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The 10 commandments for happiness and success

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Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#91

Post by epsylon »

gsk wrote: post #73

Graham Greene said: "Point me out the happy man and I will point you out either egotism, selfishness, evil - or else an absolute ignorance." This world isn't built for maximising happiness of humans, this is true whether you follow scientific rationale or religious faith. When you pursue happiness, you are working against the system. There in nothing wrong with it, however it does tell you why Graham Greene concluded…

Consider Mathieu Ricard :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthieu_Ricard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXZqQINH9O0

I wouldn't paint him as either egotistic, evil or ignorant. I consider myself an atheist and his books have significantly changed the way I view the world.

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#93

Post by vladimirralev »

theorique wrote: post #13
WalterGR wrote: post #10

Does anyone know of any good meta-analyses of studies about happiness / life satisfaction? Or put another way: what does actual research suggest the "commandments" for happiness are?

There are a lot of blog posts out there, many of which refer to peer-reviewed literature (or at least to news articles about peer reviewed literature). This is one of the best IMO: http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2011/09/10-things-you-need-to-know... A lot of it aligns with what you might consider "common sense": exercise a sense of purpose and meaning (can be religion-based, but doesn't have to be) meaningful work gratitu…

While many of these common-sense things do really have peer-reviewed research behind them, most of the others do not. Pretty much everything that is under-defined, vague or unintuitive is wrong. Fear of failure, comparing yourself to others, surrounding yourself with positive people and so on - these are bullshit in general with no scientific backup. There is in fact more evidence that if you isolate yourself in your happy place with everything positive and no fear of failure, you will eventually have to confront reality very hard at some point in your life. The only reason they work in the short to mid term is because they are sort of a religion-substitute.

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#94

Post by CaptainZapp »

crassus wrote: post #69
marcosdumay wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have been conquered. Literally. At older times religion was one of the biggest tools used to create armies, and conquer the neighbors' land.

Name some of them.

You may want to educate yourself by looing into the 30 year war, as one of many, many exmples.

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#95

Post by Amokrane »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #85
lotharbot wrote: post #23

2/ Only surround yourself with brilliant and positive people. I partly agree with this rule. People who are negative drama-creators who regularly make bad decisions can really drag you down. They can cause you to spend an excessive amount of time worrying about pointless problems that only exist because of someone else's immaturity. But I'm also a teacher. I work with at-risk children who are immature and sometimes m…

I too think this guideline is far too simplistic. In a sense it almost puts relationships in a transactional context. And people who do that are often assholes. I think it's important to seek out people with whom you value spending time with, as well as to distance yourself from people who are not good friends and aren't deserving of your time or energy, but that's a much more complicated topic than can be summed up…

I do agree with you guys. In the article I make the distinction between people you care about or love (read: family, close friends, your students, people you decided to help) and the others. Specifically, what I find to be dangerous is when you are not aware of the bad influence someone else has on you, and when you are only surrounded by these type of persons who believe that nothing is worth doing/living, then you might end up thinking the same way. It's funny that some comments are about people in the Silicon-Valley being too optimistic or even delusional, because I live in France and I commute frequently to the Bay Area. I find that when I leave to San Francisco, I always feel very morose and when I come back I am always in a fired up mood! But slowly, this mood disappears because the average french is pessimistic about almost everything.

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#96

Post by Amokrane »

yawn wrote: post #17
eksith wrote: post #6

Great advice, but... "Don’t compare yourself to others" I've repeatedly found this to be near-impossible. It's just that no matter what standard I've set for myself, just the fact that I see someone doing better automatically makes me think I'm doing something wrong and/or I'm not good enough. That may not be the case, but that's the default thought for me and only after do I actually look into it. What's worse is th…

I don't like "Don't compare yourself to others." To me it has little meaning other than making people feel good. If you are starting at the beginning of just about anything, you occasionally need to compare yourself to the "pros" in order to grow. All things in moderation.

There is nothing wrong in finding inspiration in someone else who is better than you, to help build a better version of yourself. There is a subtle nuance between this and feeling jealous or envious.

The main reason why I used the verb 'compare', is because we are taught to think in terms of adversity/competition when it comes to learning in almost any field. I strongly believe that learning should only be about learning. And it turns out that if you learn the right things and if you work hard, for the sake of being good at something, then you will likely be highly ranked. But that should not be the goal.

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#97

Post by Amokrane »

SmallBets wrote: post #20
eksith wrote: post #6

Great advice, but... "Don’t compare yourself to others" I've repeatedly found this to be near-impossible. It's just that no matter what standard I've set for myself, just the fact that I see someone doing better automatically makes me think I'm doing something wrong and/or I'm not good enough. That may not be the case, but that's the default thought for me and only after do I actually look into it. What's worse is th…

I've had similar problems and saw a talk by Heidi Halvorson that reframed it a bit: Instead of trying to stop the "compare to others" behavior, replace the behavior instead with "compare to my own past performance". I've found measuring and hacking your own improvement is a more useful feedback loop.

I love it.

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#98

Post by theorique »

vladimirralev wrote: post #93
theorique wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of blog posts out there, many of which refer to peer-reviewed literature (or at least to news articles about peer reviewed literature). This is one of the best IMO: http://www.bakadesuyo.com/2011/09/10-things-you-need-to-know... A lot of it aligns with what you might consider "common sense": exercise a sense of purpose and meaning (can be religion-based, but doesn't have to be) meaningful work gratitu…

While many of these common-sense things do really have peer-reviewed research behind them, most of the others do not. Pretty much everything that is under-defined, vague or unintuitive is wrong. Fear of failure, comparing yourself to others, surrounding yourself with positive people and so on - these are bullshit in general with no scientific backup. There is in fact more evidence that if you isolate yourself in your…

Nowhere in my comment or in the literature does anyone advocate ignorance or avoidance of reality.

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#99

Post by bradleysmith »

stevewillows wrote: post #90
bradleysmith wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the same thing. Great read.

I listened to the audio book version - - the man sounds like the Devil himself. Great book though - - I recommend it to everyone I know.

if you havent read it, He also did The Art of Seduction in a similar 'rules through historic case-by-case basis' style, but focused on relationships. its every bit as icky, and definitely just as good.

Robert Greene always reminds me of the quote by Sandy Lerner I heard on NPR somewhere:

"the first rule of any game is to know you're in one"

Re: The 10 commandments for happiness and success

#100

Post by Amokrane »

crassus wrote: post #27

I disagree with the dichotomy between living a "default life" and being happy[1]. Maybe in America where society is so atomized and culture is so dead this is true, but this is not true everywhere. It is an American sickness that says you must work your way to happiness, that happiness comes at the end of a chain of accomplishments. What more is needed to be happy but friends, family, and enough to get by? Honestly,…

FWIW, I grew up in a third world country, waking up everyday fearing that I or someone I care about will die in a bomb attack (search for Algerian Civil War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algerian_Civil_War) and having all sort of daily issues (no water for a week, no electricity for days, etc.), and I can tell you this for sure: this didn't prevent us from wanting a life that's above average, from pursuing happiness and from questioning whether we loved what we were doing or not.

Also, I am not sure where you are reading that you should be solitary or not have any family. I take care of my parents, a depressed brother who threatens to suicide every now and then, I am married and would love to have children. What's wrong with having that and aspiring to work on something that you find enjoyable instead of settling on a boring job?

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