44 Harsh Truths About Human Nature - Naval Ravikant - #922

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Happiness is being satisfied with what you have. Success comes from dissatisfaction. Is success worth it, then?

**Naval Ravikant** (0:08)
Oof. I'm not sure that statement is true anymore. Like, I made that statement a long time ago, and a lot of these things are just notes to myself, and they're highly contextual, they come in the moment, they leave in the moment. Happiness, okay, so a very complicated topic, but I always like the Socrates story, where he goes into the marketplace, and they show him all these luxuries and fineries, and he says, how many things there are in this world that I do not want? And that's a form of freedom. So not wanting something is as good as having it. In the old story with Alexander Dionysius, right, Alexander goes out and conquers the world, and he meets Dionysius, who's living in a barrel, and Dionysius says, get out of the way, you're blocking my son. And Alexander says, oh, how I wish I, you know, could be like Dionysius in the next life. And Dionysius says, that's the difference, I don't wish that I could, sorry, Diogenes, Diogenes. Diogenes says, I don't wish to be Alexander. So two paths to happiness, and one path is to success, you get what you want, you satisfy your material needs, or like Diogenes, you just don't want it in the first place. And I'm not sure which one is more valid.
And it also depends what you define as success. If the end goal is happiness, then why not cut to the chase and just go straight for it? Does being happy make you less successful? That is a conventional wisdom. That may even be the practical earned experience of your reality. You find that when you're happy, you don't want anything, so you don't get up and do anything. On the other hand, you still got to do something. You're an animal, you're here. You're here to survive, you're here to replicate, you're driven, you're motivated, you're gonna do something. You're not just gonna sit there all day, unlikely. Some people do, maybe it's in their nature, but I think most people still want to act. They want to live in the arena. I've found for myself as I've become, happier is a big word, but more peaceful, more calm, more present, more satisfied with what I have, I still want to do things. I just want to do bigger things. I want to do things that are more pure, more aligned with what I think needs to be done and what I can uniquely do. So in that sense, I think that being happier can actually make you more successful, but your definition of success will likely change along the way.

**Chris Williamson** (2:19)
Is that a realization you think you could have gotten to had you have not had some success in the first place?

**Naval Ravikant** (2:26)
At least for me, I always wanted to take the path of material success first. I was not going to go be an ascetic and sit there and renounce everything. That just seems too unrealistic and too painful. In the story of Buddha, he starts out as a prince, and then he sees that it's all kind of meaningless because you're still going to get old and die, and then he goes into the woods looking for something more. I'll take the happy route that involves material success. Thank you.

**Chris Williamson** (2:54)
I think it's quicker in some ways. One of your insights is it's far easier to achieve our material desires than it is to renounce them.

**Naval Ravikant** (3:04)
It depends on the person, but I think you have to try that path. If you want something, go get it. I quip that the reason to win the game is to be free of it. So you play the games, you win the games, and then hopefully you get bored of the games. You don't want to just keep looping on the same game over and over, although a lot of these games are very enticing. They have many levels and are relatively open-ended. Then you become free of the game in the sense that you're no longer trying to win it. You know you can win it, and either you move to a different game or you play the game for the sheer joy of it.

**Chris Williamson** (3:40)
Another one of yours, most of the gains in life come from suffering in the short-term so you can get paid in the long-term. I think winning the marshmallow test on a daily basis. But there's an interesting challenge where I think people need to avoid becoming a suffering addict, using suffering as the proxy for progress as opposed to the outcome of the suffering. It's like I was in pain not eating the marshmallow. I was in pain doing this work. I have attached well-being and satisfaction to pain, not to what the pain gets me on the other side of it.