‘You are not as important as you think you are’ and other life lessons

The more important you think you are, the more enemies you will make.

What is the good life? How can you achieve a good life? Can you imagine anyone going through life and not asking the question at some point? What makes you happy?

Rolf Dobelli, author of The Art of the Good Life, attempts to wrestle in 52 brief chapters with the question of the good life, a query that has distressed thought leaders, academicians and theorists since orthodox antiquity. Dobelli’s book is a new offering after the international bestseller The Art of Thinking Clearly. In his second work, he derives inspiration from the insights of the stoics and great philosophical scholars as profoundly as he does from contemporary business mavericks, like Warren Buffett, and modern-day psychological research, to build his anthology of lessons on how to attain happiness to day. The sample lessons derived from Dobelli’s combine both traditional and counterintuitive thinking.

• Every failure can improve your life. What goes in your head every time you make a big decision? Do you document your assumptions, thoughts, and conclusions? If the decision turns out to be a mistake, analyze the reason for the blunder. Embrace the notion that with each justifiable misstep, your life will move forward better, faster. Persistence in all you do will eventually pay off.

• Adopting a second self will protect you from toxic influences and establish a degree of internal clarity. A second persona should be differentiated from authenticity, which can be restricted to keeping your promises and acting according to your principles.

• Saving money ensures freedom. Set aside enough funds — a minimum of one year’s salary perhaps — to allow you to quit your job at a moment’s notice without ending up in a difficult financial situation. This will allow you to see and think objectively. If you haven’t saved enough yet, maintain your fixed costs to a minimum. The lower your spending, the faster you’ll hit your target.

• Enjoying the sunset instead of photographing it will make you savor present familiarities instead of getting bothered about tomorrow’s recollections. The things you experience in real time are much more powerful, and more passionately spiced and vibrant than your muddled remembrances. Spend time creating wonderful experiences for yourself in the here and now. Be consciously aware of enjoyable moments and physically experience them instead of rummaging for reminiscences.

• Your brain can tell if its concerns have been recorded and not simply ignored. Create a journal dedicated for your worries. Set aside a fixed time for your anxieties. In practical terms, this means reserving 10 minutes a day to jot down everything that’s bothering you — no matter how justified, idiotic or vague. Once you’ve done so, observe that the rest of the day will be relatively worry-free.

• Prevention requires more than just knowledge. Be ahead of your problems and vulnerabilities. Avoid them before you must solve them. It requires imagination, which means forcing yourself to think possibilities and consequences all the way through. Spend 15 minutes a week focusing intently on the potential catastrophic risks in your life. Then forget all about it and spend the rest of the week happy and carefree.

• Mindfulness helps. Be in touch with your negative emotions. Watch them, avoid bunking with them though, and don’t let them trick you into taking a decision you don’t want to take, or be sorry about later.

• Knowing when and where not to play will make you a better player. To illustrate the point, take author Dylan Evans’ description of J.P., a professional backgammon player, in his book, Risk Intelligence: “He would make a few deliberate mistakes to see how well his opponent would exploit them. If the other guy played well, J.P. knew something that most gamblers don’t: he knew when not to bet.” He knew who among his competition would force him out of his circle of competence, and he learned to avoid them.

•  The most efficient way to steer your personal development is to use your idols. But use the right ones to drive your own change. So be careful how you choose your mentors or the people you admire or emulate.

• You can’t change other people. Not even your partner or your children. Avoid situations where you must change other people. The motivation for personal change must come from within.

• The true heroes are those people who help society and individuals from veering into catastrophe. They are the truly wise, values-driven and service-oriented workers: competent and compassionate teachers, sensible legislators, honest police officers, truthful communicators, doctors with a heart or skillful diplomats.

• You are not as important as you think you are. If you died today, in less than 10 years you will not be a subject of discussion even among majority of people who know you. The more important you think you are, the more enemies you will make. If you stress your own importance, you do so at the expense of other people because otherwise it would devalue your relative position. Once you’re successful or even before you become one, other people who are equally full of themselves will pull you down.

•  Pinning everything on the fulfillment of a supposed vocation does not bring happiness. Instead, find what you’re good at and focus doggedly on that. Make a decision and then stick to it to avoid being steered off course. And don’t prize action over waiting, zeal above deliberation. Slow down.

• Technology is largely inimical to the good life. It wastes our time; time in which you could be switching on your brains, time you can devote to books, as well your hobbies, whatever they are. A lot of modern technology is not so conducive to our happiness, especially when it comes to attacking our attention.

• Social media is boastful, it leads to envy. Never in the history of mankind have more people compared themselves with others, and that causes misery. It cuts your attention into so many short pieces that you have lost the ability to stay focused on one train of thought for longer than a minute, which has very strong implications on your intellectual life; and debating issues becomes not a question of argument any more but little tweets. It’s hard to disagree and the idea of reducing the time you spend interacting with gadgets to create more time for yourself is seductive.

“Modern life is incompatible with the good life,” says Dobelli. I say the definition of a good life is highly relative. It may be defined by certain conventions and standards, but at the end of it, it depends on how you live it, and measure it.

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