There is lots out there about how to live a good life. But I think that what defines a good life is different for each person. While some people want efficiency others want as much time to do nothing as possible. You see this in older age when people really see the end in sight and start to do what they’ve always wanted. Some people beg to not retire and want to work until they die at their desk, others want to buy a little boat and spend their days daydreaming and fishing in Mexico. I can’t tell you how to live a good life. But I do think if you avoid doing these things, you can at least avoid living a bad life. And in my opinion, by default, if you aren’t living a bad life you are probably living a pretty good one.
Disclaimer: I’m not dead yet or close to dying (as far as I know) so I have not had the opportunity to look back on my life and take stock. So take everything I say with a grain of salt.
Without further ado. Here are 10 ways to live a bad life.
1. Always be shopping.
Shopping used to have a start and an end time. Stores opened and they closed. You most likely weren’t shopping every day. You either had a specific thing you were going to get or you just needed a day of retail therapy at the mall or whatever. But now with social media and Amazon and online shopping, many people find themselves always shopping. Even unconsciously. It’s like we live at the mall now and the mall has everything and every store has hot people outside showing off how cool its wares are.
It rewires your brain against satisfaction. There is no end. This infinite scroll or hedonic treadmill. Whatever you call it. You begin to view life as a non-stop project of acquisition. When will you have all the things you need to start living? It’s not good for the soul to put your contentedness off in this way. You become like an asymptote, always approaching the line of having what you want but never arriving at the destination.
2. Place your value in your accomplishments
Look its great to be driven. Its healthy to want to accomplish things. But your accomplishments are not who you are. You are not your job title, your bank account, or your wins. These are external things, often which can be controlled or impacted by others. You are your sense of humor, your perspective, your personality, your kindness, and your empathy. Yes your experiences can contribute to that and help build it, but they are not it themselves.
When you feel that people need to know certain things about you to fully appreciate you or like you then you are outsourcing your sense of self to external factors. If you make a billion dollars and suck, you still suck. And people who meet you and don’t know that you made a billion dollars will just think of you as someone who sucks. When you lie in bed at night you will just be someone who sucks. The accomplishments are not part of you, they are something you did. So go out and pursue it all, but remember that the benefit is the way in which those things shape you even after they cease to exist.
3. Be a hater
It’s easy to have an opinion on everything. Everything is posed as something to have a take on and we get more information than ever on which we can have a take. Current events, trends, celebrities, outfits, travel destinations, restaurants, movies, the list goes on. Everyone’s a critic. The whole world has become a Yelp feed. But the thing is, we have limited capacity. All of these things take up mindshare and therefore color our world. You choose what that capacity is filled with. Your world can be filled with joy if you choose to exclude the things that don’t spark joy. Rather than hate a celebrity, just don’t think about them ever at all. They don’t have to impact you. Same goes for anything. Of course there will be bad things that do happen to you in life that you will have negative feelings toward. But those are fewer and far between. Limit the space those feelings occupy by not voluntarily adding to the negativity in your mind.
4. Hurry up and get it over with
Sometimes life feels like just a sequence of things you have to do or get done. Whether its your work day, an errand, a project, being in transit, waiting in line, appointments. But the thing is, those actually are life, not the things you need to get done so you can enjoy life. Savor them. The Adam Sandler movie Click makes this point better than I can make in a few sentences. You shouldn’t be maximizing efficiency because what is that efficiency going towards? So you can get home and watch TV? Enjoy the walk, marvel at the plane ride (you’re in the sky!), be in awe of the grocery store as you pick up ingredients for dinner. Your life isn’t at the end of all your tasks, your life is the tasks.
Kurt Vonnegut summed it up in an interview right before his death when he told an anecdote about telling his wife he is going out to buy an envelope:
Oh, she says well, you're not a poor man. You know, why don't you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I'm going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.
I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don't know...And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don't realize, or they don't care, is we're dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we're not supposed to dance at all anymore.
5. Try to fit in
Not trying to spoil the key takeaway from Rainbow Fish here, but if your goal is to fit in then you’re never going to be special. I get it, society is designed to encourage blending in. Its the path of least resistance. And I’m not saying you should walk around town in a glittery tuxedo and a top hat or anything. But you shouldn’t let assimilation be your guiding principle. You lose all sense of selfhood. Its an unneccesary stress. “What will everyone else be wearing?” “Whats the vibe there?” these things are not helpful. You should bring your authentic self wherever you go. And if you don’t know what your authentic self is, maybe the problem is you’ve been too concerned with fitting in. There is no winning on the crusade to fit in. So you do all the right things, so no one thinks you’re weird, then what? Congrats on letting others dictate how you are?
6. Take the elevator
So this is a health one, not a stop and smell the roses one (although thats obviously a component). If you don’t walk as much as you can, you will have a bad life. There is obviously lots out there about how you should take creatine, swap your plasma, be Bryan Johnson, lift heavy weights, tilt the treadmill 13 degrees, whatever. You can do all that for sure. But at bare minimum you should be walking. The irony being, if you walk your whole life when you do want to live a life of leisure it will be a comfortable one. Not walking makes even sitting uncomfortable. We were made to be walking all the time. We haven’t evolved from our nomadic hunter-gatherer roots. Plus, the easiest way to cure the blues is to go outside and take a walk.
7. Always have the best
This seems counterintuitive. Wouldn’t always having the best be a way to have a good life? But the thing is, everything in life is relative. You want to have the best of things but you want to appreciate it. The only way to appreciate it is to sometimes have things that are average or even below average. It creates highs and lows. Texture. You should enjoy the best things in life, but you should consume all levels of things in order to maximize that enjoyment.
8. Compare upwards
It’s a common saying at this point “comparison is the thief of joy” But its really when you are comparing upwards. This is done almost subconsciously at this point. If you are on social media at all you are bombarded with snippets of people’s lives who are prettier, richer, and savvier than you. This is unhealthy for obvious reasons. It’s easy to model your life after these people and call it aspiration, but when aspiration is in the form of someone else’s life it is just comparison. Try to find internal aspirations. Things that you want intrinsically, not because someone else has them. Otherwise you will be positioning yourself directly in the shadow of others and wondering why its so dark all the time.
9. Obsessively follow the news
The world is burning to the ground. But it always has been. Most things you read about there is nothing you can do about and if you step back actually have very little to do with you. I think most people have morally good reasons for following the news. They want to stay informed and do their part to make the world better. But in the position most of us are in, there is little that can be done and the act is just stressing you out. Follow the news of your life. Whats happening to you and those immediately around you that you can impact. It will feel much more rewarding than keeping yourself in a constant panic from what is on TV or Twitter.
10. Map out the rest of your life
I’m not saying don’t think ahead. But the reality is, life is random and you can’t plan it all out. The randomness is what makes it exciting. It’s why people don’t like spoilers. Deviation from the plan should be the plan. Life is more of a ride than a path. You have some control, but not complete.
So if you want to have a terrible life filled with deathbed regret. Do all these things. I made it easy for you. Enjoy… or I guess whatever the opposite of that is. Writhe? Wallow?
omg twins? https://majaroglic.substack.com/p/how-to-ruin-your-life
These are all wonderful suggestions, but I actually think I'm doing an excellent job all on my own!