Hi friend,
It’s been a wild week.
Flew to the UK and back, recorded 7 episodes in 3 days, Neutonic launch hit #1 on all of UK Amazon, I’m off to Arizona this weekend for a massive episode and then back to the UK Sunday night ready for my live tour to start.
Anyway, I saw a quote which I found very interesting.
“Dopamine is not about the pursuit of happiness, it is about the happiness of pursuit.” — Dr Robert Sapolsky
So true.
So much of life and enjoyment is about the anticipation of things coming.
In fact, the anticipation is often actually more enjoyable than the experience.
Tim Ferriss used to book week-long holidays years and years in advance so he could get as much enjoyment out of the anticipation as possible.
This puts a new perspective on “it’s not the journey it’s the destination”.
There actually is no destination.
Each arrival at a destination simply marks the beginning of another journey toward the next destination.
Morgan Housel told me that when he went on holiday recently, after months of planning and organising to get there, he finally arrived, and one of his first thoughts was “wow, we should totally come back here next year. It would be great if we could come back next year”.
So literally DURING the supposed enjoyment of “the destination”, Morgan was captured by the allure of the next “journey”.
How absolutely tragic, and hilarious.
The dangerous thing about anticipation is it can cause us to look over the shoulder of the present moment, to always see what’s coming next so we never actually experience what is happening right now.
I’m not sure there is a panacea for this.
But one potential solution is to make sure you find ways to enjoy your pursuit.
Micro-celebrations, miniature wins, lots of little way-markers as you move along.
As many destinations to enjoy the anticipation of as possible.
MODERN WISDOM
I do a podcast which has had 350 million+ downloads. You should subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
This week’s upcoming episodes:
Monday.
Patrick Bet-David – why does no one trust the media anymore? Who really runs the world? Why does everyone need enemies? What is Patrick’s opinion of Ben Shapiro’s new Snow White Movie?
Thursday.
Mads Larsen – an entire history of Western mating ideologies. Might sound like an odd topic but this is an absolute stormer, EvPsych + social psychology + cultural history. Don’t miss this one.
Saturday.
Spencer Greenberg – a great breakdown of one of the biggest, most comprehensive recent studies on 20+ of the most popular habit forming techniques to explain exactly what works best and why.
THINGS I’VE LEARNED
1.
16 women reproduced for every 1 man before Christianity turned the West monogamous.
“Before the advent of agriculture roughly twelve thousand years ago (when humans primarily lived in nomadic hunter-gatherer societies), roughly 2 to 4 women reproduced for every man.
However, just a few thousand years after agriculture, approximately 16 women reproduced for every man.
Once people were able to stockpile resources and amass large armies, chiefdoms killed or enslaved the men in societies they conquered and captured all the fertile females.
This pattern was interrupted in the western world in part as a result of the spread of Christianity and its monogamous edicts.” — Joseph Henrich via Rob Henderson
2.
Don’t sacrifice the thing you want, for the thing which is supposed to get it.
“He sacrifices his health in order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.
And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;
the result being that he does not live in the present or the future;
he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.” — Dalai Lama
3.
Tell people what you want from them.
“Unspoken expectations are pre-meditated resentments.” — Neil Strauss
LIFE HACK
Nomatic Luggage.
I’m going to live my entire next month on hand luggage alone because hold luggage is a psyop meant to keep you poor & late.
So I needed to get a high quality luggage and backpack setup.
It sounds weird to say “technology” when you talk about bags, but it’s wild how much of a difference it makes when you start using proper, well designed luggage.
My current setup is the Nomatic 20L Travel Pack Backpack + the Carry-On Classic, both in Olive.
I can live out of this for 10 days. Mad.
I love this stuff.
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Big love,
Chris x
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PS
Thank you so much for your support this week.
