Choose happiness as a conscious effort akin to building muscles, surround yourself with successful people for success but less successful for happiness.
Deep dives
Importance of Choosing Happiness
Choosing to be happy is emphasized as a crucial decision that involves active effort, likened to building muscles. Naval Ravikant highlights the significance of happiness as a choice that one must work towards, similar to a skill development process.
Surrounding Oneself for Success and Happiness
Naval Ravikant discusses the importance of surrounding oneself with successful individuals for achieving success. However, for happiness, he suggests being around people who are less successful than oneself. He emphasizes the impact of relationships on personal growth and contentment.
Dealing with Conflict and Life Choices
Naval Ravikant introduces the idea of handling conflict by avoiding individuals who engage in constant conflicts, as negative interactions can escalate to affect personal well-being. He outlines the three fundamental options in life: changing a situation, accepting it, or leaving it, stressing the need to make proactive decisions to avoid prolonged dissatisfaction.
This episode features Naval Ravikant’s profile from Tools of Titans, which is now available as an audiobook. This chapter's narrators are Kaleo Griffith (bio) and Ray Porter (profile). To check out the full audiobook of Tools of Titans with 100+ chapters, visit audible.com/ferriss.
Naval Ravikant (@naval) is the co-founder and chairman of AngelList. He is an angel investor and has invested in more than 100 companies, including more than a few “unicorn” mega-successes. You can subscribe to Naval, his podcast on wealth and happiness, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. For more Naval, check out my wildly popular interview with him from 2015, which was nominated for “Podcast of the Year.”