Welcome back to the podcast. This is episode 14. I didn't think we'd make it this far,
but this has been a lot of fun. So thank you for putting up with it and still being here and listening.
Today's episode is about what makes you happy, a very big and broad and ambitious topic.
Now I'm going to try to poke a couple of holes into and see if we can take it in a direction
that hopefully you're not anticipating. I always like to find these odd ball stories that have
nothing to do with the point I'm trying to make, but they explain human behavior in a way that
hopefully you haven't thought about it before. And I want to start with a story today about
Ernest Shackleton's ship, The Endurance. Many of you are familiar with the story. Some of you
may not be though. The Endurance was a ship run by a guy named Ernest Shackleton in 1916 that
was trying to make it across Antarctica. And the endurance got stuck in the Antarctic ice.
And before long, the ship was crushed. It was ruined by the ice. And Shackleton and his 27-man crew
then spent 19 months from January of 1915 to August of 1916, rowing 800 miles to safety in tiny
little lifeboats. And the nighttime temperatures were hitting 10 degrees below zero. And they were
constantly frozen and soaked and hungry and sleep deprived. And the crazy thing about the story
is that they all survived. They ate and occasionally captured seal and they foraged seaweed. It's one
of the most astounding survival stories that you'll ever hear. But for me, the most emotional part
of the book, which is called Endurance, came at the very end. When Ernest Shackleton's crew
finally made it to a wailing station on South George Island, which is about 1600 miles east of
Argentina, author Alfred Lansing writes, quote, every comfort the wailing station could provide was
placed at the disposal of Shackleton and his crew. They first enjoyed the glorious luxury of a
long bath followed by a shave. Then new clothes were given to them from the station's storehouse.
After that, they were served a hot meal and they slept for 12 hours.
Can you possibly imagine what that is like? Can you possibly imagine how good it must have felt
to have a warm bath and a hot meal and a warm bed after being constantly frozen and starving
for 19 months? Even if the bath water was lukewarm and the food was half-stale,
that must have been one of the most pleasant and fulfilling evenings that anyone has ever experienced.
So there's this weird thing in life in that everyone strives for a good life because they
think it will make them happy. They want the nice stuff. They want all the luxuries. They want the
pleasures. But what actually brings happiness is the contrast between what you have now and whatever
you are just doing. So the best drink that you will ever taste is a glass of tap water when you
are thirsty. And the best food that you will ever eat is fast food when you are starving.
The best massage you will ever feel is sitting on a couch after a long run. The best sleep that
you will ever experience is when your newborn finally makes it through the night. In all of those,
it's not your circumstances that actually brings happiness. It's the contrast between whatever you
have now and whatever you were just doing. In his book on the final days of World War II,
Stephen Ambrose writes about a wounded American soldier who's carried back to the medic tent.
And he knows he's going home. The war is over for him. And he turns around to his fellow soldiers
who are still on the front line and he yells to them, quote, clean sheets, boys, clean sheets. Can
you believe it? Clean in sheets. Living in foxholes and trenches for weeks or months at a time
made soldiers daydream about normal life. And there were a few things that chased their
imaginations like the dignity of clean bed sheets. Not money or status or respect or glory,
just the absolute joy of clean linens. That's what made them happy because the contrast between
that simple basic thing and the life that they were living was so vast. And I think money is a
lot like this too. The richest that you will probably ever feel in your entire life is when you
get your first paycheck, maybe when you're a teenager and your bank account goes from, you know,
$5 to maybe $500. The contrast between those two might be greater than the contrast of going
from 10 million to 20 million. Going from nothing to something is so much more powerful than going
from a lot to a super a lot. So it's the contrast. It's not the amount. It's just the contrast
that actually makes you happy. Two things stick out here. One is that happiness is a fleeting emotion
because it's triggered by a contrast in circumstances, but you can quickly adapt to whatever new
circumstances you're in. Shackleton's second hot meal and his second bath and his second night
sleep probably felt like 1% as amazing as that first one did. But that shouldn't be depressing
because instead of chasing happiness, which is fleeting, people should be after contentment,
which is a similar feeling, but it's much more enduring than happiness. The second thing is that
when you realize how powerful expectations are, you put as much effort into keeping them low
as you do improving your circumstances. We talked about this on the last episode.
Happiness and contentment and joy, all of those things come from experiencing a gap between
expectations and reality. Shackleton's men learn this. After their ordeal, they found so much joy
in little things in life that they had never before considered. One of the sailors wrote in his
diary quote, today is one of the finest days we have ever had, just a pleasure to be alive.
Lansing the author wrote in his book quote, in this lonely world of ice and emptiness,
they had achieved at least a limited kind of contentment they had been tested and found not wanting.
That I think is about as good as it gets for the chase of happiness.
Here's a related point that I think is really important. A very hard skill in life,
but a very important one, is identifying when things in your life are temporarily too good
and preparing for the inevitable adjustment. It's so difficult to do because most people's willingness
to put up with hard times relies on the idea that you'll eventually be rewarded with good times.
So then when good times come you feel like you've earned it and nothing is easier to justify
than it deserved to reward. But there's an irony here. When most people experience bad times,
they consider it risk. Risk is the idea that there is a force outside of their control that
influence outcomes more than anything they could do intentionally. That's what risk is of course.
But rarely is that logic turned around. Because what is the opposite of risk? Well, the opposite of risk
is luck. And what's a good definition of luck? Luck is the idea that there is a force outside of
your control that could influence outcomes more than anything you do intentionally. It's the same
thing as risk. It's the same definition of risk. It's just in the other direction. So nothing too
good or too bad stays that way forever. Because great times plants the seeds of their own destruction
through complacency and leverage. And bad times plant the seeds of their own turnaround
through opportunity and panic driven problem solving. Everything is cyclical. But the way we deal
with risk versus luck couldn't be further apart. One is instantly recognized and we can't wait
until it's over. And the other causes an instant denial that it might ever end. This happens a lot
in investing. When every decline has to be explained and blamed on somebody else. Oh, the Fed did it,
Congress did it. But every increase in the stock market is usually just accepted and attributed
to your own intelligence. It happens in business when so many big tech companies are laying off
workers today because they assumed that the COVID-19 business bump would remain permanent. Or even
worse, they assumed that the bump was because of their own skill and their own intelligence.
It happens in people's careers where everything from cheap money to macroeconomic tailwinds can shift
the gap between how much you earn and how much value you actually produce in the world.
It's been like this forever and it always will be. People are much more attuned to negative
anomalies than positive ones, especially for things that impact their own lives. It's such a hard
thing to manage. And there's no easy answers on how to manage it. How to really recognize what in
your life is abnormally good that you should not expect to last. There are so many things in life
where distinguishing between sustainable momentum and temporary luck is only known with hindsight.
But maybe the broadest way to protect yourself is a simple rule that the luckier you are,
the nicer you should be. And the more successful you are, the nicer you should be. The better things
are going, the nicer you should be. That's probably the best. It's probably the only way to guard
yourself against entitlement, which is the main thing that blinds sides you when luck turns the
other way. It's almost like an automatic stabilizer that keeps you in check and keeps your social
circle solid, both of which probably lead to sustainable, durable, non-lucky success,
and maybe even happiness over time. That's all for this week. Thanks again. We'll see you next time.
