Resenhas - Happy Sexy Millionaire

Moitta 03/03/2022

Minhas notas do livro
This book is about fulfilment, love and success.

She went on to explain that when someone knows they’re enough, they don’t lie around doing nothing – in fact, you see the opposite reaction. Knowing you’re enough is the realisation of your own worth – which drives people to strive for things even greater than their current circumstance.

This is one of the great paradoxes of happiness: we have to call off the search to be able to find everything we’ve been searching for. The narrative that I had chosen to believe – that I was missing something – was the thing causing my unhappiness.

There’s nothing that kills more people than a meaningless life. And the toxic society we live in is slowly urging us to trade meaningfulness for material abundance, followers, likes, isolation and shallowness.

One of the great illusions in life is that we are in control of our decision making – that we make rational decisions by weighing up the facts at hand, all of the time. This, put simply, couldn’t be further from the truth.

Think about that – the value the human brain attributes to something can completely change based purely on the introduction of something better – not based on the true and inherent value of the object itself.

As frightening as it may be, we are not ‘in control’ most of the time. Our brains are designed to be incapable of constant rational thought – we simply don’t have the time or mental capacity to calculate the statistical probabilities and potential risks that come with the tens of thousands of choices we make every day, so we live largely in an unconscious autopilot state, allowing instinct to be the CEO of our lives.

The truth is that nothing in life has any intrinsic value without context.

The sad truth is that ‘Jenner Kylie’ won’t realise why she’s so anxious, insecure and self-conscious, and why she struggles with bouts of depression. She’ll say that she loves watching Kylie Jenner because it’s ‘fun’, ‘entertaining’ or ‘inspiring’ without realising the destructive mental cost of that ‘entertainment’. Her decision to follow Kylie Jenner, and hundreds of seemingly perfect fake influencers like her, is an act of mental self-harm – maybe the greatest modern act of self-harm millennials unknowingly perpetrate on themselves.

The fact that you, and billions of others like you, are actively choosing to expose your lazy CEO, comparison-oriented minds to such a filtered, unrealistic and toxic environment every single day, for hours at a time, is a choice that you and the connected generation must reconsider if you are to get out alive. This is voluntary mental self-harm on an enormous scale. You wouldn’t continue to read books that told you you’re a worthless, ugly, unsuccessful piece of shit, so why have you chosen to fill a digital library with content that will evidently do the same?

If a person could do only one simple thing to increase their health and happiness then expressing gratitude on a regular basis must be it.

Most of us realise that at the times when we feel most grateful for the circumstances of our lives, we feel most happy. So why do we practice gratitude so rarely? Why don’t we do it all of the time? We naturally live in constant forward motion, with lists of incomplete ambitions and our focus transfixed on tomorrow. As I said, we don’t feel like we’re ever enough, we struggle to feel truly accomplished despite our achievements and so how would we feel gratitude naturally?

That morning on my way to work, after achieving the biggest accomplishment of my life, I realised that we can’t live life expecting gratitude to just show up on its own because it rarely ever does – we live with our heads so far in the future that it often doesn’t have the chance to. We have to invite gratitude into our lives and we have to do it consciously and consistently.

Social media has given all of us an endless and unrealistic context in which to compare ourselves to others, and although we can’t easily change our prehistoric wiring, we can subdue its power over us by being more consciously aware of what’s happening, what’s causing it and the impact it has on us.

This starkly illustrates an essential, yet unappreciated, truth: that if you go through life believing that happiness is somewhere in your future, it always will be – it will never be where you are now.

In many respects, my gratitude journal has become my fightback against my own lazy CEO mind and the toxic society it functions in. Gratitude has transformed me from feeling that what I have isn’t enough, to feeling like it’s more than enough – and it’s made me feel like I’m enough.

Life has a funny way of giving grateful people even more things to be grateful for.

Be grateful, for gratitude can bring life to life, it can turn a meal to a feast, resentment to love, a grudge to forgiveness, an enemy to a friend, a disease to hope and you to enough.

The Stoics considered two things in life worth pursuing: ‘virtue’ (how we live happy lives) and ‘tranquillity’ (a lucid state characterised by ongoing freedom from distress).

The Stoics believed in one simple truth that was perfectly articulated by the Ancient Greek philosopher Socrates: ‘The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.’

Just because you can ask a question doesn’t make it inherently valid.

And this is really my point, ‘love’ is one of life’s many bespoke, personal and unique experiences. How you foster your love and build your relationship should therefore be equally bespoke. I believe that it isn’t the accomplishment of society’s expectations that will make you happiest, it’s the rejection of them. It’s the ability to write a new set of rules for your life, based on what is true for you and based on the world you’re living in now.

Our world is a much different place to how it was when most of these ideas and solutions were devised.

If you truly care about being happy in your life and successful in your work, you have little choice. You have to become the author of your own ‘script’, one written by your heart, not one directed by your society.

Having demands that drastically exceed your abilities and level of competence is overwhelming and does cause harmful stress but having a very undemanding job can be deeply unrewarding too. The sweet spot is where the demands placed on you match your actual abilities and your self-perceived abilities – that makes for a fulfilling challenge.

‘Find your passion’ is extraordinarily bad advice. But it sells, because simple answers to complex problems always sell.

Our generation has confused their admirations with their aspirations. Your idols did it their own way. If you want to achieve what they did, you’ll have to too.

Work matters but so does the rest

Creating this harmony of needs is the thing that we should be promoting, aiming for and holding on to if we’re fortunate enough to attain it. There is no perfect amount of hours to invest in each need, but there is a need for all of your needs to be met.

But our psychological needs are invisible (community, human connection, free movement, meaning, nature), so we continue to employ technology to optimise against them in the name of convenience, saving time, our physical needs and becoming more ‘successful’. Unsurprisingly, as is the consequence for unmet physical needs, our unmet psychological needs are sending us signals in an attempt to get us back to our tribes – feelings of loneliness, anxiety and depression – and we’re ignoring them. We’re telling people they’re ‘broken’, they’re crazy or, even worse, that everything is fine and just to get on with it.

Dom was using his addiction to self-medicate the pain caused by years of unmet psychological and emotional needs.

The greatest force stopping all of us going in search of the right thing is usually the gravitational pull from the wrong thing. The last thing. The safe thing.

If you want to feed a problem, keep thinking about it. If you want to starve a problem, take action.

The power of consistency over time is both profound and underrated. It’s profound because it’s the most common factor in the story of every ‘successful’ person I’ve ever met, but it’s underrated because it’s totally invisible.

Compound interest is such a powerful yet neglected idea that Albert Einstein allegedly called it the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’ and said, ‘he who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it’.

‘Most people need consistency more than they need intensity. Intensity makes a good story. Consistency makes progress.’

The reason people don’t do the small things that ultimately add up to success is because, at first, the small things don’t add up to success. In fact, we never really see small decisions significantly benefit us or significantly cost us in the moment, so we don’t value them.

Greatness isn’t one decision. Great is just good repeated, over and over again.

What is it you tell yourself you are? Isn’t it funny that your life continues to follow that exact storyline? You know that’s not a coincidence, don’t you?

I’m just a fucking guy that applied my skills to one particular challenge, at one point, and learned a little more about that challenge every day.

There’s a term in sociology called ‘labelling theory’, and it states that people come to identify and behave in ways that reflect how others label them – they become the labels they’re given.

Self-belief is a grossly misunderstood concept. For some bizarre reason, the most common advice given to people lacking in self-belief seems to be … ‘just believe in yourself’. These words are plastered across motivational Instagram accounts, posters, gym walls and self-help books, as if just uttering them will change the deep-rooted and hardwired beliefs we have of ourselves and our capabilities, as if our belief system were as mouldable as plasticine. Your beliefs about yourself are the by-product of years of conditioning, childhood experiences, decades of consuming media stereotypes and hundreds of thousands of hours of feedback from friends, family and total strangers. Sadly it’s going to take more than a motivational quote on Instagram or a few well-meaning words of encouragement from a friend to uproot them. But understanding that – understanding how stubborn they are – is the first step in being able to do something about them.

If you want to uproot them, words alone aren’t enough; you have to expose yourself to new evidence that challenges them, that contradicts them and that categorically disproves them.

We’re never going to stop becoming distracted from our goals if we don’t fundamentally understand what discomfort we’re trying to escape from and what’s causing it.

Motivational words and positive intentions stand no chance against our psychological hard wiring.

As Nir Eyal said, we’ll never achieve our goals ‘if we don’t fundamentally understand what psychological discomfort we’re trying to escape from’.

Self-help gurus will often preach that growth is achieved by learning new things, but the truth is, growth is achieved by learning and unlearning at the same time. Reading books like this is a great way to learn. Reading yourself is a great way to unlearn. If you can do both, you can make progress. If you just do one, you’ll fail.

Because if I didn’t view my circumstances as controllable, then why on earth would I have tried to control them? That’s insanity.

Those who take personal responsibility have a greater chance of positive change; those who alleviate personal responsibility have less scope for doing so.

I’m repulsed by these narratives because they’re so binary and intent on avoiding personal responsibility by establishing an external locus of control.

Motivation is a poorly described concept that has been largely defined by those with an incentive to depict it in a certain way, to simplify it for clicks or to distort it for respect.

The truth is that most people don’t know the difference between their intrinsic goals and their extrinsic goals.

When asked what their goals are, I frequently hear enthusiastic young people tell me that they want to ‘change the world’. Although admirable on the surface, that clearly isn’t an intrinsic goal; it is one potential outcome of an accomplished intrinsic goal.

They don’t actually want to ‘change the world’, they want the admiration, status and self-esteem boost that they believe are on offer.

When our intrinsic desires lose, so do we.

Things you will regret: 1) Allowing your potential to remain trapped behind strangers’ opinions. 2) Spending more time thinking about the past than living in the moment. 3) Time spent with people that don’t want the best for you. 4) Neglecting family. 5) Never taking risks.

if you provide incentives for someone to carry out an activity they already enjoy, it undermines their original reason for doing it.

1. Autonomy: people have a need to feel that they are the masters of their own destiny and that they have at least some control over their lives; most importantly, people have a need to feel that they are in control of their own behaviour.
2. Competence: another need concerns our achievements, knowledge and skills; people have a need to build their competence and develop mastery over tasks that are important to them.
3. Connection: people need to have a sense of belonging and connectedness with others; each of us needs other people to some degree.

And herein lies another important factor in terms of motivation – interpersonal exchanges, rewards, communication and feedback that gear you towards feelings of competence when performing an activity have been proven to enhance your intrinsic motivation for that particular activity. Continual negative feedback, which makes you question your competence when performing a task, is one of the biggest killers of motivation.

So, for a high level of intrinsic motivation two psychological needs have to be fulfilled: 1. Competence – so that the activity results in feelings of self-development and success. 2. Autonomy and freedom.

This also explains why researchers continually find that money or extrinsic rewards undermine intrinsic motivation, and why I became less motivated to post on my social media channels when I finally had millions of followers and a commercial incentive to do so. These external rewards undermine your autonomy – and your behaviour starts to become controlled by the rewards, not by you.

Love does not seek to control or dominate. Good leaders do not seek to control or dominate. True friends do not seek to control or dominate. Insecurity does.

This is how skill stacking works. It’s actually easier and more effective to be in the top 10 per cent in several different skills – your ‘stack’ – than it is to be in the top 1 per cent in any one skill.

What I’m trying to say is, in order to be considered the best in my industry, I didn’t have to become the best at anything, I just had to be good at six to seven of the right, complementary and uniquely rare things. This is a theme that runs true with nearly all industry leaders.

This is often where people go wrong as they develop their skill stack over their careers. They avoid the calligraphy class because it ‘doesn’t make sense’, they don’t learn to code because they don’t think they’ll need it to be an artist, they evade public-speaking opportunities because they don’t think it’ll help them become a psychologist. Instead, they look at the skills possessed by the people in their industry already, and they focus on honing those.

In order to build a unique, complementary and valuable skill stack you really need to know the answer to these questions: 1. What skills do you currently have? 2. In your industry, what skills do people usually have? 3. Given that most people have these skills, what new skills could you learn that will give you a valuable edge over others within your industry?

Another way to interrogate your decisions in real time is by asking yourself, ‘How would the person I want to become spend their time?’ Or, ‘Which decision would the person I want to become make right now?’

Being content with who you are and where you are is therefore the driving force for real ambition – not an impairment to it. Knowing that you are already enough will give you the focus, genuine motivation and, therefore, the consistency that you will need to pursue the things that genuinely matter to you, for your own reasons.

And as I said earlier, it’s the pursuit of those things, not even the attainment of them, that will give you the happiness we’re all so desperately ‘searching’ for.