Avoid a Life You Hate with These 8 Strategies - Dr Gad Saad | Modern Wisdom

Applying an evolutionary lens and pursuing domain-specific computational mechanisms can lead to a happier life by understanding and addressing the adaptive mechanisms that contribute to chronic dissatisfaction and unhappiness

Gad Saad is an Evolutionary Psychologist, Professor of Marketing at Concordia University, a podcaster and an author.

In today’s fast-paced world, happiness and contentment often seem elusive. By taking an evolutionary lens on happiness, we can gain deeper insight into why we are the way we are and what are the contributing elements to living a good life.

Questions to inspire discussion 

Key Insights 

Pursuit of Happiness and Fulfillment

• 🧠 Happiness is not pursued through a general mechanism, but rather through domain-specific computational mechanisms that optimize our pursuit of specific goals, such as finding an appropriate mate.
• 😃 Happiness is not just about short-term pleasure, but about long-term existential fulfillment and contentment.
• 🌍 The speaker's perspective on gratitude and contextualizing current challenges against past hardships can help combat feelings of despondence and nihilism.
• 😍 Choosing the right life partner and the ideal job profession are the two most important decisions that can determine our level of happiness and fulfillment in life.
• 🤔 The importance of living a life that you're glad you lived: "What you want to do is live a life which in retrospect you're glad that you lived, each of these moments may not have been fully pleasurable at the time, but they gave you this meaning and they were the right decision." - Daniel Kahneman

Personal Growth and Self-Expression

• 🤔 Evolution may have led to chronic existential angst and unhappiness due to misfiring adaptive mechanisms, resulting in maladaptive behaviors such as compulsive buying or eating disorders.
• ⏳ Age should never be a barrier to pursuing one's passions and goals, as demonstrated by the man who started his academic journey in his 60s and continued until his passing in his 90s.
• 🚀 Embracing failure and criticism is essential for personal growth and success, as it builds resilience and allows individuals to surpass societal expectations.
• 💡 Embracing your uniqueness and idiosyncrasies allows you to maximize what you can show to the world and become a legend in your field.
• 🌉 Immersing yourself in the creative process, whether it's designing a bridge or writing a book, can grant you purpose and meaning in life.

Importance of Relationships and Authenticity

• 🤝 The quality of relationships, particularly having a partner, is a greater predictor of health in old age than cholesterol levels.
• 💔 One of the top regrets of people on their deathbed is not living an authentic life, suggesting the importance of pursuing one's true passions and interests.
• ⏰ The speaker emphasizes the significance of time and attention, suggesting that focusing on meaningful moments with loved ones can reframe experiences and create lasting memories.
• 🌟 The love and pride expressed by our children can hold more value and significance than any external achievements or recognition we receive.

#Relationships #EvolutionaryPsychology #GadSaad #PersonalDevelopment 

Clips 

• 00:00 🔑 Humans can experience chronic dissatisfaction and unhappiness due to misfiring adaptive mechanisms, but applying an evolutionary lens can help explain conditions like OCD and depression, and pursuing domain-specific computational mechanisms can lead to a happier life.
  • Humans may experience chronic dissatisfaction and unhappiness due to the misfiring of adaptive mechanisms, leading to maladaptive behaviors such as compulsive buying and addiction.
  • Evolutionary medicine is not widely incorporated into the practice of medicine, including psychiatry and clinical psychology, but applying an evolutionary lens can help explain conditions like OCD and depression, and while there is no general mechanism for seeking happiness, pursuing domain-specific computational mechanisms can lead to a happier life.
  • Most phenomena in life, including happiness, are multifactorial, and the ability of humans to experience prolonged stress compared to prey animals is due to the prefrontal cortex.
  • Regret and anxiety stem from focusing too much on the past and future, causing stress which is energetically expensive, but understanding the smoke detector principle and finding the sweet spot of stress can lead to a happier life.
  • The speaker discovered evolutionary psychology through a book on criminality, which led them to pursue a career in evolutionary psychology instead of mathematical modeling.
  • The speaker mentions that they were introduced to the concept of the "red pill" through Robert Wright's book "The Moral Animal" in the early 90s.
• 13:09 🔑 Happiness is a long-term sense of contentment that can be increased by implementing mindsets, choosing the right life partner and job, and considering foundational values and biological compatibility in relationships.
  • Happiness is not about short-term pleasure, but rather a long-term sense of existential contentment, and while genetics play a role in individual differences in happiness, there are still many ways to purposefully increase one's happiness.
  • Implement mindsets to improve happiness and overcome despondence, using personal experiences as a reference point for gratitude and perspective.
  • Using difficult moments as catalysts can help contextualize why we feel bad, and the two most important life decisions that determine our happiness are choosing the right life partner and the ideal job profession, with the book offering some maxims to statistically increase our chances of happiness in these areas.
  • Couples with congruent foundational values and belief systems have a greater likelihood of long-term success and happiness in their relationship, regardless of shared interests or chemistry.
  • Finding a partner with similar cultural beliefs, humor, and life trajectory metrics increases the likelihood of leading a happy life, while also considering the importance of assorting on foundational mechanisms beyond religion, such as ambition, and the significance of the major histocompatibility complex in disassortative mating.
  • Men wearing t-shirts with different smells based on their MHC (major histocompatibility complex) can attract women because it maximizes the potential immune system coverage for their future children.
• 27:57 📚 Married people tend to be happier and have better health due to the structure and support provided by a long-term partner, while the modern world's emphasis on isolation and independence can lead to a lack of interaction and decreased well-being.
  • The increasing concern among parents about their child marrying someone from the opposite political party is attributed to the potential for significant differences in values and the heritability of political orientation.
  • Physical strength predicts political orientation, with less open individuals tending to be more left-leaning and male feminists using a sneaky strategy to appear sensitive and empathetic.
  • The paper discusses the importance of establishing a metric of interestingness when judging research, as it often focuses on methodological rigor and theoretical coherence rather than novel or surprising findings.
  • Married people tend to be happier because having a partner provides structure and support, as demonstrated by the speaker's personal experience with weight loss.
  • There is a paradox in the modern world where individuals are increasingly seeking isolation and independence, leading to a lack of interaction with others.
  • Having a long-term partner, who can be worth two good friends, is crucial for increasing well-being, physical health, and lifespan, as shown by the Harvard adult development study and the reduction of inflammation markers.
• 38:10 🔑 Finding a partner who fulfills your needs and allows for playful teasing can help avoid a life you hate, while prioritizing work too much and comparing yourself to others can lead to regret and an inauthentic life.
  • Finding a partner who fulfills all your needs and allows for playful teasing and self-deprecation can help avoid a life you hate.
  • Having more sex can lead to more happiness, but it is also important to have more sex than others because humans are a social and hierarchical species that compare themselves to others.
  • Dan Bilzerian's seemingly glamorous lifestyle of having multiple women and flying on private jets comes at a heavy price, as his friends are miserable and the women are more concerned with trivial matters than meaningful connections.
  • Don't become a workaholic and prioritize your job too much, as one of the most common deathbed regrets is wishing you hadn't worked so much.
  • Regret can stem from both actions and inactions, with the latter often leading to a sense of living an inauthentic life, as highlighted by studies and the regrets expressed by individuals on their deathbeds.
  • Anticipatory regret can be a useful tool for making decisions and avoiding future regret, as seen in the case of Jeff Bezos starting Amazon, and regret can also serve as a reminder that certain opportunities may no longer be possible.
• 45:49 📚 Pursuing knowledge for the love of it can inspire others to overcome doubts and pursue their dreams, regret informs decision-making and the difference between pleasure-focused and meaning-focused happiness, some people ruminate and analyze choices more, having too many choices can be detrimental, and there is a personality scale that affects happiness levels.
  • A man in his 60s pursued higher education purely for the love of knowledge, inspiring others to overcome age-related doubts and pursue their own dreams.
  • Regret informs decision-making in life, as one can choose between conforming to societal expectations for career advancement or staying true to oneself and avoiding feelings of inauthenticity and regret.
  • Linking the calculus of regret with a desire for authenticity, the speaker discusses the difference between pleasure-focused and meaning-focused happiness, with one emphasizing enjoying each individual moment and the other emphasizing looking back with gladness at the decisions made.
  • Some people can make decisions without much thought or regret, while others, like the speaker, tend to ruminate and analyze their choices more, leading to a greater sense of self and understanding of why some people seem to have an easier time in life.
  • Having more choices is not always better, as research suggests that beyond a certain point, having too many choices can be detrimental to decision-making.
  • There is a personality scale that measures maximizing versus satisficing, and research shows that how someone scores on this scale can affect their happiness levels, as maximizers have higher thresholds for happiness while satisficers are content with meeting minimal thresholds.
• 55:08 🔑 Letting go of anger, knowing oneself, and adopting an internal locus of control can help avoid a life of unhappiness and empower individuals to transform negative situations into positive ones.
  • A man named David McCallum, who spent 29 years in prison for a murder he was eventually exonerated of, demonstrated the ability to let go and not hold onto vengefulness or vindictiveness, which is a valuable lesson for avoiding a life you hate.
  • Letting go of anger and contextualizing one's experiences can help avoid a life of unhappiness, as exemplified by a man who was able to find well-being despite having 30 years stolen from his life, and the Delphic maxim "know thyself" plays a role in this process.
  • Know thyself and live an authentic life by making choices that align with your true nature, as exemplified by Lionel Messi's innate talent for soccer.
  • The speaker reflects on his regret of not being able to pursue his soccer talent due to circumstances beyond his control, but finds solace in his successful academic career, while also discussing the importance of letting go and not attributing events to a predetermined reason.
  • Taking a fatalistic approach and attributing events to external factors robs individuals of agency, while adopting an internal locus of control and recognizing the ability to transform negative situations into positive ones is empowering and accurate.
  • Having a positive attributional style and cultivating a sense of optimism can protect against the vagaries of life and make one's life better and more enjoyable, similar to the functional benefit of religion.
• 01:06:08 📝 Embrace your uniqueness, focus on the positive, and pursue a fulfilling life by being resilient, authentic, and creative.
  • The speaker shares a personal story about how changing his mindset and focusing on the positive aspects of a situation helped him avoid feeling angry and highlights the importance of spending quality time with loved ones.
  • The speaker discusses the emotional impact of his daughter playing with her dolls to make him happy and emphasizes the importance of children's love and support over professional achievements, while also mentioning the need for people to become more resilient in the face of future catastrophes.
  • Criticism and judgment are inevitable when pursuing authenticity and avoiding regrets, but looking at the trajectories of successful individuals who faced obstacles and failures can inspire resilience and the determination to prove others wrong.
  • Salvador Dali was an eccentric artist who believed he was the reincarnation of his dead brother, engaged in masochistic behavior, had a muse whom he immediately married and treated like royalty, and had to send a formal invitation to visit her in the castle he bought for her.
  • Embracing and fully embodying one's unique qualities and idiosyncrasies allows individuals to maximize their potential and attract others, even if it means facing potential regrets or challenges along the way.
  • Embrace your true nature, find the sweet spot in your pursuits, seek variety, and choose a profession that allows you to express your creativity for a fulfilling life.
• 01:21:12 💡 Creating new material in any domain grants purpose and meaning, whether it's building bridges, writing books, or even making podcasts.

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