Welcome back to the podcast. This is episode 14. I didn't think we'd make it this far, but this has been a lot of fun. So thank you for... putting up with it and still being here and listening. Today's episode is about what makes you happy, a very big and broad and ambitious topic that I'm going to try to poke a couple of holes into. and see if we can take it in a direction that hopefully you're not anticipating. I always like to find these oddball stories that have nothing to do with...
the point I'm trying to make, but they explain human behavior in a way that hopefully you haven't thought about it before. And I want to start with a story today about Ernest Shackleton's ship, The Endurance. Many of you are familiar with the story. Some of you may not be, though. The Endurance was a ship run by a guy named Ernest Shackleton in 1916 that was trying to make it across Antarctica. And the Endurance got stuck.
in the Antarctic ice. And before long, the ship was crushed. It was ruined by the ice. And Shackleton and his 27-man crew then spent 19 months From January of 1915 to August of 1916, rowing 800 miles to safety in tiny little lifeboats. And the nighttime temperatures were hitting 10 degrees below zero.
And they were constantly frozen and soaked and hungry and sleep deprived. And the crazy thing about the story is that they all survived. They ate an occasionally captured seal and they foraged seaweed. It's one of the most astounding survival stories that you'll ever hear. But for me, the most emotional part of the book, which is called Endurance, came at the very end.
when Ernest Shackleton's crew finally made it to a whaling station on South Georgia Island, which is about 1,600 miles east of Argentina. Author Alfred Lansing writes, quote, Every comfort the whaling station could provide was placed at the disposal of Shackleton and his crew. They first enjoyed the glorious luxury of a long bath, followed by a shave.
Then new clothes were given to them from the station's storehouse. After that, they were served a hot meal and they slept for 12 hours. Can you possibly imagine what that is like? Can you possibly imagine how good it must have felt to have a warm bath and a hot meal and a warm bed after being constantly frozen and starving for 19 months?
I mean, even if the bathwater was lukewarm and the food was half stale, that must have been one of the most pleasant and fulfilling evenings that anyone has ever experienced. So there's this weird thing in life in that everyone strives for a good life because they think it will make them happy. They want the nice stuff. They want all the luxuries. They want the pleasures. But what actually brings happiness is the contrast.
between what you have now and whatever you were just doing. So the best drink that you will ever taste is a glass of tap water when you are thirsty. And the best food that you will ever eat is... Fast food when you are starving. The best massage you will ever feel is sitting on a couch after a long run. The best sleep that you will ever experience is when your newborn finally makes it through the night.
In all of those, it's not your circumstances that actually brings happiness. It's the contrast between whatever you have now and whatever you were just doing. In his book on the final days of World War II, Stephen Ambrose writes about... a wounded American soldier who's carried back to the medic tent. And he knows he's going home. The war is over for him. And he turns around to his fellow soldiers, who are still on the front line, and he yells to them, quote, clean sheets, boys.
Clean sheets. Can you believe it? Clean sheets. Living in foxholes and trenches for weeks or months at a time made soldiers daydream about normal life. And there were few things that chased their imaginations like the dignity of clean bedsheets. Not money or status or respect or glory, just the absolute joy of clean linens. That's what made them happy because the contrast between that simple basic thing and the life that they were living was so vast. And I think money is a lot like this too.
The richest that you will probably ever feel in your entire life is when you get your first paycheck, maybe when you're a teenager, and your bank account goes from, you know, $5 to maybe $500. The contrast between those two... might be greater than the contrast of going from 10 million to 20 million. Going from nothing to something is so much more powerful than going from a lot to super a lot.
So it's the contrast. It's not the amount. It's just the contrast that actually makes you happy. Two things stick out here. One is that happiness is a fleeting emotion. Because it's triggered by a contrast in circumstances. But you can quickly adapt to whatever new circumstances you're in. Shackleton's second hot meal and his second bath and his second night's sleep.
probably felt like 1% as amazing as that first one did. But that shouldn't be depressing, because instead of chasing happiness, which is fleeting, people should be after contentment, which is a similar feeling, but it's much more enduring. The second thing is that when you realize how powerful expectations are, you put as much effort into keeping them low as you do improving your circumstances. We talked about this on the last episode.
Happiness and contentment and joy, all of those things come from experiencing a gap between expectations and reality. Shackleton's men learned this. After their ordeal, they found so much joy in little things in life that they had never before considered. One of the sailors wrote in his diary, quote, Today is one of the finest days we have ever had. Just a pleasure to be alive.
Lansing, the author, wrote in his book, In this lonely world of ice and emptiness, they had achieved at least a limited kind of contentment. They had been tested and found not wanting. That I think is about as good as it gets for the chase of happiness. Here's a related point that I think is really important. A very hard skill in life, but a very important one.
is identifying when things in your life are temporarily too good and preparing for the inevitable adjustment. It's so difficult to do because most people's willingness to put up with hard times, relies on the idea that you'll eventually be rewarded with good times. So then when good times come, you feel like you've earned it. And nothing is easier to justify than a deserved reward. But there's an irony here.
When most people experience bad times, they consider it risk. Risk is the idea that there is a force outside of their control that influenced outcomes more than anything they could do intentionally. That's what risk is, of course. But rarely is that logic turned around. Because what is the opposite of risk? Well, the opposite of risk is luck. And what's a good definition of luck? Luck is the idea that there is a force outside of your control.
that can influence outcomes more than anything you do intentionally. It's the same thing as risk. It's the same definition of risk. It's just in the other direction. So nothing too good or too bad stays that way forever because Great times plants the seeds of their own destruction through complacency and leverage. And bad times plant the seeds of their own turnaround through opportunity and panic-driven problem-solving. Everything is cyclical.
But the way we deal with risk versus luck couldn't be further apart. One is instantly recognized and we can't wait until it's over. And the other causes an instant denial that it might ever end. This happens a lot in investing when every decline has to be explained and blamed on somebody else. Oh, the Fed did it. Congress did it. But every increase in the stock market is usually just accepted and attributed to your own intelligence.
It happens in business when so many big tech companies are laying off workers today because they assumed that the COVID-19 business bump would remain permanent. Or even worse, they assumed that the bump was because of their own skill and their own intelligence. It happens in people's careers where everything from cheap money to macroeconomic tailwinds can shift the gap between how much you earn and how much value you actually produce in the world.
It's been like this forever, and it always will be. People are much more attuned to negative anomalies than positive ones, especially for things that impact their own lives. It's such a hard thing to manage. And there's no easy answers on how to manage it, how to really recognize what in your life is abnormally good that you should not expect to last. There are so many things in life where distinguishing between sustainable momentum
and temporary luck is only known with hindsight. But maybe the broadest way to protect yourself is a simple rule that the luckier you are, the nicer you should be. And the more successful you are, the nicer you should be. The better things are going, the nicer you should be. That's probably the best. It's probably the only way to guard yourself against entitlement, which is the main thing that blindsides you.
when luck turns the other way. It's almost like an automatic stabilizer that keeps you in check and keeps your social circle solid, both of which probably lead to sustainable, durable, non-lucky success. and maybe even happiness over time. That's all for this week. Thanks again. We'll see you next time.