I read three books today. All of them were great. And one of them even has to do with business, so I’m chalking up today as self-employed. I also moved my desk, ate leftovers, and did twelve pull-ups, so I feel quite productive for having sat on the couch all day.
Today I read:
Daniel Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness. I’d been meaning to read this since watching Dan Gilbert’s TED talk on happiness a few days ago. The book was interesting, full of counter-intuitive examples of how terrible our minds are at predicting how we’ll feel in the future. (Did you know that having kids makes you unhappy? Doesn’t matter, though, you don’t believe me and you’ll have them anyway. I will, too.) I’m disappointed that he doesn’t talk about synthetic happiness in the book, as it was the whole reason I picked it up. Oh well, it was a great read anyway.
Cesar Millan’s Cesar’s Way. Cesar Millan is the Dog Whisperer. I’ve never seen a single episode of his show, but his book blew me away. And I’m not a dog person, either. Every once in a while you read something that absolutely resonates with you and makes you go, “Yes! That’s right! Now I understand!” Cesar Millan’s book did that for me. He talks a lot about body language and nonverbal communication and animal instincts, which is right up my alley. I’ll be getting his second book, definitely.
Chip and Dan Heath’s Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. So good. Amazing. Fantastic. If you ever attempt to communicate ideas to other people, you need to read this book. I had to keep putting it down every few pages because I was coming up with so many ideas I wanted to incorporate into my own presentation and I needed to write them down. Thanks to the Ed Dale and Mike Mindel from the Thirty Day Challenge for recommending this book. It has found a permanent place on my bookshelf.
And now I’m in the middle of:
Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis. It got great reviews on Amazon, it seemed like everyone who bought Stumbling on Happiness also bought this, and Craig just happened to have a copy lying around. So of course I had to read it. It’s going a bit slower thanks to its extra-small font and the fact that all the research is so interesting that I have to keep looking it up. Seriously, “alien-hand syndrome”? Crazy!
David Deida’s The Way Of The Superior Man. David Deida’s understanding of relationship dynamics is astounding. He is an amazing writer and brings spirituality and understanding to relationships in a powerful way. It takes me a few days to process each page – the book is short but it’s taking me months to get through it. Read it. Of course, if you have no desire to ever have a satisfying relationship, feel free to disregard this suggestion.
Just in case you happen to be in Seattle looking for gourmet cupcakes that cost about $3 apiece, I am now 100% decided: Trophy Cupcakes in Wallingford is way better than Cupcake Royale in Ballard. Not to disparage the delicious Red Velvet, Hummingbird, and Triple Vanilla cupcakes I got at Trophy, but I still dream about the Triple Coconut with the slightly crispy cupcake top underneath the double coconut topping. Mmm…
Craig and I stopped by Cupcake Royale yesterday just to double check, but they don’t compare. Next stop: New York Cupcakes in downtown Seattle…
It’s been years since I’ve had anything rock my world view like Dan Gilbert’s talk on happiness. The research makes it quite clear that we have a “psychological immune system” to keep us feeling happy in the face of adversity. Dan refers to this as “synthetic happiness”. The amazing thing is that this synthetic happiness is every bit as real as the happiness we’re used to.
In the past, when I saw studies saying that paraplegics are just as happy as lottery winners, I’d kinda brush them aside. “That can’t be right.” Or, “Silly people, fooling themselves like that.” The unsettling thing is, they aren’t fooling themselves. They really are, truly, genuinely happy.
Apparently it’s a human trait that while we can predict our feelings in the future, we vastly overpredict the differences between outcomes. And we almost completely disregard synthetic happiness, to the point where people make decisions that will leave them less happy in the future.
Craig and I watched the video together over dinner and were floored. Within the span of 20 minutes, the way I look at the world was transformed. The ramifications touch every part of our lives.
- Of course people in arranged marriages are happy. With no escape route, synthetic happiness goes through the roof.
- If you’ve been divorced once, you’ll see marriage as less permanent, leading to less synthetic happiness and hence less satisfaction in your next marriage. Probably the same thing if your parents divorced.
- Synthetic happiness explains why it’s easier to be the person who’s been broken up with, rather than the breaker-upper. If you’re dumped, you have to move on, so you do. No other choice and your synthetic happiness kicks in.
- This could explain why I’m so happy about leaving grad school, buying a crappy car, and living in my current apartment.
- If I stopped buying from REI with their liberal return policy, perhaps I would be happier with my purchases.
- It certainly explains why I’m not that happy with the pen I bought from REI last week.
- In fact, if you’re running your own business, a liberal return policy makes more people buy, but a “no returns” policy will cause them to be happier with their purchases.
- Oh, and procrastinating until you only have one choice left starts to make a lot more sense.
In short, small decisions don’t matter. As long as the outcomes aren’t too extreme, your synthetic happiness will kick in to keep you happy. So don’t worry about small decisions. Oh, and since we vastly overestimate differences in outcomes, almost everything you think is a big decision is actually a small decision.
How big does a decision have to become for it to actually matter? Well, apparently the difference between being a lottery winner and being a paraplegic is not that big, so it appears the decision would have to be pretty large.
My take: Buy insurance to hold off any catastrophic events, fill up your IRA for retirement, and then enjoy the moment.
Dan Gilbert has a whole book on this, Stumbling on Happiness. I’m placing my order right now…
It took me 42 days, but I’ve finally made it through all the 30 Day Challenge material. Wow. Ed Dale and Dan Raine have done an incredible service with all the information they put out. In the end, Craig and I have yet to make our first dollar, but we know where we went wrong. In the next few days we’ll be starting the 30DC over from scratch with a new keyword phrase. Having made all kinds of mistakes in round 1, round 2 will be so much smoother. Key realization – this time we’ll be looking for a phrase that drives traffic that wants to BUY.
We have a couple friends staying with us this weekend. Andy and Jenny just finished thru-hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which means that over the last four months, they walked from Mexico to Canada. Their stories are amazing. Long distance hiking was never something that appealed to me before, but after hearing about the friendships they made on the trail, the sense of community among hikers, and everything they’ve been through, it does sound interesting.
But it’s the sense of just experiencing nature and allowing yourself to be in the moment every minute of every day for months on end that appeals to me more than anything else.
So it’s back to the Thirty Day Challenge and my lessons in internet commerce so that I can build a lifestyle that will eventually allow me to wander off into the wilderness for months on end. Onwards!
To hear about Andy and Jenny’s adventures, you can check out Charlie Brown & Cardinal Bird’s 2007 Pacific Crest Trail Journal (their trail names).
