We can:

A. Lie to ourselves about them,

B. Avoid thinking about them, or

C. Try to accept the parts we can’t change and change what we can.

If you’re in camps A or B, don’t read this post!

Here are Thirteen Difficult Truths:

1. Irrationality – we humans are not rational, despite the fact that most of us want to believe we are. Our beliefs and behaviors are influenced by nearly-invisible social forces and numerous cognitive biases.

But I believe we can learn to become significantly more rational and that there are important personal and societal benefits from doing so. This is a major part of why I created Clearer Thinking. 

2. Wrongness – we’re wrong about some of our deeply-held beliefs. We don’t know which (being right and being wrong usually both feel like being right). We want to believe that our tribe is right, the enemy tribe dangerously wrong, and the other tribes irrelevant. The truth is much more complex and interesting.

We can be right more often by seeking out the strongest contradictory perspectives, by creating feedback loops with respect to our ideas, and by learning to play devil’s advocate to our own views.

Try, for instance, the “Belief Challenger.” 

3. Challenges – we each will experience big losses, stressors, and setbacks. Some of these could send us into a negative spiral.

This will suck, but we can build up mental health skills that help.

Try, for example, our apps https://www.uplift.app (for depression) and https://www.mindease.io (for anxiety).

4. Aging – as we grow older, we will lose physical strength, attractiveness, and perhaps also cognitive abilities.

However, by exercising regularly and eating healthy food, we can likely slow our decline. We can create hobbies and sources of joy that we can benefit from at all ages.

5. Bereavement – we will lose many of the people we love. Friendships will fray, relationships will end, and the people we love will die.

But we can focus on finding lifelong friends, exert effort to detect and repair fraying, make new friends proactively, and squeeze in all the love we can. We can also encourage our loved ones to engage in healthy habits to extend their lives.

See, for instance, “Daily Ritual: A Habit-Creation Tool.”

6. Mortality – one day, we’ll be gone.

However, by taking great care of your body, you can likely give yourself more years. By being as grateful as you can to exist each day, you may be happier during those years. By funding more rigorous life extension research, we can one day give more years to many.

See, for instance, “Longevity FAQ“.

7. Extinction – one-day, humanity will go extinct.

However, the actions we take over the coming decades/centuries could determine whether humanity lasts only a little more time or a VASTLY longer time. Our wisdom must grow faster than the power of our technology. Support and fund “existential risk” work.

See, for instance, “The case for reducing existential risks“.

8. Randomness – we’re at the mercy of a tremendous amount of luck. Some are born sick orphans in squalor, some healthy, into loving families, in wealthy countries.

We didn’t choose, but we can make the world better for others and give more people good luck.

See, for instance, “Leaving Your Mark on the World.”

9. Rejection – some people won’t like us. And whatever we do or create, some people will think it sucks.

But we can surround ourselves with people who really like and value us, who support us even if they sometimes don’t like our behavior or think our projects are pretty dumb. They help us be better.

10. We will mess up and fail many times.

But by accepting (to the best of our ability) that we (and everyone else too) will fail many times, it frees us to try harder things and to have self-compassion when we do fail. If we learn what we can from each failure, we create a silver lining (“sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.”)

See, for instance, “Learning From Mistakes.” 

11. Uncertainty – there are deep, important mysteries we will never know the answer to and major unknowns we can’t resolve. Major philosophical and personal questions of the utmost importance will go unsolved.

But we don’t need certainty to be happy. We can live with the big unknowns, even while striving as a species – and as individuals – to understand the world as best we can. We can also, at least, learn to be less of a mystery to ourselves.

See, for instance, “Life-Changing Questions.” 

12. Disappointment – we won’t get all the things we want. At some point, we’ll badly want to get a certain job, achieve a certain goal, or be with a certain person, and we’ll never get it.

But we can learn to better accept reality for what it is. And even though we can’t have all that we want, we will get some of what we want, and we can get over the things we wanted and didn’t get.

See, for instance, our article on resetting your psychological baseline.

13. Animality – we are creatures who can reason, speak, understand physics, invent ideas, write stories, think abstractly, transform the world, etc., and yet we are also animals at the same time. We aspire to be something more than animals, and yet we have animal bodies, drives, constraints, reactions, and impulses.

But we can learn to work with, rather than against, our animal nature. When our inner mouse is afraid of something we know is not dangerous, we can learn to soothe it. When our inner dog badly wants something that we know is not in our long-term interest, we can make a compromise by giving ourselves something else we desire that is not so out of alignment with our goals. When our inner bee wants to copy others in doing something that violates our values, we can find other ways to fit in without compromising our integrity, or we can find a new colony that suits us better.

Importantly, since these are difficult truths for all of us, we can face them together, seeking to help one another.

For me, reflecting on the difficult truths that we all face gives new meaning to the idea that we should “be kind because everyone is fighting a great battle.”

It’s tough being a human. But thankfully, we are not alone. Let’s make the best of this together.

This piece was first written on March 5, 2021, and first appeared on this site on October 28, 2022.

Your happiness, like the level of the ocean, is caused by a superposition of waves of different frequencies. Each operates on a distinct scale – they sum up to determine your well-being at any given point in life. Each wave tends to oscillate around its mean or neutral point (except for the slowest waves, which take your whole life to unfold). One useful way to think about becoming happier is to take care of your life at the level of each of these waves.

Your Waves From Highest to Lowest Frequency

(1) Your Reactions [~a few seconds]: the fastest, highest frequency waves are your emotional shifts based on what just happened a moment ago. If you just had a sip of a delicious beverage, you’ll feel better than if you just knocked your beverage over.

(2) The Setting [~1 minute]: the next fastest wave is based on what’s around you right now and what activity you’re engaged in. Are you walking outside enjoying nature, shopping in a grocery store, talking to a friend, or reviewing your taxes? Your emotional state depends on what you’re doing and where you’re doing it.

(3) Your Body [~10 minutes]: how do you feel in your body? Are you hungry? Do you have to go to the bathroom? Does your back hurt? Are you overheated? These states tend to persist until something changes and more often make us feel bad than good – though you can, of course, have positive body states too (e.g., the feeling of taking a warm bath, getting a massage, or experiencing a post-workout high).

(4) Your Mood [~a few hours]: some days, you may wake up in a funk. Sometimes, after a few hours, your mood might change due to something good or bad happening, or perhaps due to nothing at all that you can put your finger on. Your mood may well shift a few times throughout the day.

(5) Your Circadian Rhythm [~1 day]: you likely have a time of day when you tend to feel your best. You might be a morning person or a night owl. Additionally, once enough hours go by without sleeping (especially after it gets dark), you’ll start to feel sleepy. If you slept badly during the previous night or your circadian rhythm is disrupted, that is very likely to impact how you feel the next day.

(6) An Acute Illness [~1 week]: do you have an acute viral or bacterial infection? Typically these reduce our functioning and make us feel bad for a few days to a few weeks. Of course, some illnesses are much worse than this, and some end up as a chronic health problem operating on a longer scale.

(7) Hormones & Nutrition [~1 month]: the most obvious cycle of this type is the change in female hormones during the menstrual cycle. Some scientists claim male hormones also have periodic (though not necessary monthly) fluctuations, but this is more controversial. Some nutritional deficits also operate on this time scale.

(8) Loss & Gain [~4 months]: if you lose something you care a lot about (e.g., you break up with the person you love, or your house burns down), it will typically take at least a few months to start feeling mostly normal again. And of course, sometimes it takes far longer than that if the loss is especially severe or if it’s something that is extremely important to you that you believe can never be replaced. On the positive side, a big gain can cause months or more of substantially boosted happiness. The obvious example is the “new relationship energy” of falling in love. But a new job you love, getting your dream home, a baby, a sudden windfall of cash, etc. may also cause months of elevated happiness before the hedonic treadmill starts to kick in to bring you closer to baseline. Of course, these positives can have long-lasting benefits, but usually they give us a burst of delight when they are new to us, and that burst fades.

(9) Satisfaction & Health [~ a year]: are you making progress towards your goals? Are you happy with your city, the people you hang out with, and your job? Do you have a romantic relationship, and if so, does it make you happy? Is your body fit or out of shape? Do you have chronic health issues? This yearly scale is often about our overall satisfaction with life, which involves an evaluation of how things are going overall compared to how we want them to be going.

(10) Identity [years]: Are you the person you want to be? Do you love (or like) yourself? Do you have lifelong friends? Is your life path one you feel good about? Do you feel positive about your past? This time scale is often about how you feel about yourself as a person, which usually shifts over multiple years (though it can occasionally undergo a rapid shift in the face of big life changes).

(11) Aging [decades]: as we age, our bodies and minds obviously change. Our aging bodies can feel worse and become less reliable. Yet there is at least some evidence of U-shaped happiness curves, with more happiness on average for the young and old (until very old age) – though it may be culturally dependent. Aging is the longest wave of them all. Good habits such as exercise and healthy eating can slow the negative impacts that come with age.

Your well-being is the sum of many waves operating at many scales. It’s easy to get lost in this sea of complexity and over-focus on just a few waves at the expense of the others. Here are questions for you to help you evaluate how each wave is going:

(1) Did your emotion just shift?

(2) How do you feel about the activity you’re doing right now and about the setting you’re doing it in?

(3) How does your body feel right now? Are you hungry, thirsty, in pain, etc.?

(4) How has your mood been for the past few hours?

(5) How sleepy or tired are you, and did you sleep well last night?

(6) Are you sick right now?

(7) Have you been eating healthy and nutritious foods lately, and are you being affected by your hormone levels?

(8) Are you processing some form of loss right now?

(9) How satisfied are you with your life?

(10) How satisfied are you with who you are?

(11) Are you taking care of your body for the very long term?

This piece was first written on October 17, 2020, and first appeared on this site on April 1, 2022.