Hello friends,
Today I have a guest post for you from none other than Ed Latimore.
For those of you who do not know, Ed was one of the inspirations behind LMM and watching his success pushed me towards using X to promote my blog.
Ed is a former heavyweight boxer who’ve pulled himself out of poverty (“the hood” as he calls it), quit his drinking habit, and turned his life around with WiFi money.
There’s always a lot to learn from a success story (especially Ed’s) so I’m very pleased to introduce him to you.
Enter Ed:
No matter how tight your mental health is, you may fall prey to negative thoughts. Everyone no matter how upbeat and positive they are will find themselves in a situation where they need to figure out how to be happy again.
The trick to being happy is to realize that you’re not always going to be happy. This doesn’t mean that you can’t do little things that make a big difference in your ability to endure hard times without spiraling into a sea of helpless depression.
I had to learn how to take control of my own happiness, despite facing many challenges in my own life that paralyze many people with depression and hopelessness.
I was born poor, so spending money on things to make myself happy was out of the question. I didn’t have a lot of opportunities, so it wasn’t easy to surround myself with positive people in the hope that some of their happiness would rub off on me.
I knew that if I wanted lasting happiness in my life–not just a quick buzz from getting drunk with people or endorphins from working out–I’d have to make some fundamental changes to my mindset, lifestyle, and the way I approached life.
Through the most difficult situations of my life, I learned how to control my own level of happiness, regardless of what was happening around me. This newsletter will teach you how to increase your own happiness and live a happier life, despite any setbacks, difficulties, or hardships that you face.
A positive perspective helps you see positive things
The best thing about studying physics is that it’s given me a framework to understand everything about the world. It gave me a new way to see the world, grasp subtle nuances about life, and get more out of my short time on this planet.
Making the connection between the external world and my state of mind improved my mental health, well-being, and satisfaction with life.
Physics helped me understand happiness—not because studying the subject makes me happy (it does, but it has moments that break your self-esteem and make you feel like an idiot), but because it provides interesting analogies for the “secret” to happiness.
There really are no secrets, but thinking in terms of the calculus that drives physics has given me a valuable path and perspective for being happy.
Here are a few of my favorite analogies from Physics and Calculus that will increase your life satisfaction and help you figure out what to do when you’re having a bad day.
Understand that happiness is a rate of change
An interesting fact about life: we’re better able to suffer lack than loss.
This is called “loss aversion”. Research shows that negative emotions are felt more intensely than positive emotions of the same time. We react more negatively to losing $10 than we positively do to finding $10.
This is why it’s easier to be happy in chronic poverty and loneliness than it is if you lose everything or you’ve been dumped. On the flip side, few things can make you as happy as a new lover or a bump in income. Your happiness isn’t so much dependent on where you are in life as it is on the change in your position.
The change in your life position is responsible for your mood, while the acceleration of this change determines how hard it hits you. This is F=M*A applied to your emotions.
A slow change, positive or negative, doesn’t generate much force. The sudden death of a romantic partner or winning a massive lottery jackpot will quickly and drastically alter your mind.
How to use this to make your life happy again: Happiness in life is about constantly changing your position for the better. Improving yourself and conquering past challenges is the surest way to increase happiness. No matter how high you get, there’s always another comfort zone to step out of, another area to develop in, or a new group to reach out to.
See how life integrates experience from past to the present moment
Individual moments don’t matter much.
If I look at any random point in your life, I can’t tell a thing about you or your journey. You could be having an off day in a life full of happiness or a happy day in a life full of sadness. It’s only by seeing the whole person, over time, that I can understand what their life is like.
If you take a singular experience–whether in or out of context–you won’t be able to accurately assess the happiness level of your life. A local minimum in your experience is viewed as the absolute and permanent depression. You’ll become fixated on one position, forgetting that your life can change.
This fixation makes movement impossible. Without movement, there can be no growth. Without growth, there can be no happiness
How to use this to make your life happy again: I’ve essentially described gratitude. Gratitude is nothing more than the ability to look at the pain in your life and realize that it could be worse. Even if it truly is the worst position in your life, fixating on it not only prevents you from appreciating the past but also from planning your escape in the future.
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Break down big problems into small things
This point will appear to contradict the last, but I assure you that’s not the case.
Rather, this is only a different perspective. Besides, this wouldn’t be a true calculus analogy if you couldn’t undo it and get some useful result that’s vital to understanding the whole thing.
Everything can be separated into smaller and smaller moments. In fact, no matter how big a problem is, it can be broken down into infinitesimally smaller parts. These smaller parts, in many instances, are much easier to deal with than the entire issue.
How to use this to make your life happy again: Happiness is found in problem-solving, which means that your life must be focused around solving problems. To be an effective problem solver, break your problems down into the most simple components that you can. Each time you make progress and solve one of the smaller bits, you will experience an increase in happiness.
Connect with other human beings
Special and General Relativity lead us to a few interesting conclusions about the universe. The most relevant two to this discussion are:
- Nothing exists by itself. There is no such thing as a thing by itself because objects are always defined in terms of their relationship to something else.
- Two people can objectively observe the same event differently and, because of their speed or position, both be correct.
These two ideas are powerful ideas that have the capacity to increase your happiness on this planet.
How to use this to make your life happy again: I: First, don’t forget that other people are the most important thing. Your social connections can have a tremendous impact on the quality of your life. Spend time with close friends and loved ones. You are happiest when you’re surrounded by other humans. Furthermore, know that you can never truly be alone.
In our darkest hour, it’s easy to believe that there is no one who understands our plight. This is untrue. Someone’s had it worse. Someone understands. Someone’s made it through and can teach you how to do the same.
Either for instruction or love, you’re never lacking in the universe. You are never alone.
How to use this to make your life happy again II: The greatest waste of time is arguing with people to change how they feel about something. It’s perfectly reasonable for intelligent people to look at the same facts and have two different reactions to them.
Each moment spent in denial of this is a moment of unnecessary misery you inflict on yourself when you argue irrelevant points. You have less time on this planet than you think. Don’t waste it arguing
Forgive and get on with life
Physics says that only two things are truly impossible:
- 100% efficiency (perpetual motion)
- Causality reversal (reversing the flow of time)
The first statement means that everything eventually runs out of energy and will need to be recharged or assisted. The second means that you can’t travel backwards through time. What’s done is done, and can’t be undone. The belief that we can reverse causality is a great source of misery.
People hold a grudge because they genuinely believe that it will undo what’s already happened in the past.
The universe doesn’t work this way.
All you have is time and forgiveness. When correctly executed, the latter will accelerate the passage of the former.
If you distance yourself from things that make you feel sadness, depression, and other negative emotions, you can eventually get over anything. On the flipside, all positive emotions and good feelings require upkeep to ensure they stay strong and radiant.
How to use this to make your life happy again: Commit to forgiving your enemies, moving forward, and nurturing the current relationships with your friends. Deep relationships or forgiveness need not happen instantly. Committing to an attempt is more important than the accomplishment.
A recap of how to make your life happy again
- Understand loss aversion and rates of change
- Look at the big picture
- Break down your problems to make them easier to solve
- Connect with other people
- Forgive and get on with life
Getting these will take time, but all that matters is that you let go of the past and start living for the future.
The rest is up to you.
I publish a weekly newsletter you can subscribe to at https://edlatimore.com/newsletter.
I write about managing risks, building relationships, and facing reality. If you want to become stoic street-smart, you definitely want to sign up.
Ed Latimore
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