41: How to Win Life

A Evidence-Based Tale

Sep 21, 2021

Hey Friends,

Pobody’s Nerfect.

Even though perfectionism might be constantly fed to our brains otherwise via mainstream media.

There isn’t a single answer to winning at life otherwise we’d all be following the same set of instructions. It’s the peaks and valleys of the journey of life which make it pleasurable at times and miserable at times.

It took years to figure this out but everything nowadays can be figureoutable. For example, I knew nothing about coding and used to think “oh well I missed my chance” but by working at it over time I realized it’s actually pretty fun and helps you look at things in a different way.

It is this different thinking which led to asking is there some kind of code to life??

To answer the question “How to win at life?”

We should understand the focus shouldn't be on short-term games but rather be on playing the long game. You don’t have to credit me for this answer. It comes from many known thought leaders such as:

Naval Ravikant
“Play long-term games, with long-term people”
Malcolm Gladwell
“Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness”
Steve Jobs
“That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

There aren’t any shortcuts to life and it can be easy to quit when things get hard but what keeps us going is `Grit`. It comes down to how much you really want something because if you’re not fully into it then you quit at some point.

Grit alone is not enough and requires the combination of our relationships we have with the people know to make a significant impact.

The journey of life becomes more enjoyable if we focus on optimizing our quality of relationships.

“THE GOOD LIFE IS MADE OF GOOD RELATIONS” - Robert Waldinger

In the TED talk above, a Harvard study was done which tracked the lives of 724 men for 75 years.

These men went through the factory working lifestyle to getting drafted for war to experiencing mental illness. Some of these men went from the bottom to reach the top of the social ladder while some fell from the top to the bottom.

At age 50, the men were asked how satisfied they were with their lives and those who answered positively were also the healthiest at age 80.

While there are not any shortcuts to winning life, it can be easy to always surround ourselves with work without any thought given to the consequences.

Evidence suggests we should focus on the long game but at the same time focus on the people who make the long game worth doing in the first place. Taking the time to nurture relationships is a significant factor in life.

The long game does not follow a singular type of growth. There are two different versions.

Sidd's Telegrams ✉️

39: The Two Types of Curves of Life

Patterns exist all around us. The job is to spot them and draw from the insights. Life is full of curves so why not understand them to make better use of them. The most common types of growth cycles you’ve come across at some point in your life include…

4 years ago · Siddhant Chauhan

As Mark Twain said:

“There isn't time, so brief is life, for bickerings, apologies, heartburnings, callings to account. There is only time for loving, and but an instant, so to speak, for that.”