Happiness Equation (Neil Pasricha) – Book Summary & Highlights

Book in 3 sentences

• There are only 3 Goals: To want nothing. That’s contentment. To do anything. That’s freedom. To have everything. That’s happiness.
• Whenever you are starting a new goal or habit do not use  external motivators. You must be doing it for yourself and not for others. It’s hard to compete endlessly because there’s always more to compete with someone or something and there is always someone or something better out there.
• How to make every decision at twice the speed? Remove choice, What’s the counterintuitive way to having more time? Remove time, How to add an hour to the day with only one small change? Remove access.

Impressions:

I liked reading this book as Neil gives pointed and actionable tips to achieve happiness. I will definitely be applying his space scribble and decisions matrix (explained below) in my life and see how that would help me better manage my decisions.

Who should read it?

I would recommend this book to everyone and if you are someone who has their happiness depend on others opinion of you then you must read this. Also, if you can take away one thing from this book then find a way to apply the 7 ways to be happy to your life. I feel this can be done without having to do any significant changes to your current lifestyle.

Highlights:

Want Nothing

1. The right order is NOT Great Work –> Big Success –> Be Happy but the reverse Be Happy –> Great Work–> Big Success.
2. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens and 90% how I react to it.
3. 7 ways to be happy right now! Below are scientifically proved points explained in great detail in the book.

1. I was using external motivators. I wasn’t doing it for me. I was doing it for others. Do it for you. Don’t do it for others. It’s hard to compete endlessly because there’s always more to compete with when you get there.
2. There are three S’s of Success, – Sales Success, Social success, and Self Success. Know which of the 3 S’s of Success you want.
3. 

Buddha says – You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

7. If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same.  “If —” by Rudyard Kipling to his son John as parental advice. ( – Fantastic Poem – must read !! Just google it. 🙂 )
8. None of us can control our emotions. We can only control our reactions to our emotions.
9. The Greek philosopher Epictetus says, “Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

Do  Anything

10. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. – from “Regrets of the Dying“
11. Retirement:
    1. Retirement is a new concept. It didn’t exist before the twentieth century anywhere in the world except Germany. It didn’t exist before the nineteenth century anywhere.
    2. Retirement is a Western concept. It doesn’t exist in Okinawa or much of the developing world. Old people in those places don’t play golf every day. They contribute to their families and societies.
    3. Retirement is a broken concept. It is based on three assumptions that aren’t true: that we enjoy doing nothing instead of being productive, that we can afford to live well while earning no money for decades, and that we can afford to pay others to earn no money for decades.
12. The 4 S’s of Work
    1. Social: We need to be social to be happy. Work provides major social stimulation.
    2. Structure:
       1. 
       2. “Our work bucket earns us our third bucket. By structuring our time so that we’re focused and investing our energy in a productive way, we earn and justify all the fun we have in our third bucket. Work provides this structure! Work pays for this structure.
    3. Stimulation: “When everyone nods at the thing you just said in the meeting. The guy who fixes the photocopier for you. Coming back from lunch to a way better parking spot. When the meeting ends early. A coworker showing you a keyboard shortcut on your computer. Leftover cake in the office kitchen. The feeling you get after finishing a big project right at the deadline and knowing you did a great job. When someone decorates your cubicle for your birthday. “Retiring slices off this learning, seeing, and experiencing the stimulation of our world.
    4. Story: When you’re working you become part of something bigger than yourself.
13. So don’t give up work. You’ll be giving up the Social, Structure, Stimulation, and Story you get every day from being there. Forget the money. You’ll lose the 4 S’s, and they are much more important.
14. Space Scribble:
    1. 
    2. The Space Scribble says every single moment you’re in one of four boxes. And every single moment you need to know which one you’re in and which you’re going to next. Happy people alternate between boxes. They flip-flop. They swirl. They jump. They know where they are and they know how to create space.
15. Removal #1: How to make every decision at twice the speed.
    1. Too many choices can lead us to decision fatigue which will lead to one of two options : Make no Decision or Make bad Decision
    2. You look at decisions you make on a daily basis and decide which ones to automate, regulate, effectuate, and debate.
    3. 
    4. Automate—Buying toilet paper and detergent. Paying the phone bill. Deciding your route work. Picking your workout routine. If it’s low in time and low in importance, your goal is to automate. Outsource your brain completely and don’t think about it again. Set online refills to ship toilet paper and detergent monthly. Set up auto bill payments from your bank account. Download a traffic-maps app and mindlessly follow the best route to work. And set a workout schedule and follow it. Free your brain. Just don’t mistake these smaller decisions for the more important decisions in which they reside. Deciding to work out every day is important. Picking which dumbbell to lift next is not.
    5. Effectuate—Grabbing the kids from daycare. Eating dinner with the family every night. Saying hi to your team every morning. Effectuate is a big word with a simple meaning: Git ’er done. Nail it. Just do it. If it’s low in time but high in importance, your goal is to just do it. There is no decision to make. Simply effectuate.
    6. Regulate—Checking email. Managing your calendar. Doing chores. If it’s high in time and low in importance, your goal is to regulate. Make rules and follow them. Set an email window. A single calendar review meeting. A chores blitz every Sunday morning instead of painfully doing one or two a day.”
    7. Debate—Buying a house. Picking a spouse. Applying for a job. Moving. High-importance, high-time decisions are the ones to spend the most time on. Debate in your head, call trusted friends, list the pros and cons. Slow the decision down to molasses so you can engage in a proper debate. These are the ones that matter.
16. Removal #2: The counterintuitive way to have more time
    1. It is a commonplace observation that work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.
    2. “What’s the solution? Create last-minute panic!  Move deadlines up, revise them for yourself, and remember you are creating space after the project has been delivered. Remember: A late deadline is painful. Nothing gets done.
    3. Do only nerds do their homework Friday night? Maybe. But they’re the ones with the whole weekend to party.”
17. Removal #3: How to add an hour to a day with only one small change
    1. Block access. Protect your brain. Guard it. Remove all entry points to your brain except a single one you can control.

Have Everything

18. The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.—C. G. JUNG
19. Do–> Can Do –> Want to Do — Loops … It’s not easier said than done, it’s easier done than said…
20. Your relationship with yourself is the most important relationship in your life. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
21. The Saturday Morning Test.
    • What do you do on a Saturday morning when you have nothing to do? Your authentic self should go toward that . . .
22. The Bench Test
    • How do you feel when you put yourself in a new situation? Your authentic self will lead you toward that . . .
23. The Five People Test
    • Who are the five people closest to you in the things you love most? Your authentic self is an average of those people . . .
24. Observations from the article 5 regrets of dying.
    1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me—This was the most common regret of all. When people realize that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honored even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
    2. Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
    3. I wish that I had let myself be happier—This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realize until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.
25. The Bhagavad Gita, the sacred Hindu text, says it’s better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. Pretending to be Better You instead of Normal You means spending energy focusing on this person and then acting them into existence. How exhausting! If you were a computer, this would be spending brainpower to flash a beautiful screen saver at everyone walking by.
26. “Advice is never objectively true in all situations. “You make up your own mind. My advice is to become creatively indifferent to all advice. Hear it, but decide what to do yourself.” He paused and then said it one more time. “Don’t take advice.”
27. What are the nine secrets to get us there?

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