Welcome back to episode 5.
Thank you again so much for being here.
What I want to talk about today are two little things that have always interest me and have
always found so fascinating.
Number one is that some of the richest people you will ever meet come across as incredibly
unhappy, abnormally unhappy.
And number two, which is very related, is how big a role are expectations play in our
financial success.
A few years ago, I heard this amazing quote from Richard Nixon of all people about money
and happiness that I thought was so spot on and so accurate.
I was going to read it out for you.
I'm going to have it come straight from his mouth.
Here's what he had to say.
To me, the unhappiest people of the world are those in the watering places, the international
watering places like the South Coast of France and Newport and Palm Springs and Palm Beach,
going to parties every night, playing golf every afternoon, then bridge, drinking too much,
talking too much, thinking too little, retired, no purpose.
And so, while I know there are those who totally would disagree with this and say, gee, but
if I could just be a millionaire, that would be the most wonderful thing.
If I could just not have to work every day, if I could just be out fishing or hunting or
playing golf or traveling, that would be the most wonderful life in the world.
They don't know life.
Because what makes life mean something is purpose, a goal, the battle, the struggle, even
if you don't win it.
That's astounding, right?
I think he's absolutely correct here.
And it goes against so much intuition.
But if you are fortunate enough to have met some extremely wealthy people, you know exactly
what Nixon is talking about here.
So I think that is true, but hard to accept is that nothing is as desired as the thing
that you want but can't have.
For most people, there is actually a higher archaeo of wants, and it goes something like
this.
If you don't want something and you don't have it, you don't even think about it.
If you want something and you have it, you might feel okay.
And if you want something and you can't have it, you drive yourself mad.
Nixon kind of elaborated on this.
Here's what else he had to say here.
You feel it, or Jay, isn't it?
Just great to have enough money for living a very nice house, to be able to play golf,
and to have nice parties, and to wear good clothes, chores, suits, et cetera, et cetera,
or travel if you want to.
And the answer is, if you don't have those things, then they can mean a great deal to you.
When you do have them, they mean nothing to you.
Now this I think is a little exaggerated here, but the idea of valuing only what you have
struggled for is very real.
There is a British author named William Dawson who wrote this book in 1905 called The
Quest for the Simple Life.
And one of the ideas that he brings up in the book that I really admire is that the
hardest thing to understand about money is the thrill of the chase.
That something that you can easily afford brings less joy than something you must save
for and struggle for.
Dawson writes that quote, the man who can buy anything he covets, values nothing that
he buys.
Look, I think he is absolutely right.
And I think this starts to make sense when you really understand and come to terms with
what your brain wants.
This is true for everybody.
Your brain does not want nice cars or a big house or fancy jewelry.
Your brain just wants dopamine.
That's it.
That's all you want that's all you are after.
Your brain just wants more dopamine.
Dopamine, of course, is the chemical of desire that it's just always asking you for more.
It says, please get more stuff and more stimulation.
Give me more surprises.
That's all dopamine wants.
And from dopamine's point of view, having something does not make you happy.
It is getting something.
It is the process of attaining more stuff that feels good.
Your brain does not want stuff.
It doesn't even want new stuff.
What you want is to engage in the process and the anticipation of getting new stuff.
The change in how much money you have, not the amount is typically what matters.
And you can see this so often with money.
When you are young, when you are a teenager, you dream about having a car.
Any car does not matter.
Just having any car would feel amazing.
And then maybe you get a $10,000 car and you start to dream of the $20,000 car.
And then you get the $20,000 car and you dream of the $50,000 car.
And then from $50,000 to $100,000 and from $100,000 to several $100,000 cars, there is almost
no end to this process.
The millionaires look up to the centa millionaires.
Who look up to the billionaires.
Who look up to the decabillionaires and who look up to the centa billionaires.
It's always just what's next.
What's the next level?
How can I get to the next level?
The people are always engaging in with money.
That's what you do because that's what your brain wants.
It's just like Nixon said, once you have something, it means nothing to you.
Some people I think are much less susceptible to this than others.
I like the idea from author, Rameet Sethi, who says, you should try to figure out your
own rich life.
Like discover the little peculiar things that money can buy that buys you sincere joy
and happiness in life.
But I think that dopamine train is really common and it's a powerful trap.
And it helps to answer the question of what do you want out of money?
Do you want a new car?
Do you want a new house?
Do you want better clothes?
For most people, the answer is no.
You actually don't want any of those things.
At least not directly.
For material possessions, you want everything that you can't have.
You want the chase of obtaining something new.
And once you get those things, if you do get those, the goalpost moves.
The dopamine takes over and you immediately start to ask, what is next?
Okay, so what if anything can we actually do about this?
I think there's one thing to keep in mind here.
Let me tell you a really fascinating story that I read many years ago that really stuck
with me in 2004, The New York Times interviewed Stephen Hawking, the absolute genius, Savant
scientist who had, of course, a motor neuron disease that left him paralyzed and unable
to talk since he's been 21 years old.
And he was in a great mood during this interview.
He was talking about how happy he was and how amazing his life was and how lucky he was
to be getting to do all of the research that he was doing, which is kind of a weird mindset
and mentality for a guy whose life has ended up in this tragic condition.
And so The New York Times asked him, they said, quote, are you always this cheerful?
No seriously, how do you keep your spirits up?
And Stephen Hawking's answer I think was so interesting.
He said, quote, my expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21.
Everything else since then has been a bonus.
That's quite a lesson, isn't it?
And I think it applies to lots of things, including money, of course.
Look, people get excited and happy and emotional when they are surprised.
Now when something big happens or when they find the right answer, they get happy and
they get mad and scared and amused and astounded when they stumble across a gap between their
expectations and the reality that they face.
There are so many examples of this that defy intuition.
Will Smith, the actor Will Smith, he wrote the singing his biography that I really like.
He says, becoming famous is an amazing feeling.
Being famous is kind of a mixed bag.
And losing fame is absolutely miserable.
And look, just like with money, it's almost like the amount of fame does not matter here.
Going from a nobody to a little bit famous creates a huge gap between what you expected
your life to be and what it became.
And it's the same on the way down in the other direction.
But being famous, that just meets the expectations that you have.
It doesn't create the gap between your expectations and reality.
I have a friend who grew up in Abject Poverty in Africa.
And now today he works in tech in California, he does quite well for himself.
And he says that to this day, he's still blown away when a hot meal is put in front of
him.
Because he grew up in Abject Poverty where food was so scarce and even though he makes
a very good six-figure income today, whenever he has a hot meal in front of him three
times a day, he's overcome with like the sense of wonder and amazement.
It's astounding to him still how abundant food is in America.
And part of me is like a little bit envious when I hear him say that.
He finds immense pleasure from something that I don't think twice about just because his
expectations were so different than mine when we were growing up.
That's how like incredible expectations are in your life.
Actual circumstances don't make all that much different in your life.
What generates all the emotion is just how big the gap is between your expectations and
reality.
It's pretty astounding when you think of it like that.
Everyone, everywhere doing almost any task is just in pursuit of finding a little bit
of space between their expectations and their reality.
And that is so easy to overlook, particularly when we are trying to become happier with
something like the money that we have and the money that we are in pursuit of.
Peter Kaufman, he's a friend of mine, he's a CEO of Glen Air and he's one of the smartest
people you will ever come across.
And he wrote this thing one time that I really liked.
He says, quote, we tend to take every precaution to safeguard our material possession.
It's not just about the cost of our expectations because we know what they cost.
But at the same time, we neglect things which are much more precious because they don't
come with price tags attached to them.
I love that and I think it's the exact thing with our expectations.
They are easy to ignore because their value is not on a price tag.
But your happiness completely relies on expectations.
Your boss's impression of your career relies on expectations.
And super confidence relies on expectations when it moves the stock market relies on expectations.
So why do we pay so little attention to them?
We spend so much effort trying to improve our income and our career skills and our ability
to forecast the future.
All those things are good and worthy of our attention.
But on the other side, there is almost a complete ignorance of expectations, especially
managing them with as much effort as we put into changing our circumstances.
All this Huxley has this great quote where he says, most human beings have an almost
infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
How true is that and how scary is that?
Because imagine a life where almost everything gets better, but you never appreciate it because
your expectations rise just as fast as your circumstances.
And you take everything for granted.
It's terrifying.
It's almost as bad as a world where nothing gets better.
Charlie Mugger has this great idea.
He was once asked the secret to living a happy life.
And he said quote, the first rule of a happy life is low expectations.
If you have unrealistic expectations, you're going to be miserable your whole life.
You want to have reasonable expectations and take life's results good and bad as they
happen with a certain amount of stoicism.
I love that.
My friend Brent Beeshore has this related theory about marriage.
He says marriage only works if both people want to help their spouse while expecting nothing
in return.
And if you both do that, you are both pleasantly surprised day after day.
That is easier said than done.
I think it's often hard to distinguish high expectations from motivation.
And so sometimes low expectations feels like you're giving up or minimizing your potential.
The only way around that might be just recognizing how the expectations game is played.
Just coming to terms with it.
It's a mental game and it's often a crazy and agonizing game.
But it is a game that everyone is forced to play so you should be aware of the rules
and the strategies of the game.
It goes something like this.
You think you want progress, both for yourself and for the world.
But most of the time that's not actually what you want.
What you want is to feel a gap between what you expected and what actually happened.
And the expectation side of that equation is not only more important, but it's often
more in your control than managing your circumstances.
And maybe the key to happiness with money is not figuring out how to get more.
It's figuring out how to want less.
That's all for this week.
Thank you again for listening.
We'll see you next time.
