Amazing news – I have almost completely eliminated sadness from my life. ๐ฅณ Same with anxiety.And I think some of the lessons are generalizeable, so it might work for some of you tooย So what was it? What eliminated my sadness and dramatically reduced my anxiety?It wasn’t exercise.It wasn’t therapy.It wasn’t mindfulness (more on why I regret mindfulness practice later)It was actually ๐ฅ๐ช๐ต๐ค๐ฉ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ mindfulness practice, and exploring more widely.It was stopping trying to change my attitude and instead, changing my environment.๐ฆ๐ง๐๐ฃ ๐ญ- ๐ฅ๐๐๐จ๐๐ ๐ฆ๐๐๐ก๐๐ฆ๐ฆ BY ๐๐๐๐ก๐๐๐ก๐ ๐ฌ๐ข๐จ๐ฅ ๐๐ก๐ฉ๐๐ฅ๐ข๐ก๐ ๐๐ก๐งI used to struggle with sadness a lot.Now I pretty much never feel involuntary sadness.I still feel sad when I watch that movies, or when I watch factory farming footage to maintain motivation.But that’s voluntary.If something genuinely bad happens to me, then Iโll feel sad, but for what feels like an appropriate amount of time, which actually isnโt something I actually want to get rid of.But I don’t have days where I randomly feel sad anymore. I donโt feel sad for way longer than I feel I โoughtโ to.I tried so many things to fix it, and in the end, what fixed it wasn’t changing my mind or internal state.I stopped feeling involuntarily sad because I changed my ๐ฆ๐น๐ต๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฏ๐ข๐ญ circumstances.It turns out that I was just trying to fit my brain into a job that made me sad.I struggled with this because all those books on meditation made me think I could just meditate hard enough, or smart enough, and then I could be happy regardless of external conditions.
Or I could just pick a job that made me a โ7 out of 10โ happiness. Happy enough, but not super happy. And that was a fine exchange for doing more good in the world.
It just turns out that even if thatโs good in principle, you donโt have nearly that degree of understanding to pull it off in practice.
We donโt really know what makes us happy or sad.
Even now, I donโt really know if it was my job which made me unhappy. Maybe it was my relationship. Maybe it was the weather. Maybe it was my beliefs about impact. Maybe it was my epistemics. Maybe it was some weird interacting mix of factors.
These are all plausible hypotheses.So itโs not really realistic to aim for something as precise as โhappy enoughโ.And sure enough, ever since I started taking into account my own happiness when designing my job, I got rid of almost all involuntary sadness.Interestingly, I think Iโm higher impact than Iโve ever been. Take that for what you will, other overly scrupulous, altruistic, guilt-prone impact maximizers.It turns out your external circumstances affect your happiness.Who knew?All jokes aside though, I actually think this is an important realization for many people.
Of course, the law of equal and opposite advice applies, and many people think that external factors are more relevant than they are.
But there are plenty of people who need to hear that actually, you don’t just need to meditate more, or do a new psychological technique. Sometimes the problem is actually the environment and it won’t go away unless you fix it.Even Sam Harris, who says that he has achieved non-duality at will, left Twitter because he said it was bad for his happiness.If even a person who has spent ๐บ๐ฆ๐ข๐ณ๐ด in monastic contemplation has to take into account his environment, you are no different.People are adaptable, but up into a point.Sometimes it’s better to fix your environment instead of trying to โfixโ your brainAnd yet, one the other hand, my anxiety was fixed entirely by changing my brain, not my environment.๐ฆ๐ง๐๐ฃ ๐ฎ – ๐ฅ๐๐๐จ๐๐ ๐๐ก๐ซ๐๐๐ง๐ฌ ๐๐ฌ ๐๐๐ง๐๐๐๐ก๐ ๐ ๐๐ก๐๐๐จ๐๐ก๐๐ฆ๐ฆ ๐๐ก๐ ๐๐ซ๐ฃ๐๐ฅ๐๐ ๐๐ก๐ง๐๐ก๐ ๐ช๐๐๐๐๐ฌ
Iโve already told the story of how I reduced my anxiety ~85%.ย
Also, since I posted that, I ran an experiment on 20 other people, and they also experienced massive drops in reported anxiety.I think the main lesson learned there was to not spend so much time on just one technique, but to experiment widely until I found something that worked.In retrospect, I did mindfulness practice for ๐ธ๐ข๐บ too long.I did ~30 minutes a day for about a year, spread out over a few months-long stretches.It never did anything for me.Just fireworks occasionally, and eventually happiness on demand (but in a totally unsatisfying way).I can now achieve probably a jhana of some sort, on demand, where I feel extreme joy when Iโm in intense concentration, which I can do whenever I want.The problem is – it only works when Iโm concentrating on a single meditation object.It goes away when I stop (or, rather, thereโs an afterglow, but it only lasts for like, 30 minutes or something?).And itโs really ๐ฆ๐ง๐ง๐ฐ๐ณ๐ต๐ง๐ถ๐ญ.And ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ!Iโve realized an interesting thing – you can feel bored even when youโre feeling pure joy.I would have thought the two sensations were incompatible — but nope!I can be experiencing pure joy and then also . . . just kinda be bored?Like my brain wants intellectual stimulation? Itโll be like โsure, joy is fun. But itโs the ๐ด๐ข๐ฎ๐ฆ joy again and again. Thatโs boring. Go read a bookโSo yeah, I just donโt do it.Itโs a bit like dancing or running. Both pretty reliably make me happy. But theyโre hard, the happiness doesnโt last long, and theyโre not that intellectually stimulating, so I find it hard to maintain.But I kept with mindfulness practice for way too long because all the books and the teachers keep telling you itโs ๐บ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ณ fault. You just arenโt meditating the right way or you havenโt meditated long enough, etc.Except, actually, I have a habit of asking people I know who meditate a lot what their actual results are.And usually, they report similar things. Theyโll have meditated a ton, theyโll have had a grand total of a few minutes spread out over a year where it felt close to drugs, theyโll have afterglows after meditation, and report โsubtleโ effects throughout the rest of their lives (I have so much skepticism about the latter. Sounds like rationalizations to me).So, yeah. I am the person whoโs done the thing. Whoโs meditated 30 minutes a day for ages. Whoโs read all the books and followed all of the different techniques.And Iโm telling you I regret it.Not because I donโt think you should spend 30 minutes a day trying to improve your psychology. I think thatโs the ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ข๐ด๐ฐ๐ฏ that meditation works for a lot of peopleDoing 30 minutes a day of almost ๐ข๐ฏ๐บ๐ต๐ฉ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ that could plausibly help your happiness is probably good.Itโs just – I could have been spending more time on exploring possible techniques, to find something that really suits my brain, instead of digging deeper into a hole that wasnโt going anywhere.And who knows – maybe if Iโd kept at that hole for another year, I would be enlightened now.But I did 30 minutes a day for around a ๐บ๐ฆ๐ข๐ณ.And it didnโt do anything lasting.Meanwhile, I did the technique I developed for 3 weeks and, two years later, Iโve still reduced my anxiety by ~85%.Permanently.With no maintenance.Despite me having one ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ญ๐ญ of a year.(If you know me, you know what Iโm talking about).So yeah. I wish I had experimented more. Tried more emotional techniques.Not believed the people who said if it wasnโt working, itโs because I was doing it wrong, I wasnโt meditating enough, or any other thing than mindfulness meditation just doesnโt work for my brain.Doesnโt mean it doesnโt work for other peopleโs brains. I know a lot of people who swear by it. And by all means, they should keep doing it.But if youโve been meditating for awhile, and youโve tried a bunch of different sub-techniques, read a bunch of different books on it, and really put in the time for a few months, and youโre not really feeling much or anything?Try something else.There are a lot of different psychological techniques (e.g. CBT, ACT, IFS, journaling, yoga, solution focused therapy, confidence practice, problem-solving, hypnotherapy, tapping, relaxation techniques, etc etc)There are a lot of different types of minds.We have not even come ๐ค๐ญ๐ฐ๐ด๐ฆ to figuring out happiness yet.So explore widely.Give each technique a shot, then, if itโs not working for you, try the next one.Once you find something thatโs gelling for you, really dive into that.That will lead to way more happiness than simply digging in further and further into something that people tell you ๐ฐ๐ถ๐จ๐ฉ๐ต to work, but isnโt working for you.—So there you go. My two bits of attempts at wisdom for you:1) Sometimes itโs not you. Sometime itโs your environment.
2) Sometimes itโs not you. Sometimes you just need to try a different mental technique.