Born To Be Unhappy. How We Can Overcome Our Own Biology. (Part 3 of 4)

Ten Tenets for a Better Life

This is part 3 of the Born to Be Unhappy series, sharing Ten Tenets that can help live a happier life. These are time tested techniques adopted by multiple philosophies as sound approaches to reducing stress and being happier.

I want to highlight a few considerations to get fuller benefit from these tenets:

• You have to actually live these tenets out, not just read them. These can’t be mentally internalized solely through reading any more than one can become become a world class athlete just by reading about physical training.
• The tenets must be practiced consistently and not just in time of crises. If you wait until you are under extreme stress to start, there can still be benefit but it will be significantly diminished.

For most of us,¹ living out and forming habits based on the Ten Tenets can lead to an improvement in happiness and our emotional well being. I encourage you to experiment integrating them into your everyday life and to focus on one at a time in any given day or week, as doing everything at once is overwhelming.

Over time aim to integrate as many as possible. This is a challenge I am far from finishing. Life is always a work in progress.

1. We can’t control everything that happens to us but we can control how how we respond.

• Born to be unhappy: This crappy thing happened to me and now I’m going to be upset about it
• A better life: This crappy thing happened to me and I’m going to accept it as it is and learn from it

A burglar steals your prized possessions. Somebody cuts you off in traffic. Your company lays you off. Your house burns down. We can probably all agree that these are undesired events, but how should you react? Our instincts are to be down on ourselves, but should you be? Does being down on yourself make the situation better or worse? What’s the point of doing something if it doesn’t make the situation better?

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so. — Shakespeare (Hamlet)

There are plenty of “turn lemons into lemonade” teachings out there, but this is not one of them. It’s not about turning negatives into positives, it’s about taking all external events and accepting them as they are — both the positive and the negative —and simply choosing the best way to respond. It is understanding that what is “good” and “bad” are rooted in our own judgement.

We can’t control most events, but we can control our reaction. We should avoid emotions which only serve to make things worse and instead focus on actions which make things better.

Michael Jordan was famously cut from his high school basketball team his sophomore year. This was an event he would not have chosen at the time, but instead of interpreting it as something that limited his potential or just feeling sad about it, he chose to take actions that would help him. He practiced relentlessly between seasons to improve his game.

He made the team the next year and the rest is history. Michael Jordan’s work ethic likely improved because he was cut from the team, and that work ethic stayed with him for the rest of his career. Indeed, being cut from the team may have been one of the best things to ever happen to him (see more below on #2: The outcome is not the outcome).

There are countless successful people who have said that being fired was the best thing to ever happen to them.

Getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life. — Steve Jobs

Many people who experience an undesirable event react to it by brooding, blaming, and self-pity. Some choose to view it as a moment to re-collect, re-focus, and re-dedicate. We cannot control all events that happen in our lives; in fact, we probably can’t control most of them. But we can control 100% of how we choose to react to them.

This is different from pretending that undesirable events make us happy. For example, if your car window is smashed into for a third time, I’m not suggesting you pretend “oh hey, I’m so glad my car window was broken again. This is a great chance to get a new clean window!” That would be silly. However, instead of just being bummed, you can take it as an opportunity to re-evaluate the neighborhoods you choose to spend time in. You can then either 1) change where you park, or if you decide not to change, then 2) you should continue to expect broken car windows and therefore just treat it as an inconvenience tax you have chosen to pay. There would be nothing to get upset about. You choose to respond to the event in a way that improves your situation rather than letting your emotions make your day even worse.

The key is that we have the power to choose how to interpret events that happen around us.

The Earth has been around for over 4 billion years but an average person lives around 80 years. During this short time, wouldn’t our time be better spent living and enjoying what we can control rather than feeling bad about things we can’t control?

In summary:

• We shouldn’t pretend undesirable events make us happy, but that doesn’t mean we have to let them make us unhappy
• Spend less time feeling “good” or “bad” about external events and spend more time deciding how to respond in the best possible way

2. The outcome is not the outcome

• Born to be unhappy: You treat each outcome as the final result
• A better life: You treat each outcome as merely a step before the next

You work hard through high school and apply to multiple universities but only get into your last choice. Your watch your close friends go to higher ranked schools. You feel disappointed and regret.

While at college, you end up roommates with a brilliant computer engineer and you become best friends. You get along so well that after graduation you start a company together. Due to his technical brilliance you get lots of funding, the company takes off, and you feel fortunate to have found a great co-founder. Life is great and in hindsight you wouldn’t change a thing about where you went to school.

After starting your company, it turns out your co-founder had all sorts of personal and ethical issues and stole from your company. This caused your investors to lose trust and many of your employees leave. You now regret your decision to start a company and ever meeting your co-founder.

After nearly losing everything, the experience taught you a lot about people and how to become a better judge of character. This leads you to hire an all-star executive team which helps you pivot your startup in a new and successful direction. You feel that your failure with your co-founder was one of the best things that ever happened to you as you now lead one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley and are a much more capable leader.

As your startup soars, other competitors begin popping up every day. Amazon decides to enter your space and invests $1B into a previously unknown competitor. Within six months you find out that your business model lacked defensibility and your market share is quickly evaporating. You regret pivoting your startup into the direction you did and are unsure of your future.

This cycle goes on and on. What is a “good” or “bad” outcome is never so clear until one sees the full arc of life.

What appears to be good can become a disaster while our worst experiences can lead to be our greatest success and proudest moment.

The immediate outcome is often insignificant compared to the unintended consequences that ripple thereafter. The outcome is not the outcome.

In summary:

• Every outcome is only an input to the next event
• Appreciate the full range of potential long term effects rather than just focusing on the short term results
• Short term consequences are often not as important as their unintended long term consequences

3. The decision is more important than the outcome

• Born to be unhappy: You feel good or bad based on the outcomes of your decisions
• A better life: You focus on the quality of your decision rather than the outcome

We tend to feel “good” or “bad” based on the outcome of our decision. We err by undervaluing the decision itself and overvaluing the outcome. Outcomes are influenced by many factors outside of our control, whereas our decisions are completely within our control. It is therefore the quality of our decision which we should focus on.

While still challenging, it is easier to look at distant events and say they shouldn’t affect our internal happiness. For example, Supreme Court decisions, elections, and celebrity tweets. They may move us to take productive action, which is good, but does it do us any good to just feel sad or angry about things so distant from our control?

More difficult than distant events are local outcomes that we heavily influence but still not control. These too should be differentiated from the decisions we make.

In my business I try to always keep the most important metrics visible across the company, such as on a TV screen in the office. This unifies everyone behind the most important metric, creates transparency, and hopefully motivation. In my first company, this metric was Daily Active Users, and it created an emotional roller coaster.

I would check this stat on my phone before I got out of bed, throughout the day, and as the last thing before I went to bed.

As a CEO I aim to project a consistent and calm demeanor, so externally I was modulating my emotions. My internal state of happiness however was tied to this external metric. When the number was high I felt high. When the number was low I felt low. When it was really low, it deeply affected me. This was the stressful ups and downs of startup life, I was told. But later I realized there are healthier ways of managing such emotions.

Anytime we peg our internal emotion to an external outcome we are enslaving ourselves, regardless of whether the outcome turns out positive or negative.

For some people, it’s their portfolio value, daily weight on a scale, or social media followers. While these are things we clearly have influence over, they are outputs and we don’t have absolute control over them. The things we do have control over is our inputs, for example, our discipline or lack thereof in how we invest, what we eat, and what we post online.

So instead of tying my emotional well being to a graph of metrics, I focus on the quality of my decisions. Did I do a good job navigating our product roadmap discussion? Did I do a good job in balancing speed to decision versus information collection? Did I invest enough time today listening to our users? Am I spending my time wisely in general? If the answer to those are yes, then I should be happy, because I succeeded in the only things I have control over.

This doesn’t mean I am not responsible for the outcomes, as CEO I am clearly responsible. However, it does mean that when calibrating my internal state, I tie my happiness to whether I am making the right decisions, not to a graph.

Feeling bad about things outside of your direct control is not productive. The only thing you can control is yourself.

What’s important is whether you make the right decision based on what you know at the time, and you shouldn’t judge yourself otherwise. Yes, one should learn from the outcome in order to inform even better decisions next time, but that is not the same as collecting emotional baggage just because the universe had other outcomes in mind for you.

Don’t judge yourself based on an outcome. Focus on the quality of your decisions and on your actions.

In summary:

• Learn from outcomes so that you can make better decisions in the future, but do not judge yourself based on the outcomes themselves
• The only thing you can control is yourself and your decisions, so focus on those as a way to measure your success

4. External events can bring joy but not happiness

• Born to be unhappy: You chase joy in order to be happy
• A better life: You find happiness with what you have and who you are

External events are perceived through sensory experiences such as sight, sound, and touch. Certain experiences lead our brain to release chemicals that makes us feel joy. Some last a few seconds and some a few minutes or even a few days, but nothing I’ve experienced produced continuous joy for more than a week. Everything dissipates and normalizes.

Is Mark Zuckerberg happy? Is Jeff Bezos actually happy? Maybe, but maybe not. I have no idea. I would give it a 50/50 chance. Once you achieve what you want then you either worry about maintaining it or about getting something new. So achieving something is never an enduring source of happiness.

Even winning the lottery doesn’t bring happiness. A 1978 US study and a 2008 Dutch study concluded that lottery winners showed no meaningfully higher levels of happiness compared to control groups of non-lottery winners. As the study described it:

“Eventually, the thrill of winning the lottery will itself wear off. If all things are judged by the extent to which they depart from a baseline of past experience, gradually even the most positive events will cease to have impact as they themselves are absorbed into the new baseline against which further events are judged.”

I learned this when I was 21 and I bought a used Porsche 944 for $4000. It was red, relatively fast, and shifting its manual gear box brought out a primordial emotion of thrill and joy. For a 21 year old male, this was a dream, and it was the first time I felt I owned something incredible.

I parked the Porsche at my parents’ garage so it wouldn’t be exposed to the elements. I didn’t want to go to sleep the first night because I just wanted to spend more time with the car. Early next morning I jumped out of bed and rushed to check on it. I was so engrossed by this car that I contemplated sleeping in it for the first week (though I didn’t).

I showed my appreciation by regularly hand washing my car and taking panoramic sunset pictures. Inevitably, my joy for the vehicle diminished. Hand washing the car became a chore and ceased being a pleasure. The cost of maintenance ate up more of my salary. What used to be a high speed thrill became the new commuting norm.

My Porsche was the first time I mistakingly believed a thing could bring me happiness but it was not the last. As my career progressed I was able to buy nicer things, such as an even nicer car, but I always experienced the same diminishing joy after the initial dopamine bump. After several of these cycles, I came to accept what wiser people had figured out long ago; that material possessions can create momentary joy but not happiness.

In every permanent situation, where there is no expectation of change, the mind of every man, in a longer or shorter time, returns to its natural and usual state of tranquillity. In prosperity, after a certain time, it falls back to that state; in adversity, after a certain time, it rises up to it.- The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith (1759)

This is terribly disappointing, because it would be nice to believe that happiness is just around the corner and can be achieved if your next place just had granite kitchen countertops. It’s a lot harder to accept that everything you acquire can at best give you temporary joy but can never bring you happiness.

We have to re-evaluate everything we think about happiness, but once you do, everything including happiness itself becomes much easier.

So please enjoy your new iPhone, or new purse, or your new golf clubs. Be proud of your new job, or promotion, or employee of the month status. There is nothing wrong with enjoying things we acquire, but also understand they will not bring you happiness, and nor should losing them bring you unhappiness.

To be happy you must be happy with who you are and what you have at this very moment.

In summary:

• Do not wait for a happier future as our life is a sum of the present
• Do not look for new things or achievements to make you happy, instead look to see what you can change about yourself to make you happy

5. Happiness comes from the struggles we choose, not from the outcomes we wish

• Born to be unhappy: You focus on the success you want to reach
• A better life: You focus on the struggles that you want to endure

Listen to a successful CEO talk about how he took his company from 1 person to 1000. What stories do you expect him to tell?

For years that CEO worked to quiet the naysayers, to build something of value, and continuously overcome challenges. He struggled and achieved his great dream of taking his company public, bringing generous returns to his investors and employees. On the day of his company going public, he finally receives validation for what he believed all along but others doubted.

Fast forward a year. What stories does he share?

Does he recount his triumphant day ringing the opening bell at NASDAQ? The interesting view he had from the stock exchange balcony and what that lush carpet felt like beneath his feet. How he felt when all his paper money became real money?

No, he recounts the stories of the early days and the startup struggle. He recounts the times his company almost went under and how working together as a group it was saved, over and over. He reminisces about the long hours, the uncertainty, and the struggles that he persevered rather than the successes that followed.

During our struggles we tend to look toward a great moment in the future that will be our triumph. Yet if we achieve our triumph, we ironically look back at our struggle as our greatest moment.

Since what we tend to look back on fondly is our struggles and not our achievements, we ought to carefully consider not just our goals but what struggles we choose for ourselves.

In hindsight, it’s often living through struggle that makes life great. So don’t ask yourself how you can eliminate your problems but whether you are enduring the right struggle.

Life is always a struggle no matter who we are or what we achieve. Should you go through the struggle of running your own business or the struggle of always working for somebody else? The struggle of trying to change our political system or the struggle of feeling powerless to change it? The struggle of sustaining a long lasting marriage or the struggle of living alone? The struggle to continuously compete and become the top of your profession, or the struggle of knowing you never achieved your best? No matter which direction you follow in life, you will struggle.

Research has also shown that many struggles leads to post traumatic growth, like a person who decides to completely re-evaluate their life’s priorities after a dangerous car accident and a subsequent recovery period. Such struggles have been shown to provide a greater appreciation for life, improved relationships with others, exposure to new possibilities in life, greater personal strength, and a positive spiritual change. This doesn’t mean we should wish for a car accident, but it does mean that we should appreciate the struggles in our life for the benefit they bring us.

So don’t try to seek ways to end all struggle and suffering in your life. Instead choose your life based on the types of struggles you want to endure and overcome. It is the struggle which brings meaning to your life.

Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing. — Shakespeare

In summary:

• No matter the path you choose for yourself there will be struggle
• Overcoming struggle, rather than reaching any achievement, is what brings meaning to your actions
• Since struggle is always present but achievement is not, it’s best to choose what struggle you want to endure rather then just the outcome you hope to achieve

6. Accept responsibility for everything happening in your life.

• Born to be unhappy: You spend time blaming others or yourself for what happened to you
• A better life: You accept responsibility for your situation and focus on deciding on what to do about it

Regardless of the events leading up to the present moment, whether it was your fault, somebody else’s fault, or a combination, you are still responsible for making the decision as to how to respond.

Not everything that happens to you is your fault, but everything that happens to you is your responsibility.

If your business fails you are responsible for what to do about it. If your marriage fails you are responsible for what to do about it. If life brings you a tragedy, you are responsible for what to do about it. Independent of how much it was your fault or the circumstances that brought you there, you are still responsible for how you react.

Being responsible means you don’t feel sorry for yourself or how you got here. It means you stop blaming events and people, including yourself, and instead focus on taking responsibility for your circumstances and making the best decisions to work through the struggle at hand.

This is not a pass to deflect blame or to not learn from the past. It is simply a recognition that regardless of what decisions were made in the past and by who, you are still responsible for what you do in every moment of your life. So own that responsibility and focus on making the best decision you can.

Say for example hired somebody you thought would be great, but after a few months his performance deteriorates and this harms your business. You can say it was your fault for hiring that person or for not being a better manager. You can say it is the employee’s fault for deteriorating in performance. To the extend that you can make better hiring and management decisions in the future, of course you should learn from the events that occurred and what could have been done better. But regardless of the conclusion, there is no mistaking that you are 100% responsible for what to do about it now.

Accept responsibility instead of blaming others or feeling upset with your past mistakes. Neither of those feelings will make your situation any better.

In summary:

• Everything that happens to you, regardless of who’s fault, is your responsibility to deal with
• Accept responsibility and learn from mistakes but and don’t spend time blaming people, circumstances, or yourself

7. Avoid any sense of entitelement

• Born to be unhappy: Feeling you are entitled to something just because you expect it or already have it
• A better life: Entitled to nothing

George H.W. Bush’s loss in 1992’s Presidential re-election campaign must have been difficult to handle. He was a decorated WWII veteran, successful businessman, Vice President, and then President. He achieved an incredible peak approval rating of 89% and currently sits as the President with the highest average approval rating of any President of the past 50 years — despite being a one term President and losing a difficult campaign to Bill Clinton.

When asked how he will handle his loss of the White House, I have been told he reacted essentially with “I can’t lose what was never mine.” Meaning, he was never entitled to a second term nor his original position in the Oval Office.

President George H.W. Bush exemplified the concept of non-entitlement. One cannot be disappointed if one does not expect something or feel it is theirs to have. We can and should dream big, but we are not entitled to anything, even to the things we have already acquired. Our health, our friends, our possessions, and even our life will all eventually vanish. We are not entitled to any of them.

If you have something, enjoy it, but never confuse that as something you are entitled to.

In summary:

• Just because you own something, are loved by somebody, or expect something, doesn’t mean you are entitled do it
• It’s always better to feel grateful for something than entitled to it
• The only thing you truly own is your time and how you choose to spend it

8. Accept death as what brings value to your life

• Born to be unhappy: Lives in fear of death
• A better life: Uses death as a reminder to how valuable life is

We are alive for an astronomically short blink of an eye. It is the scarcity of life which motivates us to create, to achieve, and to make an impact. If we were to live forever, would you be as motivated to raise a family? To build your legacy? To have an impact on humanity now?

My drive to work used to go by a cemetery and I hated this drive this because it would make me think of the futility of life and our ultimate destiny, especially in the time after my mom died.

I eventually came to view death not as a tragedy but as something that helps create a framework for meaning. A book for example could never have the same impact on others if it never ended. The fact that our life has a start and an end helps bring meaning to the time in between.

Driving by a cemetery today triggers a positive reminder to make the most of every day.

One day you will wake up and it will be the last day you do. This brings incredible motivation and reminds us to enjoy every moment of our lives as a gift. Don’t squander it.

In summary:

• The state of death is no worse than your life was before you were born, so there should be nothing to fear
• Appreciate death as something that gives shape, motivation, and meaning to our lives

9. Stop caring about things that won’t matter a year from now

• Born to be unhappy: Fretting over little things that you won’t even remember
• A better life: Focus on what matters and ruthlessly ignore everything else

Some jerk cuts you off in traffic and you become frustrated all morning. You get a flat tire and miss a date which torpedoes your night. You lose your iPhone in the back of Uber and ruin our weekend.

All these events ruined what did not need to be ruined. A year later you would hardly remember any the details of what happened and your life will certainly not be any worse off by it, perhaps except one less date and an upgraded iPhone.

How much better would your days had gone if you didn’t let getting cut off ruin your commute, or that flat tire ruin your night? None of those things matter in the big picture, so do yourself a favor and don’t dwell on them.

I was at the gym recently texting on my phone while sitting on an exercise machine. I admit I am one of those people at the gym that spends too much time on their phone, but for the most part I’m entering stats on my exercise app and going through my workout notes. This day was different because I was texting with my wife who was attending her grandmother’s funeral in another state. I felt that she needed some support, so I chose to respond. So there I am, admittedly taking up an exercise machine unnecessarily when somebody walks up to me and very arrogantly says “hey, you mind getting off this machine and playing with your phone elsewhere?”

I am trying to be a supportive husband and discussing a death in the family with my wife while this guy is tell me to stop “playing” with my phone. My initial mammalian brain reaction was annoyance, frustration, and anger — in that order. I could have made the person feel terrible by telling him what I was actually doing. I could have quietly moved aside cursing under my breath, feeling angry and ruining the rest of my workout. My instincts directed me to do many things which would have ruined my mood.

I made the choice not to follow a counter-productive instinct. I just told him I would be done in a minute and carried on with what I was doing.

My emotional instincts are strong though and even after a few minutes the offensive dialogue replayed in my mind. It took deliberate effort to 1) accept nothing I could say or do would make the situation any better and 2) in the long run this event has absolutely zero meaning. It was therefore simply not worth my mental attention and that unwound my frustration.

Small and annoying events happen to us all the time, but these outside events need not disturb you. Focus on what matters, which is only what we can control within ourselves.

In summary:

• We all spend way too much time worrying about things that ultimately won’t matter
• Ceasing to worry about petty things will reduce your stress and unlock intellectual and emotional energy to focus on what matters
• Life is short. Strive to only spend time on what really matters to you

10. The meaning of life

• Born to be unhappy: Tries to find their meaning as though it is some lifelong secret that just needs to be discovered
• A better life: Chooses their own life’s meaning based on their circumstances at the any given time

Viktor Frankl’s answer to the meaning of life is that there is no universal meaning. The holocaust survivor and renowned psychologist explains that asking for the meaning of life is as incomplete of a question as asking a chess master what is the one best chess move. The best chess move cannot be determined in isolation. It is an impossible question as it depends on the configuration of the board, your opponent, and your strategy. Similarly, life has no single meaning. It depends on your circumstances, the people around you, and your goals. It is also not something you find, but rather decide.

Searching for a universal meaning of life, even if seeking to apply just to your own life, is bound to set you up for disappointment. It would be great if we could anchor ourselves to an immutable meaning that is clear and absolute. We then wouldn’t have to continuously re-evaluate ourselves and our circumstances. We could write it down on something the size of a fortune cookie and carry it in our pocket. We could take it out and refer to it whenever we needed guidance to make a decision. Whether we were ten or sixty years old, this solved riddle would be there to comfort and guide us through any existential question. Wouldn’t that be nice?

Every person must define their own meaning, and that meaning is subject to the present circumstances around you. What was your meaning in one point in your life may not be the case later. In fact, it can’t be. We can only live in the present, and meaning must reflect the present situation we find ourselves in.

We may find a way to ultimately tie it all together through rationalized hindsight, but that does little to guide us through life itself.

Your meaning comes from the reasoned choice of what you do in every moment. To do this, you must live in the present and accept life and fate as it is.

All the world’s a stage

As described by Jonathan Haidt, imagine the universe as a movie that has been playing for 13 billion years and will play for many more. Humans have shown up in the last few acts and each individual’s life is but a few scenes. Thrusted into unknown and confusing world at birth, our brains have evolved to visually understand the world around us but we cannot comprehend its meaning. Like tuning into the middle of a movie but for a second, you cannot possibly understand the grander purpose of the scene before you. You may ask “what is the meaning of this scene?” but only somebody who has seen and understood the whole movie could possibly know.

Whether one believes there is a higher divine power that is directing or whether one believes that the universe is simply unfolding through secular laws of nature, one is still stricken with the same ignorance and confusion. We therefore cannot know what the unfolding scenes mean in the context of the greater universe, only that we are part of it, and that we can control how we play our role.

Our meaning comes from our choices

The choice of how you spend your precious life is itself what brings meaning to your life. Life presents you with continuous sets of challenges and you always control how you choose to respond. Choosing why you respond certain ways to your circumstances is what helps bring meaning to your actions and hence meaning to your life.

In summary:

• Don’t search for a meaning to your life as though it’s symbolically hidden under a rock in a distant mountain
• Your meaning comes from how you choose to respond to the world around you and you have the power over that choice
• Determine your own principles and live by them. That would be the realization of your own meaning

Part 1: Born to be unhappy

Part 2: Wisdom from the ages

Part 3: Ten Tenets for a happier life

Part 4: Life hacks and tricks

Footnotes

1. There is an even deeper level of wisdom and spiritual health. There may be extraordinary times in one’s life in which everything we implicitly assumed from our earliest years turns out to be wrong. Such rare but real worldview shattering events may lead one to be stripped of everything they have believed despite doing everything good and right. Such extraordinary situations warrant their own consideration. Imagine for example how one is to process and make sense of the holocaust?

Credits: Much of this writing has been influenced by, and sometimes borrows directly from the following: Ryan Holiday, Tim Ferriss, Tim Urban, Shane Parrish, and Mark Manson, as well as the more scholarly works of Robert Sapolsky, Yuval Harari, Jonathan Haidt, Viktor Frankl, and many others. I have also posted an intro to the series.