13) Have Low Expectations
Before you mislabel me a pessimist, check out this awesome TED Talk by psychologist Barry Schwartz in which he posits why having high expectations (enabled by today’s unprecedented range of choices) has actually made us less happy.
“The reason that everything was better back when everything was worse is that when everything was worse, it was actually possible for people to have experiences that were a pleasant surprise. Nowadays, the world we live in—we affluent, industrialized citizens, with perfection the expectation—the best you can ever hope for is that stuff is as good as you expect it to be. You will never be pleasantly surprised because your expectations, my expectations, have gone through the roof. The secret to happiness—this is what you all came for—the secret to happiness is low expectations.” ~Barry Schwartz
Or as Louis C.K. puts it so well:
“Everything is amazing right now and nobody’s happy.”
“It seems like the better it gets, the more miserable people become. There’s never a technological advancement where people think, ‘Wow, we can finally do this!’ And I think a lot of it has to do with advertising. Americans have it constantly drilled into our heads, every fucking day, that we deserve everything to be perfect all the time.”
Next: 14) Most Things Make No Difference; Focus Only on What Does Return to the List
