Assured Misery

People tend to know what makes them angry with more certainty than what might make them happy. Happiness is complicated because you keep moving the goalposts. Misery is more durable.

Warren Buffett says the definition of success is when the people you want to love you do love you. A corollary is not to sweat it when people you don’t care about don’t love you.

A sneaky kind of assured misery is when you have no room for error in your life, which feels like maximizing efficiency but actually just means you’re guaranteeing disappointment when the world inevitably wobbles.

This is one of those technically-right-but- contextually wrong problems. Rockefeller never had Advil or sunscreen or penicillin. But nobody today wakes up feeling richer than Rockefeller because everyone judges how well they’re doing relative to those around them. And since somebody is always getting richer than you, faster than you, with what appe... See more

The inability to deal with criticism, even when it’s unwarranted, is a sure path to misery. The line between “protecting your honor” and “dangerously thin skin” is pale.