Naval Ravikant: 15 Timeless Thoughts & Quotes on Peace, Happiness, the Meaning of Life, & More

Desire to me is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want, and I keep that in front of mind…Pick your one overwhelming desire. It’s okay to suffer over that one.”

Be authentic to escape competition, find what you know how to do better than anybody because you love to do it and it feels like play, & get to “retirement.”

Modern life is a single-player game. Draw your own boundaries from society. Focus on changing yourself and living the life you want others to live.

An attainable superpower:

You leave me alone for a day, it will be the happiest day I’ve had in a while. That is a superpower that I think everybody can attain.

Clear Mind → Better Judgement → Better Outcome

Slow your busy mind, give up the idea of problems, and seek peace from the mind by watching your mind all day long (24/7 meditation).

Peace is happiness at rest and what you want most of the time, but you can also convert peace to happiness any time.

If you’re smart, you will choose happiness. You can train yourself to look on the bright side so it becomes second nature.

Creativity is the last frontier: 

Automation over a long enough period of time will replace every non-creative job…that’s great news. That means that all of our basic needs are taken off, and what remains for us is to be creative, which is really what every human wants.

I live for the aha moment: 

When you connect two things together that you hadn’t connected together before…it helps form a steel framework of understanding in your mind that you can then hang other ideas off of…that’s what I live for…it’s like curiosity fulfilled.

Humans are broad and multivariate. Try your hand at everything because you only have one life.

Read for yourself to understand concepts:

“I probably read 1-2 hours a day, and that puts me in the top .00001%. I think that alone accounts for any material success that I’ve had in my life and any intelligence that I might have.”

Embrace the rare ability to start over:

When you look at the greatest artists and creators, they have this ability to start over that nobody else does.