Jon_Bundesen

Notes based on Leo's video: https://youtu.be/pxyJiN4Z2Ds See image for quick overview Make a distinction between pleasure and gratification hedonic happiness vs. eudaimonic happiness Hedonic happiness: The idea that well-being is achieved through maximizing pleasure, enjoyment, and comfort while minimizing pain and displeasure. Eudaimonic happiness: Living a virtuous life: embodying your greatest strengths, living up to them, living a life of integrity and noble purpose, living with higher consciousness and wisdom. How much of my happiness is about hedonism and eudaimonia based on the activities I do? How can I move the ratio more towards eudaimonia? Eudaimonic happiness cannot be chemically induced. There's no shortcut for it and it requires hard work. It doesn't come naturally and easily to most people. You cannot buy deeper fulfillment in life which can only happen through inner development towards eudaimonia (a virtuous life). 3 factors for screening an activity that provides you with happiness. How long does the happiness last in duration? What does this happiness cost to produce? (Does it cost a lot or a little) What are the consequences of engaging in this form of happiness? - What does it cost me long term if I keep doing it? Does it make my psychology weaker or stronger? Happiness spectrum: First third of spectrum: Anything in this section can become an addiction and these activities give you a big spike in excitement but then leave you lower so you're left with a feeling of emptiness. Drugs Food, partying and drinking Beauty - Trying to make yourself physically look better/look more attractive. People that obsess about beauty are more miserable. People who are more physically attractive objectively speaking are no happier than the average or even below average attractiveness levels of other people. Money/shopping. People who primarily have money-based goals in their career and in their life are the most frustrated people. Even if they achieve their money goals, they're still not happy. All money can do is buy you more hedonic happiness. Media and entertainment. It creates a opportunity cost which means that if you're heavily engaged in entertainment you're using so much time that could otherwise be used on eudaimonic activities. If you take a person watching TV for a long period of time and you measure his mood it's mild depression. Gossip/idle socialization. Mindlessly hanging out with your friends. Fame, public image, success (external signs of accomplishment). It's hard to believe initially before you have it that these things would not make your life better. But once you get it and get acclimated to it doesn't do much for your internal levels of fulfillment. Validation from other people - Getting people to like you, to approve of you, to give you compliments etc. Porn/sex Romantic infatuation - Around the first 6 months of a new intimate relationship where you're falling in love etc. Romantic infatuation is not sustainable it always dies off. Middle third of spectrum: Hobbies Physical exercise/physical growth. Don't confuse this with beauty, a lot of guys do physical exercise because they're obsessing over their beauty. Friendships and strong relationships. You can have shallow gossipy type friendships and you can have deeper, stronger and more intimate friendships, you want the later. Also family relationships that you strengthen. Companionate love. The deeper bond and rapport you build with a partner after the first 6 months of excitement wears off. Last third of spectrum: Learning and education (Especially after college). Excellent work and flow states. Does your work produce flow states for you? If not you need to create that. Inner development and self-acceptance. Any kind of personal growth activities like: Coaching, exercises, journaling, meditating, seminars/workshops etc. Any work you do to ACCEPT yourself exactly as you are. Not worrying about your beauty and trying to be different or worrying about who you should be as an ideal but instead just accepting yourself exactly as you are. You can't really be fulfilled in life if you're not accepting of yourself no matter what kind of external circumstances you can create for yourself Kindness. Most of us haven't figured out how to integrate this kindness in a consistent systematic way into our own lives since it's not really part of our daily routine and also not really natural to some our work. Create an alignment to become more kind daily. Gratitude. If you're not grateful for what you've already got then you're not going to be satisfied because you tell yourself you'll be grateful when you get or accomplish a certain thing but when you then get the thing you're not going to be grateful for that either because hedonic adaptation will happen and you will be chasing the next thing. (Create a gratitude practice) Integrity. Are you living up to your greatest values? Are you doing the things that are actually meaningful to you in life? Are you honoring commitments to others and to yourself? This means not lying, cheating, stealing or harming others but also are you keeping your own commitments to yourself? Contribution. Contribution is what your work does for the betterment of humanity and the world. Is your work contributing in a meaningful way that you believe is meaningful? Being/to be/existing. The best way to practice this is through meditation because it teaches you how "to be" and enjoy the moment of being. This should be your greatest source of satisfaction in life which means you should not need any stimulation of any sort. All the other ways to reach happiness/fulfillment are fundamentally activities that create stimulation which create a kick. Ask yourself: What are your top goals for the next year? Are they hedonic goals or eudaimonic goals? Re-engineer your hedonic goals into eudaimonic goals.

@Leo Gura Could you elaborate on this post and explain how cannabis can provide insights? If you’ve used it yourself, I’d also be interested in hearing what kinds of insights you’ve experienced. https://actualized.org/insights/from-weed-to-religion

@YIDIRYIDIR @Ramasta9 Do you ever get that feeling of emptiness where nothing seems to be interesting and there's no motivation towards anything? (Everything just feels so grey like there's no color to life) Even just getting out of bed in the morning is painful. I even got a nice life purpose, but lately everything seems so fucking dull (I'm not even trying to sound depressed and i'm not on drugs either )

I’m too lazy to go outside and socialize, but I’d like to meet people (especially women and maybe get laid, lol). It’s like I have two opposing forces pulling me in different directions. One wants me to stay where I am; another wants me to go outside. I can’t even push myself to take small steps because they feel uncomfortable and exhausting/laborious. (I haven't been outside of my house for 3 days now and I feel like a big slob) Help please

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRXRnDYwePk&t=328s&ab_channel=EckhartTolle

I thought of smoking cannabis while going out with my friends for fun. I'm not addicted to weed nor do I use it to escape I would say. I've used it occasionally, probably once per 1-2 months but I feel guilty about doing it since it's just for fun use. This post is not just about weed but also other drugs and what your thoughts are on using them recreationally.

I'm a junior (11th grade) and have 1,5 years back before finishing high school but I hate it so much I just want to quit. Everyday I wake up and genuinely dread going to school, don't get my wrong I like being social with my friends and what not but I hate my class and I think there so boring I especially hate math which I think is very complicated and I don't really care about. I don't care about grades but I do care about not failing my exams and having to low grades to not be able to complete high school because you get kicked out. I'm going on quite a rant and in reality it's probably not so bad but I really dread it espically assignments which I feel take up all my free time. Any advice on how to get through high school would be much appricated.

This blew my mind

@Yarco I see

Maybe but related to engineering would be creating things like Elon Musk that's more what I'm envisioning. I have looked at the possibility of engineering something new related to music an example could be inventing a program like auto-tune which is a genius invention that got created out of already existing possibilities but, to be honest, I feel more intrigued by inventing things like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Leonardo da Vinci invented more physical we could say.

I've gone through a lot of the course and found engineering to be something I'm quite passionate about but lately, I haven't really been feeling it and not working on the course (for like 3 weeks) I guess it's because of the fear of how hard it's going to be to accomplish something great. Life purpose statement: To envision and design groundbreaking inventions Since I'm not working on the life purpose course I really got into producing music and I can literally spend hours doing that sh*t but I just feel like I could achieve something greater with engineering than producing music.

The title is related to pick up since I'm not old enough to go to the club so instead, my friend group holds parties that I go to but the problem is there are no new women, and then once there I don't find that attractive. I really come there to get better at pick up but the main thing of these parties are drinking and smoking which I don't participate in. I don't feel like I'm able to make that much progress because I can't just hit on multiple women because there are none. From all of this would my time be better spent staying home or going out with them anyway?

So I've been getting bad grades at school because I want to use my time on other things but I have become really anxious about the fact that the bad grades might lead to me not being able to finish high school. I am currently in my junior year (10th grade) and still have to more years to go. As the question says how do I stop caring so much about f*cking grades!

Thank you all for the replies. I really think the problem is that I see if I can gain something from making music like approval, fame, money, etc. which truly ruins the fun of it because I keep thinking of all the other activities that would bring more value to the table and it just gets me frustrated and anxious.