Naval Ravikant's - To Be Happy is To Be Neutral...

I recently been listening to Naval Ravikant who is a successful computer programmer that evolved into a successful venture capitalist. He is associated with the book The Almanack of Naval which is a summary of Naval's quotes that he has learned throughout his life. Essential rules he derives as the basis of living life. Many people whether professionals or not can relate to his book since it is about living life.

You Feel Happy Don't Mean You Are Happy?

Naval has a deep and thorough answer to how one can be happy. I would do my best to generalize his response. Naval believes that when people achieve their desires they will be happy. Yet that feeling of happiness is not lasting since emotions come in two forms. One who feels happiness will likely have felt unhappiness too. Thus the feeling of happiness will likely result or have resulted in some form of unhappiness.

The polarity phenomenon Naval is reference where in order one to feel happy they will also have to feel unhappy can be associated with Yin and Yang. Naval further adds that everything in the universe has no feeling of happiness or unhappiness. It is random as much as the first big bang that lead to where planet earth is where it is today. In such random event it is neither happiness nor unhappiness. It is how the person wants to perceive the event that makes them feel either happy or unhappy.

Instead of one trying to feel happy they would want to have their mind thinking at a neutral state. Neither happy or unhappy so that they can focus on the present moment and live in the moment. Here is a quote with an example of what he is trying to explain what the neutral state is:

Neutral state, not neutrality, but existence [similar] to little children live. Little children on balance they are pretty happy because they are immerse in the [current] environment and moment without the thought of how it should be given their personal preferences. Neutral state is a perfection state where one is very happy as long as they are not too caught up in their own heads.

Conclusions

The children when playing are not thinking of what they need to do in the near future nor thinking of what happen to them in the past. Instead they are at the current moment playing and enjoying the things they are seeing at the moment. The children are living in the moment and that allows them to be happy. Yet these kind of moments happen rarer and fewer in adults.

For adults we focus on what to do to put food on the table. We focus on how to get work done and fulfill are responsibilities even if we do not want to do them because of our bias feelings against doing them. All these thoughts while trying to live in the present moment tend to create more anxiety and or sadness than happiness.

The goal then is to try to be neutral where I do not feel too happy or sad at the current moment. Instead focus on living in the moment and once that occurs I have the opportunities to appreciate the moments.

None of what I write is financial advice. It is for entertainment purposes only. Thanks for reading!

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