[Opinion] Rich People, Stop Telling Us how to Find Happiness!
Why do rich people feel entitled to teach others how to be happy & what do I think about happiness?
I have passionately been following Vitaliy Katsenelson’s newsletters for almost two years now. He is a phenomenal value investor who successfully predicted today’s supply chain shortage, the war in Ukraine and the worldwide inflation crisis in March 2020 (don’t believe me? Click HERE to be proven wrong).
This week I got extra excited when I saw that he is publishing a new book.
What could it be about?? Predictions of the next economic collapse? Maybe a prediction on where the next big war will take place? Or just a good analysis of the greatest stocks in the world?
I was disappointed to say the least when I saw the title: “Soul in the Game – The Art of a Meaningful Life”…
The worrying trend of successful CEOs and investors feeling entitled to tell us plebs how we can find happiness and the meaning of life has definitely picked up even more steam lately.
Here is just a sample of some phenomenally rich people who have decided that they hold the keys to your happiness:
Scott Galloway - An incredibly successful entrepreneur, podcaster and business professor at NYU who has made millions on bets on Meta (Facebook), Amazon & Twitter. His latest book: The Algebra of Happiness: Notes on the Pursuit of Success, Love, and Meaning
Ray Dalio - One of the world’s richest men and founder of the incredibly successful hedge-fund Bridgewater Associate. His latest book: Principles: Life and Work - How to Happy
Tony Hsieh (1973-2020) - Former CEO of Zappos, at one point the world’s biggest online retailer for shoes, accessories and clothes. His last book: Delivering Happiness
Robin Sharma - A successful Canadian investor and author who founded the business training firm Sharma Leadership International Inc. His most famous book: The Monk who Sold his Ferrari: A story of fulfilling their dreams and realizing themselves.
Maybe they’ve gotten bored with making so much money and want to focus on something else, or maybe they truly believe their sense of business success directly translates to owning the secret elixir of happiness…
Either way, I am getting so annoyed about this that I have decided to throw in my two cents on the topic (ironic, isn’t it?):
Being good at making money has likely ZERO correlation with being good at making people happy. We tend to trust rich people with all kinds of things because money gives them such power in today’s society. However, the truth is that there is not a single piece of evidence I have seen that correlates wealth with the skill to teach people how to live a meaningful life…
Truly happy people often have no idea how to make others happy. Just like how Magic Jonson was one of the world’s best basketball players but a terrible basketball coach, so too are most happy people bad teachers of happiness. Perhaps annoyingly, happiness is something deeply personal and it is very unlikely that someone that lives a completely different life than you can ever teach you what your path to a meaningful life is.
Happiness is mostly about genetics. It doesn’t matter how many self-help books you read if you are born with dopamine deficiencies. Sadly most of our innate happiness comes from how our brains are structured and except for medication, there is very little we can do about this… In fact, studies have shown that people return to the same state of happiness just weeks after major events occurs, such as accidents, promotions, or whatever that drastically changes your momentary happiness. This phenomenon is called the Hedonic treadmill.
Interesting read!
> Maybe they’ve gotten bored with making so much money and want to focus on something else, or maybe they truly believe their sense of business success directly translates to owning the secret elixir of happiness…
I think what you're seeing is a move up the "value chain" of life quality.
Massively successful people almost always sacrifice a lot (some might say "most everything else") to achieve their success -- this almost always includes quality of life, unless the person happens to really love their work and balance life with other people who think differently well.
Once all these people were able to achieve success in one or a few parts of their lives, they were finally able to turn and focus on the parts of their lives that were lacking (and paradoxically are the most important over the "longest" run).
Maybe the way to happiness that they've found is so profound that they hoped someone would tell them earlier so they're trying to right the world. A more cynical take is that they've prematurely decided they've cracked the happiness problem and are looking for a place to declare victory.
That said, being massively successful economically or otherwise doesn't mean people *don't* have good tips, but those people often don't go out of their way to write books about them unless they're obsessed with solving that problem, and if they were, you'd have heard about them already. The best advice is probably also pretty obvious-sounding as well -- not much to make a book out of.