Cultivating Inner Peace and Happiness as Skills

Naval has such a following because he is successful financially AND happy, in the sense that he has focused on learning happiness. Naval built happiness habits, reminders and behaviors that create an inner peace. This episode has Naval’s best ideas on how envy, success, and desire can interfere with your innate happiness, and how you can defend it or win it back. It all starts with realizing that happiness is a choice, and happiness is a skill. You can train yourself into happiness through perspectives and Naval’s small changes in thinking habits. 

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Artwork and illustrations by Jack Butcher of @VisualizeValue

Shownotes:

Important Quotes from the podcast on Happiness as a choice:

The Tao Te Ching says this more articulately than I ever could, but it’s all duality and polarity. If I say I’m happy, that means I was sad at some point. If I say he’s attractive, then somebody else is unattractive. Every positive thought even has a seed of a negative thought within it and vice versa, which is why a lot of greatness in life comes out of suffering. You have to view the negative before you can aspire to and appreciate the positive. - Naval Ravikant

If you believe Happiness is a choice you can start to work on it - Naval Ravikant

The fundamental delusion: There is something out there that will make me happy and fulfilled forever. - Naval Ravikant

Happiness is being satisfied with what you have. Success comes from dissatisfaction. Choose. - Naval Ravikant

Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion. You can convert peace into happiness anytime you want. But peace is what you want most of the time. If you’re a peaceful person, anything you do will be a happy activity. - Naval Ravikant

Important Quotes from the podcast on Success and Desire:

When working, surround yourself with people more successful than you. When playing, surround yourself with people happier than you. - Naval Ravikant

Tell your friends you’re a happy person. Then, you’ll be forced to conform to it. You’ll have a consistency bias. You have to live up to it. Your friends will expect you to be a happy person. - Naval Ravikant

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

Important Quotes from the podcast on Anxiety:

I think a lot of us have this low-level pervasive feeling of anxiety. If you pay attention to your mind, sometimes you’re just running around doing your thing and you’re not feeling great, and you notice your mind is chattering and chattering about something. Maybe you can’t sit still…There’s this “nexting” thing where you’re sitting in one spot thinking about where you should be next. - Naval Ravikant

It’s most obvious if you ever just sit down and try and do nothing, nothing. I mean nothing, I mean not read a book, I mean not listen to music, I mean literally just sit down and do nothing. You can’t do it, because there’s anxiety always trying to make you get up and go, get up and go, get up and go. I think it’s important just being aware the anxiety is making you unhappy. The anxiety is just a series of running thoughts. - Naval Ravikant

How I combat anxiety: I don’t try and fight it, I just notice I’m anxious because of all these thoughts. I try to figure out, “Would I rather be having this thought right now, or would I rather have my peace?” Because as long as I have my thoughts, I can’t have my peace. - Naval Ravikant