Someone please explain Stanley Cups to me…because I just don’t get it.
According to a recent article in Business Insider, Stanley Cups are tearing middle schools apart.
Now I get how physical possessions can become symbols of adolescient social hierarchies. The original iPod had just been released in my tween years.
You knew who was poor and who had grandparent money in high school based on the type of MP3 player everyone had. So believe me, I get it.
That being said, not having an iPod wasn’t a death knell to your social career.
The whole Stanley Cup thing seems blown out of proportion to me. It looks like an obnoxiously large Hydroflask with a handle, but that’s just me.
What do you think? Do you have a hot take on the Stanley Cup phenomenon?
I’ve spent $37.82 on groceries, $25.55 on takeout/restaurants, and $31.74 on coffee and beer since last week.
Y’all, I think I’ve turned over a new leaf. I LOVE not spending money. Do. I miss getting croissants regularly? I sure do. But seeing how good I feel not eating them and how much money I have in my bank account because I’m not spending it is far more rewarding.
There’s six days left in the month as I wrap up the slow carb diet. I’ll be introducing more carbs back into my diet next month but I think some of these new habits are here to stay.
My current Bitcoin holdings: are 0.0738417 BTC.
This week in Audio Note #61, I tried to answer a question as old as time: what is love?
Contrary to what I’ve always believed, love is not a feeling. It can be, sure, but that isn’t inherently what it is. It’s a conscious choice to show appreciation towards another human with the hope of making their life better.
I published one essay on Medium this week: AI Can’t Be Contained — Here’s Why That’s a Problem
This essay is a commentary of Mustafa Suleyman’s book The Coming Wave. It was selected for a Boost by Medium’s team of human editors. That means it’s the third essay I’ve published this month to get Boosted!
I hosted my first paid webinar this week, and I’m happy to report I had attendees! It was all about how to hire a virtual assistant. I think this is super important as the future of work continues to take shape around us. This year I’d like to create more training content around this. Stay tuned for more to come here.
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
-Aristotle
Happiness.
I stumbled upon Peter Attia’s podcast the other day. This particular episode was between him and Arthur Brooks, one of the foremost experts on happiness.
Given the content of this week’s Audio Note the idea of cultivating happiness resonated with me.
For the first time in a long time I think I’m happy. Genuinely happy. I wake up every morning wanting to pinch myself — how is this my life?
I’d say most of my adult life hasn’t been happy. The last time I consciously remember experiencing deep happiness was during my senior year of college. But even then I was going a million miles a minute, I didn’t have enough time to appreciate the happiness I was experiencing.
The absence of happiness through most of my adult life doesn’t necessarily mean I was unhappy. I was just busy.
I was always working and if I wasn’t working I was side hustling. Everything I did had a business objective to it. I tried to spend every spare moment of my time trying to make money rather than cultivating happiness.
Of course, that strategy didn’t work. Operating from a scarcity mindset, I spent all of my 20s chasing paper that I now consider to be worthless.
Happiness seems like a better currency to measure one’s life with. It’s not about racking up commas in your bank account or more possessions than the Joneses. It’s about finding joy in the little things: the way a blanket rests on your shoulders or the slow burn of a candle.
It’s about snuggling on the couch with someone you love, eating delicious food, and getting lost in a really good book.
The Danes refer to this as hygge. It loosely translates to ‘cozy comfort’ but it’s this idea of experiencing life as it is not the unrealistic expectations of what we think life to be.
What struck me about listening to Arthur Brooks talk about happiness was his invocation of nutrition as an analogy to understand what makes someone happy.
Just like carbohydrates, protein, and fat are the core macronutrients of a well-balanced diet, enjoyment, satisfaction, and purpose are the key elements of happiness.
I think enjoyment and satisfaction are easy to measure. I find enjoyment in exercising my body and satisfaction when I achieve difficult goals. Running makes me happy because it fulfills both of these objectives.
Purpose seems to be the one thing that’s really difficult to nail down.
In the U.S., we equate purpose with work. We find meaning and fulfillment in the service we derive for others, specifically in an economic or business sense.
This is a bit of a sophomoric understanding of purpose in my opinion. After spending a lot of time reading books trying to understand it — specifically Man’s Search for Meaning — I recognize now that purpose isn’t just work. It won’t make any of us free.
I’m now starting to see purpose through the context of love, specifically as it relates to serving others. My purpose in life isn’t to serve others to chase the almighty dollar, it’s to serve others to make their lives easier.
This purpose might look different depending on who I’m serving. For white collar professionals, service looks like education and teaching. I serve by sharing what I’ve learned and by helping others cultivate strategies to live life to their fullest potential.
For businesses, service looks like education. The more I do consulting work, the more clarity I’m receiving on the value I provide. My job is to work with businesses that have innovative ideas that need to be shared with the world.
And in relationships, that means taking on a more traditional role to become a caretaker. The ability to freely give to someone else is infinitely more fulfilling than negotiating for equality. We each have our own respective roles in the world and I’m finally in a place where I get to take ownership of mine.
Like love, happiness is both a choice and a process. We can choose to be happy by making conscious efforts to fill our lives with things that satisfy us, allow us to serve our purpose, and bring us joy. It is our responsibility to identify the things that don’t fit these parameters and prune them from our lives.
Happiness has always felt quite elusive to me but I don’t think it has to be that way. As Arthur Brooks notes in the podcast, happiness is a direction — not a destination.
Where do your happiness macros stand? Is there a deficiency you weren’t aware of? How can you fix it?
More importantly, what decisions can you make right now to cultivate more happiness in your life?
What I’m Currently Reading
The Plant-Based Athlete: A Game-Changing Approach to Peak Performance
P.S. Check out my recommended reading list here
My running gear:
Whatever clothes I can find at the thrift store
My crypto gear:
My productivity tools:
Task management:
TodoistScrapping this because Google launched a new to do list feature built into Google Calendar. It’s AMAZING.
Time management: Clockify
Email management: Unroll.me
Everything management: Notion
P.S. some of these are affiliate links including links from Amazon’s affiliate program. I may receive a commission from them. This is one way to support my writing and help me build sustainable income streams in 2024.