Life

Choose well.

The most important choices you’ll ever make in life will be with respect to your spouse and your friends. If you choose right, then later choices become simple. The less effort you have to give something, the more powerful you become.

Do your work, your best work, the work that matters to you.

Life is short, so find work you love. Work ought to be chosen for its intrinsic value, and for its sense of enjoyment, sense of purpose. Life is much too short to spend doing something you don’t like, even for a few years.

Each day, do something foolish, something creative, and something generous.

This is what I’ve learned from Ben Graham. Remember, this is not a big long term goal that should worry you just by the magnitude of it. It’s a daily task, which is much easier to follow.

Don’t confuse pleasure for happiness, for they aren’t the same.

Pleasure is bound by the limited abilities of our external senses. Happiness isn’t.

Remember, the endless hedonic treadmill of pleasure-seeking culture is a mirage. The promise of satisfaction that it holds is a false one. It’s only in your imagination.

They are all ephemeral – excitement of next big car, the fancy new gadget, the exotic dream vacation – all of them.

Happiness is in remembering the special memories. Memories created when you got wet in the rain with your giggling daughter, when you fell for your son’s latest mischief, and when you faked a hysterical laugh in your father’s laughter club.

Sooner or later people have realized that it’s not worth it – the pursuit of the ephemeral.

Choose happiness.

Know what to avoid, and avoid it.

Charlie Munger says, “Don’t do cocaine. Don’t race trains. And avoid all AIDS situations.”

It’s important to know what we must avoid in life. I have been through times when it was easy for me to fall prey to requests from a few of my friends for taking just one puff of cigarette, and just one glass of alcohol.

Thankfully, I knew within my heart what I wanted to avoid. And thankfully, I have avoided those and a few other such things.

So know what to avoid…and avoid it.