The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness

by Eric Jorgenson

Confucius says you have two lives, and the second one begins when you realize you only have one. When and how did your second life begin? That’s a very deep question. Most people who are past a certain age have had this feeling or phenomenon; they’ve gone through life a certain way and then gotten to a certain stage and had to make some pretty big changes. I’m definitely also in that boat. I struggled for a lot of my life to have certain material and social successes. When I achieved those material and social successes (or at least was beyond a point where they didn’t matter as much), I realized the people around me who had achieved similar successes and were on their way to achieving more didn’t seem all that happy. In my case, there was definitely hedonic adaptation: I’d very quickly get used to anything. This led me to the conclusion, which seems trite, that happiness is internal. That conclusion set me on a path of working more on my internal self and realizing all real success is internal and has very little to do with external circumstances. One has to do the external thing anyway. We’re biologically hard-wired. It’s glib to say, “You can just turn it off.” Your own life experience will bring you back to the internal path. [7]