You can't be sad

Something I've for done for years when facing a stressful or upsetting situation is snap my mindset back to a normal or happy state by reminding myself of certain things I take for granted. Over the years I've become better at finding reasons to melt stress away and I thought it would be interesting to write down a few basic things I remind myself that help laugh at problems and resolve them rather than let them ruin my day or week.

1. You're alive

It's a cliche that we should be happy to be alive, but when you think deeply about what it means to be alive, in the grand scheme of things, the thought makes it hard to stay upset about something.

If you're reading this now, you're the winner of a race bigger than any marathon ever run. During your conception, you likely competed with 300 million other sperm cells to be the one that made it. The chance of winning the biggest lottery is around 1-150 million. Your 299 million potential brothers and sisters all washed away into nothingness, never to even get a chance to experience a single second of consciousnesses. How lucky are you?

Richard Dawkins touches on this when he re-frames death as a gift (I highly recommend watching this in it's entirety)

2. You can see, hear, and run

If you lost your sight tomorrow, how much money would you pay to get it back? I think most of us would pay any amount, and even be willing to go in debt for the rest of our lives to get our sight back. Now consider what you paid for your eyes - nothing. Isn't the implication here that if all of us internalized the value of something like sight, even for a day, we should have the same emotional state of being that we would have if we had been given a million dollars? But we don't because we have no reference experiences of blindness.

Even if you could not get your vision back, you at least know what it is like to see. You got to experience the sight of the ocean, the sight of birds flying, or a child playing - all things a person born blind will never experience.

If any of us could truly appreciate this fact for even a few seconds, all of us would most likely fall to our knees in tears of joy over how grateful we are, tears of guilt over how little we valued these things, and sheer embarrassment over how pathetic we will have been to allow such small things to upset us.

( A woman’s reaction to hearing for the first time in her life after receiving an ear implant )


3. You're free


Imagine while traveling to another country you're arrested for a crime you didn't commit, and are jailed. You don't speak the language of the guards, don't have the same rights, and have no way of contacting anyone. Think of how helpless and terrified you would be over how uncertain your future is. You’re alone with your thoughts, wondering about your family and friends.

You had no choice over what to eat, had nothing to read, never were let outside.  Months go by and suddenly a man walks up to you who speaks English and says "I'll make you an offer. I'll let you stay here or be a homeless man in California" - There's no doubt everyone would choose to be the homeless man, but think of how amazing it would feel to just walk around freely on the beach after being jailed. It would be like the scene in the matrix when Neo is told he's in a matrix, everything and everyone would look differently - the reality that you could do basically what you wanted without fear of death would sink in and you'd finally see how precious it is just to be free.

Millions of people throughout human history were enslaved or ruled by a dictator, and their biggest dream of all was to have what you've had everyday. Their dream was not a nice car, a cool jacket, or a healthy lawn, it was live a single day without being ruled by another person.

If any of us could truly appreciate that each day of our life we're living the fantasy of millions of people throughout history, not just intellectually understand it but internalize it, I think we would not allow as many trivial things to upset us.

Mental frames & silliness

One silly thing about human nature is how we don't judge the value of something by its virtue, but how it measures up against something else. How we feel about what we have is more influenced by what others have compared to us, and not on the actual quality of what we have. This is why you will see people get more excited over whether their lawn is better or worse than their neighbor and not the lawn itself.

In the book "The Mind of the Market" by Shermer, he cites studies on this fact about human nature where they asked people would they rather live in a modest house in a neighborhood where it was the biggest, or in a mansion in a neighborhood of mansions - most people picked the modest house although objectively a mansion is much better - it was more about where they stood compared to others than it was about the actual quality of life.

The implication here is that if we're seduced by this 'where do I stand compared to...' mindset, we essentially allow others to dictate whether we can be happy. We should focus on what we have compared to what we want and that's it - and achieving our goals based on our values should give us pride & fulfill us.

An easy way to test your ability to maintain this 'mental-frame' is to imagine you're job hunting. You get a job at a really large & cool restaurant as a server and let's say they start you off at $15 an hour. You're totally thrilled to go to work and are happy with the pay. You tell your best friend and he decides to try to get a job there too and is hired! You're even more excited to work closely with your friend.

You then find out he's paid $25 an hour for the same position.

Most people would feel upset about this. However, if you're a rational person whose well-being is based on his values, and not dictated by others, you should be happy to see your friend earn more. His making more has absolutely no? effect on your job and does not change why you were happy with it to begin with. Since what you have matches what you want, you ought to be fulfilled.

I think it's important to not be a feather in the wind and allow our surroundings to control our emotional state. Not all of us have complete control over our life but all of us have control over how what attitudes and mindsets we choose to adopt.