The Juice Boost Bite-sized wisdom for goal-chasers

No.23 — 2nd July 2023

Today at a glance:

• Why happiness is so hard to understand
• Who can we learn about happiness from
• What do Joe Rogan and Naval Ravikant think of happiness
• Notes on understanding happiness

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What is happiness?

Have you ever tried to describe happiness?

If you have, you know that it’s harder than it sounds.

Like me, you can probably recognise what happiness is when you feel it, and you also know what needs to happen for you to feel it.

But what exactly is happiness? That’s a question I find myself thinking about a lot.

One day, while I was looking for pieces to the ‘happiness puzzle’, I can across a podcast between Joe Rogan and Naval Ravikant. Joe and Naval are prolific thinkers and world-class operators in their respective feels of podcasting and investing.

The whole episode is a treasure trove of ideas on technology, philosophy, business and beyond. But there were two clips in particular that stood out to me.

Both clips were on happiness.

• What is happiness?
• Why is it so hard to be happy?
• Why is ‘looking for it’ pointless?

These clips tackled these ideas in a way I'd never seen before.

They were the missing pieces in my understanding of happiness.

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To this day, I keep rewatching these clips when I feel like I haven’t been prioritising happiness enough. I think you may really enjoy them too:

Full episode (2hr 11mins)

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Clip 1: You have to make happiness your priority (8mins)

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Clip 2: Learning to be alone is a superpower (6mins)

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I highly recommend watching both clips, and if you've got the time, then the whole episode too.

I’ve attached below all the notes I took for myself (and for you) — because we both deserve to be happy. I’ve also attached relevant ideas from other clips / books / philosophers to better support some ideas. Enjoy!

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Notes

• The beauty of happiness is that it is fleeting. No one can claim it, cling to it or fake it. You can only ever notice it.
• Happiness is directly linked to your interpretation of reality. You can’t be happy if you believe the world is terrible, that everyone is out to get you, and that nothing good will ever happen to you.
• There are two ways of looking at almost everything. I like how stoic philosopher Epictetus frames it: “Every event has two handles, one by which it can be carried, and one by which it can’t. If your brother does you wrong, don’t grab it by his wronging, because this is the handle incapable of lifting it. Instead, use the other—that he is your brother, that you were raised together, and then you will have hold of the handle that carries.”
• If you default to the negative handle, you trap yourself in a negative headspace that continues to torment you. To break that habit, you have to commit to changing it (even when it’s painful).
• Meditation is hell for a while, because you listen to mind expose its deepest and darkest secrets that you’ve intentionally avoided for a really long time. Once you work through it, you don’t completely eliminate the mental chatter, but you learn to control it. You’ve heard it before, you’ve made sense of it, and it stops controlling you.
• Making sense of your past is really important. If you’ve been through severe hardship or loss at any time in your life, and thinking about it still makes you uncomfortable, it’s likely because there are still unresolved issues there. As painful as it may be, and there’s no doubt that it will be painful, you have to go back to that time and make sense of it. Without it, you carry these unresolved issues with you perpetually, and they keep rising to the surface to pull you back down.
• No matter how bad things are: if you believe they will get better, then they will. If you believe they won’t, then they won’t.
• You have to objectively look at yourself and ask: what are my genuine beliefs, and what have I been conditioned to believe? There’s many beliefs each of us have been preemptively pushed towards from a young age, which might be outdated or unaligned with who we want to be. We have to decide which belief system we want to pursue.
• Stop thinking of things as good or bad. Starting thinking of them as paths or journeys. You’ll stop viewing things in isolation, and understand what caused it and where it’ll go in the future. Everything is perpetually in motion.
• “All of humanity’s problems arise from man’s inability to sit in a room alone” — Blaise Pascal
• Since the birth of personal computers, boredom is dead. These devices lure us through stimulation and trap us into dependency. The only way out is to disconnect yourself on a daily basis.
• If you can’t spare an hour a day to meditate, start with just 5 minutes. You’ll have 5 less minutes of unresolved issues by tomorrow.
• Meditation (and happiness) aren’t status games. It’s not about how long you meditated for, it’s about how you feel once you do it for long enough.
• Your definition of happiness is deeply yours. Don’t impose it on others, don’t seek it from others. Look inwards and you’ll find it.
• If you find something that makes you happy in a sustainable way (e.g walks, not ice cream), then keep doing them.
• Try to define happiness just enough. Enough that you’re content with it, not so far as you go crazy and spiral.
• If someone makes you happy, tell them.

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Hope you have a happy Sunday!

Team Juice — Ria, Jay and Akash

Sera, Law Garden, Ahmedabad, India, 380006
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