# Learning happiness

# Happiness is a default state

Happiness is really a default state. Happiness is there when you remove the sense of something missing in your life. ¹²⁰¹ When nothing is missing, your mind shuts down and stops running into the past or future to regret something or to plan something. ¹²⁰³

# Every desire is a chosen unhappiness

Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. ¹³⁰⁵

It’s way more important to perfect your desires than to try to do something you don’t 100 percent desire. ¹³¹⁰

# Jealousy

If you’re not willing to do a wholesale, 24/7, 100 percent swap with who that person is, then there is no point in being jealous. ¹³⁸⁰

If you had the opportunity to switch places with Warren Buffett, would you do it? You could be one of the richest people in the world. But you would also have to be 90 years old.

―Anthony Pompliano, Time Billionaire

# The three assets

When you’re young, you have time. You have health, but you have no money. When you’re middle-aged, you have money and you have health, but you have no time. When you’re old, you have money and you have time, but you have no health. So the trifecta is trying to get all three at once. ¹³¹³

Confucius says you have two lives, and the second one begins when you realize you only have one. ¹³¹⁸

# Happiness is built by habits

You have to go through your life replacing your thoughtless bad habits with good ones, making a commitment to be a happier person. At the end of the day, you are a combination of your habits and the people [with] who you spend the most time with. ¹⁴⁰⁸

# Vices

Not drinking alcohol ... [and] ... not eating sugar will keep your mood more stable. ¹⁴⁰⁴

You’re being fed dopamine and having dopamine withdrawn from you in these little uncontrollable ways. Caffeine is another one where you trade long term for the short term. ¹⁴⁰⁶

# Obligations

How much of [your] day is spent doing things out of obligation rather than out of interest? ¹⁴⁵²

# Find happiness in acceptance

A rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things outside of their control. ¹²⁴⁸ In any situation in life, you always have three choices: you can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. ¹⁴⁶⁴ What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you could leave it but not leaving it and not accepting it. That struggle or aversion is responsible for most of our misery. ¹⁴⁷¹

Any moment where you’re not having a great time, when you’re not really happy, you’re not doing anyone any favors. It’s not like your unhappiness makes them better off somehow. All you’re doing is wasting this incredibly small and precious time you have on this Earth. Keeping death [at] the forefront and not denying it is very important. ¹⁵⁰¹