8 Life Hacks from Naval Ravikant (#Almanack of Naval Ravikant)

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appiness.Just so you can make your own judgment, I’ve shared some of his content below so you can decide for yourself.<ul><li>His 11 Rules for Life YouTube audio: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmAO9jBqJf4&ab_channel=PickingNuggets">Naval Ravikant — 11 Rules For Life (Genius Rules) — YouTube</a></li><li>His best-selling book, ‘(which I’ve read and again, I would highly recommend) — <a href="https://www.navalmanack.com/">Almanack of Naval Ravikant (navalmanack.com)</a></li></ul>I have consumed quite a bit of his content and in this article, I’ve tried to share the nuggets of wisdom that resonated most with me. His tips are practical and useful and based on my own experience, can be applied and implemented in your life pretty much starting NOW (if you choose to do so). On that note, let’s get into it.<ol><li>If you can’t decide, the answer is NO: Our modern society is now full of options. We are not biologically designed to choose from these many options. Hence, as a thumb rule, you should only say yes when you are pretty certain. You’ll never be 100% certain but you are going to be very certain. If you find yourself creating a spreadsheet with pros and cons, why this is good or bad etc., forget it. Go by this rule — ‘If you can’t decide, the answer is No’. However, if you are evenly split on a difficult decision, then take the path that is more painful in the short term.</li><li>Learn to love to read: Read what you love until you love to read. Reading a book is not a race. Explain what you read to someone else. That should be the intention behind reading and that’s the best way to retain what you read (and hence one of the reasons behind this article). Have no obligation to finish a book. You know that song you can’t get out of your head, all thoughts work that way. So be careful what you read/ consume online.</li><li>Happiness is a skill: The moment you frame happiness in that context, then like any other skill, you can ‘learn’ it i.e., you can learn to be happy. Happiness is a default state when you remove the sense of something missing in your life. Happiness is about the absence of desire for external things. Real happiness comes as a side effect of peace. Don’t hang around unhappy people. Medidate and read philosophy. You can improve your happiness baseline and work on developing this skill just as we can work on developing our fitness. As long as you have your thoughts, you can’t have peace. That does not mean stop thinking altogether, but be aware and conscious around what you are thinking. Happiness = Peace (not joy or blissfulness etc). Training yourself to be happy is a single player game. You are only competing with yourself.</li><li>Reorient your life towards being happy: Don’t hang around people who always choose conflict. Happiness is a skill you develop and a choice you make. You choose to be happy and then you work at it. You prioritis

Options

e it in your life. Tell you friends you are a happy person, then you will be forced to conform to it. You’ll have a consistency bias, you’ll have to live up to it. Your friends will expect you to be a happy person.</li><li>Choose your desires carefully: Every desire is a chosen unhappiness. Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. Choose your desires very carefully. Choose the area in your life where you want to be unhappy and tie that to your desire. Don’t form your desires based on jealousy. If you are not ready to do a 100% wholesale swap with someone you are jealous of (i.e., getting their family, looks, mindset, etc.), then there’s no point in being jealous.</li><li>Find the Gap: Enlightment is the space between your thoughts. It means enlightenment isn’t something that you achieve after 30 years sitting on a mountaintop. Its something you can achieve every single day and hence you can be enlightened to a certain % every single day.</li><li>Life choices: In any situation in life you always have 3 choices, you can change it, accept it or leave it. If you want to change it, then it is a desire. Pick only 1 desire at a time. Not 2 as then you’ll be distracted. Being peaceful comes from having your mind clear of thoughts. And clarity comes from being in the present moment. Its very hard to be in the present moment if you are thinking I need to do this, I want that etc. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, neither accepting it or leaving it. That struggle is the primary cause of our misery.</li><li>Finding positive in negative: ‘What is the positive in a negative situation’ — that’s a question you should ask yourself in a negative situation. If nothing positive comes to your mind, you can say that the universe is going to teach you something new. Now you need to listen and learn. Death is the most important thing that will happen to you in your life. Whenever your ego comes into play, use this as a levelling context.</li></ol>And that’s it. Hope you enjoyed this read and gained some perspective that you can apply in your life. Share in the comments what resonated the most with you (or didn’t). I’m keen to hear. Thanks for reading.If you liked what you read and want to read more, here’s another article of mine on Naval — <a href="https://readmedium.com/8-life-lessons-from-naval-ravikant-almanack-of-naval-ravikant-9cecee91c50b">8 Life Lessons from Naval Ravikant (#Almanack of Naval Ravikant) | by Anant Kasliwal | Jul, 2023 | Medium</a> and another one, in a similar vein, on Dr. Peterson (or Uncle Peterson as he’s fondly called by some of his fans — including me :)) — <a href="https://readmedium.com/8-tips-for-self-development-from-dr-jordan-peterson-d31e73d4df04">8 Tips For Self-Development from Dr. Jordan Peterson | by Anant Kasliwal | Medium</a></article></body>

8 Life Hacks from Naval Ravikant (#Almanack of Naval Ravikant)

This is part 2 of a 3 part series from the book ‘Almanack of Naval Ravikant’.

I broke it down into 3 parts as there’s just too much wisdom to share that it just didn’t felt right to cramp it all out in one big article. Moreover, given the limited focus we have nowdays, most won’t even bother opening a long article, let alone reading it. Hence, I’ve broken it down hoping this will help in getting this content out to more readers.

So who are we talking about — Naval Ravikant. As per Wiki, he’s an Indian-American entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder, chairman and former CEO of AngelList. He has invested early-stage in over 200 companies including Uber, FourSquare, Twitter, Wish.com, Poshmark, Postmates, Thumbtack, Notion, SnapLogic, Opendoor, Clubhouse, Stack Overflow, Bolt, OpenDNS, Yammer, and Clearview AI, with over 70 total exits and more than 10 Unicorn companies.

Ravikant is a fellow of the Edmund Hillary Fellowship. As a podcaster, he shares advice on pursuing health, wealth, and happiness.

Just so you can make your own judgment, I’ve shared some of his content below so you can decide for yourself.

I have consumed quite a bit of his content and in this article, I’ve tried to share the nuggets of wisdom that resonated most with me. His tips are practical and useful and based on my own experience, can be applied and implemented in your life pretty much starting NOW (if you choose to do so). On that note, let’s get into it.

If you can’t decide, the answer is NO: Our modern society is now full of options. We are not biologically designed to choose from these many options. Hence, as a thumb rule, you should only say yes when you are pretty certain. You’ll never be 100% certain but you are going to be very certain. If you find yourself creating a spreadsheet with pros and cons, why this is good or bad etc., forget it. Go by this rule — ‘If you can’t decide, the answer is No’. However, if you are evenly split on a difficult decision, then take the path that is more painful in the short term.

Learn to love to read: Read what you love until you love to read. Reading a book is not a race. Explain what you read to someone else. That should be the intention behind reading and that’s the best way to retain what you read (and hence one of the reasons behind this article). Have no obligation to finish a book. You know that song you can’t get out of your head, all thoughts work that way. So be careful what you read/ consume online.

Happiness is a skill: The moment you frame happiness in that context, then like any other skill, you can ‘learn’ it i.e., you can learn to be happy. Happiness is a default state when you remove the sense of something missing in your life. Happiness is about the absence of desire for external things. Real happiness comes as a side effect of peace. Don’t hang around unhappy people. Medidate and read philosophy. You can improve your happiness baseline and work on developing this skill just as we can work on developing our fitness. As long as you have your thoughts, you can’t have peace. That does not mean stop thinking altogether, but be aware and conscious around what you are thinking. Happiness = Peace (not joy or blissfulness etc). Training yourself to be happy is a single player game. You are only competing with yourself.

Reorient your life towards being happy: Don’t hang around people who always choose conflict. Happiness is a skill you develop and a choice you make. You choose to be happy and then you work at it. You prioritise it in your life. Tell you friends you are a happy person, then you will be forced to conform to it. You’ll have a consistency bias, you’ll have to live up to it. Your friends will expect you to be a happy person.

Choose your desires carefully: Every desire is a chosen unhappiness. Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. Choose your desires very carefully. Choose the area in your life where you want to be unhappy and tie that to your desire. Don’t form your desires based on jealousy. If you are not ready to do a 100% wholesale swap with someone you are jealous of (i.e., getting their family, looks, mindset, etc.), then there’s no point in being jealous.

Find the Gap: Enlightment is the space between your thoughts. It means enlightenment isn’t something that you achieve after 30 years sitting on a mountaintop. Its something you can achieve every single day and hence you can be enlightened to a certain % every single day.

Life choices: In any situation in life you always have 3 choices, you can change it, accept it or leave it. If you want to change it, then it is a desire. Pick only 1 desire at a time. Not 2 as then you’ll be distracted. Being peaceful comes from having your mind clear of thoughts. And clarity comes from being in the present moment. Its very hard to be in the present moment if you are thinking I need to do this, I want that etc. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, neither accepting it or leaving it. That struggle is the primary cause of our misery.

Finding positive in negative: ‘What is the positive in a negative situation’ — that’s a question you should ask yourself in a negative situation. If nothing positive comes to your mind, you can say that the universe is going to teach you something new. Now you need to listen and learn. Death is the most important thing that will happen to you in your life. Whenever your ego comes into play, use this as a levelling context.

And that’s it. Hope you enjoyed this read and gained some perspective that you can apply in your life. Share in the comments what resonated the most with you (or didn’t). I’m keen to hear. Thanks for reading.