people again bad word get there is they have a persistent experience of no self and that becomes their new default. It is binary. It's not a it's not a pathway to it. And one of the ways that some of them get there some of them are just naturals almost born that way. Some of them they have a mystical experience.

46:32Some of them they have a psychotic break. That's literally what a Krishna already had, right? Um he had this thing called the process which like kept coming back to him and it was just seems like a psychotic break plus his brother died and he went through a bad time. Um some people get there through meditation, you know, decades of meditation. Some people get there through just kind of devoting their life service to others like their self disappears. They see through it. But the the the one that I found the most interesting was they just do what's called self-examination. And self-examination is just looking for the self. Looking for this separate self.

47:06You're convinced you're Eric. I'm convinced I'm the wall. What do we mean by that? What is that? It was very fuzzy definition. What is that exactly? Find me this Eric that's constantly talking about himself, referring to himself. Find me this Eric who suffers. Find me this Eric who feels pride. Find me this Eric who thrives. Find me this Eric who feels good. Find me this Eric who feels bad. Where is this guy hiding? Who is this? Like look for that. And what you find is if you look look look look, you can never pin it down. It's always like it's always on the edge of your vision. It's what Alan once described as like you take a a burning stick and you whirl it around and it looks like you have a flaming wheel. You don't have a flaming wheel. What you have is you have a lot

47:45of thoughts going around that convince you that there's this character in there called Eric. But there's no actual Eric. The self is just a thought. These are just thoughts that are happening that are convincing you there's someone there. So even when I'm speaking to you, there's words coming out and there's thoughts coming out. That's not me. They're just flying out. I'm not controlling them. There's no separate me sitting there controlling them. And then for a moment, I felt sort of proud of how I said this and articulated to you. What is that feeling of pride? It's just a feeling. Who is that feeling referring to? It's not referring to anyone.

48:18There's no one that's referring to. It's just another thought. That pride was just another thought without a target. Well, if I keep looking for that target long enough, then maybe I'll finally realize actually the target doesn't exist. And then when that realize that target doesn't exist or that target has never existed. And if that target has never existed, then eventually those thoughts that were going towards a fake target will start dying down because they're false. They're useless. That knowledge will no longer be replicated in my mind in a Deutschian sense. And then I will be at peace because I will no longer have these egotistical emotions and ups and downs. And I'll realize there was never anybody here.

48:52And it was all just consciousness all along. And some people call that God. >> It's going to take me a while to gra all that. But that's the point. >> Yeah. I mean, maybe I mean some people are very lucky. It happens for them right away. And most people never want it, so it's fine. >> Yeah. Do you um they're truly enlightened people. >> If you ask them like, you know, like I I've gone through this with all of them in different ways, but you know, I've tested them. I'm I'm kind of a a smartass about this, but I've tested them to see if they feel emotional pain in any way, right? >> And my favorite way to test them like, well, >> you know, the best tests are subtle where they don't, you know, it's not obvious, but the one I like to ask them is, well, what if you weren't

49:37enlightened? What if you lost your enlightenment? Or what if like you had never been enlightened? They're completely okay with that, right? Because the truth doesn't change if you know it or not. And if you are not around to know the truth, if you don't exist in any separate sense, it doesn't matter if you know it or not. >> Yeah. And if it breaks under that question, then it was >> it was false. >> It was part of your identity >> into the enlightenment. >> That's right. >> Yeah. Interesting. >> But going back to your question about like can they uh still go about their lives and you know have girlfriends and and businesses and jobs. Yeah.

50:11Absolutely they can. They they do actually. Some of the people that I mentioned, they have jobs, >> one of them is running a company, you know, um, one of them is like really good at dating, dates a lot, right? They they just absolutely have full clarity of mind. They have fully functional bodies. They even have desires. Uh, and they even have wants and needs, but they're not egoic. That they're not wrapped up in a small sense of self that gets easily threatened and gets angry or gets like depressed or any of that. They'll take the actions that you and I would take, but they'll take them much more calmly and they won't take anything personally.

50:52So, they're still getting feedback from the environment. They're still reacting. And if anything, I would argue they're more capable than they ever were and their desires are more genuine. They're less mimedic. They're less status oriented. Now, are they less motivated than say someone like me? Yeah, I haven't met enlightened person who's as motivated as me. On the other hand, I haven't met many people who are as motivated as me, right? Maybe I' I think I may have met like five people in my life who are more motivated. Right? So, it's it's hard to intersect that set. >> And would I take that trade, you know, being slightly less motivated for being a light? Sure. I was going to ask if you um having been so close if you're seeking that or if you feel like >> you know it's impossible not to seek it

51:33even though I know that's a trap. It's like the shiniest of the shiny objects. Like, you know, why would you want to start the next great company when you could be the Buddha, >> you know, when you could be God himself? Like, who are the greatest people in human history that everyone knows? It's Jesus, Muhammad, Buddha, you know, it's that bunch. It's not it's not even the Caesars of the world. Uh maybe the Einsteins, right? But essentially truth seekers. Truth seekers are the most revered and artists. History remembers artists and truth seekers. And the truth seeeking artists are the highest of them all, right? The daqing and so on. That said, it's another chase. It's another chase for something permanent. It's another chase for uh a shiny object.

52:09It's a chase for things being different than they are. And the key thing about enlightened people is that they are fine with everything the way it is. And which includes not being fine with the way things are. They self-actualize. >> They may self-actualize in more authentic ways that are different than how they would have self-actualized pre-enlightenment, but they still self-actualize. I'm really interested in the the ways in which you've broken these like false dichotoies, right? And you mentioned one just there, which is, you know, the enlightened and unmotivated are potentially more effective. You know, you've gotten more effective as you've become happier, even though everyone has this fear of like, oh, if I become happy or if I accept what is, I'll be less productive.

52:54>> Yeah. What What would you rather battle? A terminator that is enlightened or a terminator that is wrapped in an ego. Terminator wrapped in ego is much easier to manipulate. Might have guilt, might have self-doubt, might have anger, will be less efficient. A term that is enlightened is a true terminator. You need to get away from that right away. >> It's interesting. >> There is a place for emotions. Modern society is very safe. So a lot of the anger that we feel is derived from times when anger was there for physical violence or physical reasons. But we now take it on as mental. A lot of the modern suffering comes from we feel things chronically that were meant to be felt acutely for brief periods of time.

53:36So I I just I don't think you are less effective because you're happier. You will choose to do different things. So it may look like, oh, you're changing for the worse because you may look less motivated or motivated for a different thing, but you're motivated for something that is going to make you more effective while you're being happy. By the way, no one chooses to go back to being less happy. Right. Yeah. No, it's just like money. No one chooses to go back to being poor. >> Strictly dominant strategy. Correct. >> To become happy. >> That's right. These are strictly dominance and dominant strategies. These are unalloyed goods. So when people say, "I don't value happiness," that's just not true. That's not true through your own actions because every time you've been happy, you don't want to give that

54:14up. And every time you do something that makes you a little bit happier, you're not going to give that up. Uh, you know, like one one of the things like as you kind of go through the progression of life, there's a point where you have roommates and then you get to like not having roommates, right? You don't want to go back to like the pre- roommate life, >> but then you have kids and you the worst roommates >> and the best. It kind of sucks when the kids grow up and leave too, right? >> Um, you don't want to go back to uh commutes, you know, if you've had long commutes and then you get like start walking to work or having a short commute, it kind of sucks to go back to

54:44commutes. Um, retirement, you know, or or working for yourself. These are these are oneway doors. It's very hard to come back through those doors. >> I I asked about the enlightened people in their relationships because um a lot of people ask me what's something I disagree with you on I think as a test to see if I'm just a complete involved sophant. Um and actually one of the things that I I wrestle with the most is this like you know only the individual ascends. all of your experiences are individual and like objectively I understand the correctness of the you know your perception as individual but I also know that so much of happiness like in my lived experience in research comes from our relationships with the people around us I have to imagine there's a lot of nuance there you can't control them but you are a participant in these

55:29relationships and they do affect your day-to-day happiness >> yeah we we we will disagree because I think that uh it's very difficult to be happy if you're bound wound up in needy relationships and just needing the relationship is needy. Now, obviously, I have my family and I love them very much and they're very important to me, but I'm not going to stay in any relationship that makes me unhappy. I will do my duty. I'll fulfill my obligations. I'll take care of them even if they don't like me. But I'm not going to create stay sustain in a false relationship. And this is truth. Every relationship you're in, you're in because that person provides some value for you or because in in your identity you're tied up and you have some obligation towards them and that's fine. But like if if

56:19literally your wife changed tomorrow, if she was inhabited by a demon who just did everything horrible to you, you would leave, right? So every relationship other than pure blood relationships which are different. They're on a genetic level. You know, you see your kids and you just go nuts in a good way. Every relationship is transactional. It does have a value exchange component. It does have an expectation of give and take. And it's kind of, you know, it sound good but not true, but false. And this this is this is where truth is hard. If truth was easy, everyone would do it, right? But this is where like these false relationships and these false

56:52obligations are tough. So like I don't go to my friends birthdays unless I think the party is going to be fun. How do I go to weddings for example because I think you know largely there's just like enormous amounts of time taken out of your day you know of your week destination weddings oh my god right I don't go to like obligatory things like oh so and so is having an anniversary so and so is having a this thing you have to go you know or the these people need you there for this f no that's like that's like where I draw the hard line no obligations and relationships drive you into obligations and then the obligations drive you into pain now.

57:27Now, now you're not having the pleasant part of the relationships. Now I'm left with in my life people who are similarly free, similarly low ego. We hang out all the time, but it's voluntarily. We all want to see each other and we're all being at our best to each other because we want to attract the other person. We don't take each other for granted, which is like the worst thing that can happen in a relationship. You have to invest into all your relationships because you want to keep them alive. If you value them, you invest in them. But there's no false attachment. you know, it's the neediness that destroys a relationship or creates a fake relationship. Um, obviously to have family, you have obligations and you fulfill them. Uh,

58:05and I actually have I don't have a single estrange family member. Everyone everyone is in my life. Everyone in family. So, you know, it's not one of those your family is broken. We have to fix the world situations. The family is functioning really well. But at the same time, you have to be happy on your own. You know, the secret to a happy relationship is two happy people. Okay? Uh because you can't be happy with your spouse. They'll drag you down or you'll drag them down. Uh so it's important that each person find happiness. And happiness is personal. They each have to work on it. The the worst thing you can do in relationships is go to somebody else and say, "Cheer up being happy."

58:41>> You know, what's wrong with you? Why are you depressed? It doesn't work right. So it has to be tackled at an individual level. And then once your own house is in order, then you can form genuine relationships with other people. But putting relationships ahead of your own work and your own happiness, I think is a mistake. You will get neither. >> I think that's a good formulation of like they are valuable and important. You want to pursue them in that order. And if I if I'm describing it correctly, your approach, you want them to be maximally truthful. Like you don't want to go into a relationship trying to make someone else happy. And I don't want them to do things to make me happy that

59:18are dishonest. I don't want them to, you know, feel like I'm a burden or an obligation. You know, like one of the issues I have is like uh as a parent like I do things, you know, for my kids because I love them >> and people around me are always trying to train them to say thank you. They'll say, "Oh, you know, your dad gave you something. Did you say thank you?" I'm like, "Don't don't do that. Don't train them. They're not an animal." Like, if they genuinely feel gratitude, they'll come out in some way. I don't need it. I'm not doing it for the gratitude. Yeah. >> Right. And I don't want to train them like an animal. If they're genuinely thankful, it'll come out, you know? And if they're not, it won't. But don't don't don't force it. I don't I don't want any forced obligations relationship

59:59in either direction. >> Yeah. >> The only relationships I I believe in are peer relationships. Like obviously people work for you, but even then you always want to treat them as much like a peer as you can given the circumstances. Uh because otherwise it ends up formalized. It ends up ritualistic. It ends up false. It ends up unhappy. Um, you know, where where do you find it's funny in if you go to an event like a wedding or you go to like a big party, a lot of times you'll find a lot of show about happiness, you know, people cheering. Yeah. You know, but like they're not the genuine article is rarely there, you know. The genuine happiness comes in smaller interactions that are more genuine and less forced.

1:00:42Like if you're forced to wear a tux and you're forced to show up a certain time, then you're forced to listen to a speech, then you're forced to do a toast, then you're forced to go around and it's just like that's not what actually makes you happy. If it was genuinely how it makes you what makes you happy, then you would be doing that every day. You'd be going to every party and every wedding and every bar mitzvah and everything you get invited to. But at some level, those things are tedious. You're doing them for other people and they're doing them for you. Like who's doing it for themselves, right? So I I think like true celebration uh is a beautiful thing but it has been ritualized so much >> like Valentine's Day, having to send

1:01:17flowers, you know, Hallmark cards, all this stuff is ritualistic Uh real happiness is when you're genuinely grateful with somebody else and you know you do something kind for them because you just want to and you have to create space for that in your life and you have to create situations where you feel it authentically for people to genuinely you know inspire that in you and I don't want anything ritualistic. I never want a card. I never want a you know a ritualistic gift. I don't want a medal. I don't want an award. you know, all these things are useless. >> I was gonna ask you about, you know, helping people sort of find the the courage to be that truthful in their lives. But, you know, I think it just goes back to the long-term view like you know that the truth, even if it causes

1:02:07short-term pain of like, hey, I'm not I'm not going to do this to make you happy. I don't want you to do this just to make me happy is the best way to create this long term. >> That's absolutely true. But I think it's even deeper than that. It's that truth is non-negotiable. like find me a single person who says I don't want the truth. That's a rare person, right? >> Well, the express preference I think there's probably plenty of people living uh choosing to live lies. >> I think they don't want to disappoint other people >> and I think so we're all caught in this collective trap, >> right? Like one of the things co did that was good was it broke the collective trap of commuting,

1:02:42>> right? It legitimized work from home. Now some people might take it too far and they just checked out completely. But overall it it broke society of its addiction of commuting to un unnecessary commuting to unnecessary meetings and that was good. So I think the same way like it would be good if we can break society of it addiction to pump and circumstance, >> right? like Valentine's Day, like that should be happening all the time with the person you love spontaneously and naturally instead of February 14th, everybody tries to get in the same overpriced restaurant and buys the same overpriced flowers and gives the same

1:03:16overpriced checks the same box, right? And if you don't feel like doing it naturally, then that means there's something wrong with your relationship that you should fix or you should move on to another relationship. But what's not the correct answer is to do this falsehood of checking the box every year and kicking the can down the road. Just wasting everybody's time.