How to Not Be Miserable & What Actually Leads to a Happy Life
How to be happier & less miserable
Typically, a post like this would be reserved for paid supporters, but we wanted to highlight an important topic while giving everyone a peek.
It’s the summer, a great time to work on ourselves and our brains away from the rink. One of the biggest topics you’ll hear anywhere is about being happy or finding happiness. As you’ll remember from the movie Happy Gilmore… Grandma just wants you to be happy.
So how does one find happiness?
Today we’re going to dive into misery and happiness. And at the end, we will bring this around to ice hockey so we can have more joy through our journey.
Understanding Misery
It’s been said, “Misery loves company, but nobody loves misery.”
One easy framework that many of us utilize on a daily basis is to “flip the script”
For example, if you desire to be happy, instead of looking at how to be happy, directly, instead look at how to guarantee misery and then avoid that.
Seven Ways To Maximize Misery:
#1 Stay Still - avoid exercise
#2 Screw with your Sleep - disrupt your sleep cycle
#3 Maximize Screen Time - distract yourself
#4 Use your screen to stoke your negative emotions
#5 Set VAPID goals (Vague, Amorphous, Pie in the sky, Irrelevant, & Delayed)
#6 Pursue happiness directly
#7 Follow your instincts
Charlie Munger on Misery
A Coach Revak all-time favorite… I have this printed out and stored for pre-sleep regular reading. Here is the full transcript. If any of the above resonated with you, I suggest reading the entire transcript.
Summary of how to be miserable in life:
Ingest chemicals in an effort to alter mood or perception
Have envy
Have resentment
Be unreliable
Learn from your own experience, while minimizing learning from other’s experience
Quit when life gives you adversity
Avoid objectivity
Here are some selected passages:
The four closest friends of my youth were highly intelligent, ethical, humorous types, favoured in person and background. Two are long dead, with alcohol a contributing factor, and a third is a living alcoholic -if you call that living.
Envy, of course, joins chemicals in winning some sort of quantity price for causing misery. It was wreaking havoc long before it got a bad press in the laws of Moses.
Resentment has always worked for me exactly as it worked for Carson. I cannot recommend it highly enough to you if you desire misery. Johnson spoke well when he said that ‘life is hard enough to swallow without squeezing in the bitter rind of resentment.’
If you like being distrusted and excluded from the best human contribution and company, this prescription is for you. Master this one habit and you can always play the role of the hare in the fable, except that instead of being outrun by one fine turtle you will be outrun by hordes and hordes of mediocre turtles and even by some mediocre turtles on crutches.
It is in the nature of things, as Jacobi knew, that many hard problems are best solved only when they are addressed backward.
Philip Wylie observed: ” You couldn’t squeeze a dime between what they already know and what they will never learn.”
Einstein said that his successful theories came from: “Curiosity, concentration, perseverance and self-criticism. And by self-criticism he meant the testing and destruction of his own well-loved ideas.
Finding & Creating Physical Space
This video was created to address the COVID lockdown and all of the new/in-your-face emotions that resulted but can be easily translated to any time or place.
Here’s the skinny:
There are two parts to health, physical and mental
Brains cannot just think themselves better. Physical activity brings brains back to neutral. When in trouble, prime with physical activity. As Nike says, “Just Do It”
Divide physical spaces - assign spaces that are only used for that task
i.e., your bedroom is for sleeping, not for also watching TV
Harvard Study on Happiness
So what directly makes people happy?
The “Harvard Study of Adult Development” is the longest study on human development ever conducted. Started in 1938, this experiment tracks thousands of people from many walks of life across their lives.
Young people think happiness rests in:
Rich & Success
Lottery winners often become less happy or depressed than before.
Wise/older people realize happiness rests in:
Relationships with those they care about
Physical wellbeing
Harvard study results:
Taking care of physical health has huge benefits:
Easting well
Regular exercise
Avoid substance abuse
Preventative healthcare
Exercise has physical AND mental benefits
Relationships keep us happier AND healthier
Relationships are great for our health
Being married shows married folks live longer (On average, 7 for women + 12 for men). People living together tend to keep each other healthier as they look out for each other.
Loneliness is equal to smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day or being obese, which also makes people more prone to disease.
Best predictors of health at age 50 to age 80:
Strongest predictor: Satisfaction with your marital situation.
Relationships are the best emotional regulators
Proud vs Regret
Proud of relationships - Good boss/spouse/parent/friend/mentor
Not about the badge of achievement
Regret - Spending too much time at work and not enough time with those they cared about
Relationships are easy to take for granted
What Game Theory Says How We Should Approach Life
When it comes to treating others, what is the best strategy for long-term success? Being predictable, trustworthy, nice, forgiving, and not being a push-over. Having an infinite mindset over a finite mindset also makes a large difference.
Basic strategy:
Simple was better. People need to be able to predict your behavior.
Four qualities that continuously do well:
Nice = not first to defect (even the worst nice did better than the best nasty opponent).
Forgiving = Doesn’t hold a grudge
Provokeable/Retaliatory = If your opponent defects, retaliate immediately. Don’t be a pushover.
Clear = Important to find a pattern of trust.
Over time, only ‘nice’ strategies survive.
A little island of cooperation will survive and then thrive if starting in a nasty environment.
Tournaments with more noise and generosity. - Noise/random error (could be false positive) + 10% more generosity.
Zero Sum Games vs Win/Win situations:
Cooperation pays, even among rivals.
Overall… best to be nice, forgiving, and clear while not being a pushover. Don’t be provokeable.
How to Enjoy Your Journey
We all have only one life to live. So how to best enjoy our time? There are many above, and here are the ones that stick out the biggest to us:
Build genuine relationships with others - build a sense of togetherness and community
Accept feedback - Be honest with yourself and others.
Give the benefit of the doubt - I’ve seen road rage solved on multiple occasions by simply imagining people hurrying to the hospital or driving a wedding cake to a wedding venue.
Be trustworthy - Be the person you’d want to call when stuff hits the fan
Stay active - there is no substitute for aging bodies and minds
Forgive often - Grudges hurt the person holding the grudge more than anyone else
Run your own race - You are one of one. You are on your own journey, not someone else. Discover and create yourself. Have some fun along the way… after all, we aren’t getting out of this alive!
Last word: go play some more hockey; an adult league hockey may help with a few of these… and could help on a path toward long-lasting happiness!
Further Reading
Adult League Series
Check out some other supporter-only articles