Chapter Content
Okay, so, um, success doesn't necessarily equal happiness, you know? It's kind of a weird thing to think about.
Basically, happiness is, like, being content with where you are. Just, you know, chilling and being happy with the present. But success? That's often driven by, like, discontent. It's about wanting to change things, to make things better, or different, or whatever. So, yeah, it's sort of a, you kind of have to pick one, it seems like.
You know, somebody once said that, uh, a person has two lives. The second one starts when you realize you only have one. Which is pretty deep, right? I mean, when did your second life start, and how? That's, like, a really profound question. I think most people get to a certain age and they start to, like, feel that way. They've been living life a certain way, and then, bam, something happens, and they have to make a big change. I definitely fall into that category.
I spent so much time, like, hustling and grinding to achieve, you know, material success and get that social validation, that pat on the back. And then, once I got there, or at least when those things started to feel less important, I realized that a lot of people around me, who were either successful or striving to be even *more* successful, they just didn't seem all that happy. And my own experience kind of lined up with this thing called hedonic adaptation. Basically, anything, no matter how good, you just get used to it. It stops giving you that buzz, that feeling of excitement and pleasure.
So, I came to this, maybe obvious, conclusion: that happiness is an inside job. I know, sounds like a fortune cookie, right? But it was that realization that started me on this, like, journey of self-reflection and self-improvement. And it really made me realize that all the *real* success is internal, and it doesn't really have that much to do with the outside world.
Of course, you still gotta, like, do stuff, you know? You can't just switch off your biology and society. When you get certain experiences, they kind of lead you back to that internal journey.
And, you know, when you get good at a game, especially a game with, like, big rewards, you start to see a problem. You get addicted to it! You can't stop, even when the game becomes too easy, if that makes sense.
The instincts to survive and reproduce drive us to work, to keep going. And then this hedonic adaptation keeps us moving. So the secret to happiness, maybe, is knowing when to stop the hustle, when to stop working, and start, you know, just playing, doing what you want.
Who do you think of as successful? I mean, most people define successful people as, like, the people who win at the games, whatever those games are, you know? If you're an athlete, you think of the top athletes as successful. If you're in business, maybe it's someone like Elon Musk.
A few years back, I probably would have said Steve Jobs, because, like, he really drove innovations that changed the way we all live. Or maybe Marc Andreessen, not so much for his VC stuff, but for building Netscape. And Satoshi Nakamoto, the person who created Bitcoin...that's an amazing technological creation, and it's gonna have an impact for decades. And, yeah, maybe Elon Musk too, for changing what people think is possible with technology and startups. I mean, these are people who successfully commercialized things, and to me, that felt like success.
But now? Now I think the *real* winners are the people who've completely quit the game, or maybe never even played to begin with. It's the people who've, like, transcended the game. They're so strong internally, so self-controlled, so self-aware, that they don't need anything from anyone. I actually know a few people like that. Someone like Jerzy Gregorek. He doesn't need anything from anyone. He's just, like, calm and healthy, and his mental state isn't affected by how much money he's made compared to other people.
And if you look back through history, people like the Buddha, or Krishnamurti, they seem successful to me. I like reading about them. I think they're successful because they completely dropped out of the game. Winning or losing, it just didn't matter to them.
Blaise Pascal said, "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." You know, if you can sit alone for 30 minutes and be happy, genuinely happy, you're successful. It's a state of transcendence, but very few people can actually achieve it.
I think happiness, naturally, is peaceful. If you have a peaceful body and a peaceful mind, you're ultimately gonna find happiness. But getting to that state of peace is hard. I mean, ironically, most of us try to find peace through struggle. Starting a business is kind of like going to war, in some ways. Or even arguing with your roommate about who does the dishes. Those are like wars, too. It's all about trying to get some amount of future safety and peace, by fighting in the moment.
The thing is, in real life, inner peace isn't a, like, one-time thing, or a constant. Your mental state's always shifting. And a core skill for happiness is just, you know, accepting reality and flowing with it.
You can pretty much get anything you want out of life, but only if it's your one and only goal, and you want it more than everything else.
And for me, personally, what I want more than anything is inner peace.
Peace is, like, happiness standing still, and happiness is peace in motion. You can always activate peace and turn it into happiness if you want to. But most of the time you just want that, like, sealed-off happiness, which is peace. If you're a peaceful person, you can find happiness in whatever you're doing.
People think the way to get peace is to solve all their external problems. But the external problems are endless!
So the only way to actually find inner peace is to just let go of this whole idea of having "problems" in the first place.