The Men’s Guide To Happiness and Success
All men everywhere want two things
- Happiness
- Success
What is Happiness?
Happiness is the state of being happy according to Oxford Languages/Google.
Happy is “the feeling or showing pleasure or contentment” (also from Oxford Languages/Google)
Being happy is an emotional state brought on by brain chemicals when something you like or enjoy happens (basically). Because being happy is not measurable, this emotional state can and will be different for everyone. It is far simpler to assume the things that will make you unhappy and work our way backwards.
A Simple List of things that probably will make you unhappy.
- Physical or Emotional Pain.
- Being Poor.
- Being forced to do something you don’t want to do.
- Someone committing a crime or act or aggression against you.
- Being around Toxic Individuals.
- Emotional Distress – Stress/Anxiety/Depression etc.
This List is in no specific order, just listed as I thought of them.
All these things make me unhappy and I imagine they make you unhappy as well. The name of the game is to avoid as many of these things as often as possible. If you do that, you should theoretically be happy or have the chance at happiness.
How To Avoid Physical and Emotional Pain?
Physical Pain can be mostly avoided in life. When I say this I am specifically referring to unreasonable or extreme levels of pain. A few examples of this include broken bones, concussions, deep cuts or wounds etc. Generally speaking if you live a safe and cautious life you can avoid many accidents in life. I am not saying to live in fear, but be aware of your surroundings. If something seems unsafe maybe stay away from that activity.
Emotional Pain is almost unavoidable in life. Eventually something will happen that you cannot control that will cause you emotional pain. What is important is that you learn proper coping mechanisms to deal with the pain. Certain types of emotional pain can be avoided theoretically. You can avoid the pain of a breakup if you choose your partner well and the two of you are “in love”. I cannot specifically define what a good partner is but generally speaking they probably are a nice and caring person and are not a toxic individual. Even If you choose the perfect partner though, there is no guarantee that you won’t break up. This is why avoiding emotional pain is difficult and almost impossible.
How to avoid being Poor?
Generally speaking anyone who was born in a first world country can avoid being poor. When I say poor I am over generalizing as there are different levels to this. Living close to or below the poverty line is the most simple example. I include anyone who lives paycheck to paycheck as these people could potentially be homeless if they lost their job or had an unexpected large bill.
The best way to avoid being poor or staying poor is to use your money wisely and make good life decisions. I believe that most people in the United States OVERSPEND and buy many things they do not need or put themselves in positions of debt. I will put together a rudimentary list of things to help you not to be in this poor category.
- Control your spending habits
- Save Money
- Educate yourself
- Invest
- Plan for the Future
These basic 5 things should theoretically put you on the road to being “not poor”.
Being forced to do something you don’t want to do
And
Someone committing a crime or act or aggression against you
These are very broad and self explanatory. These categories are so large it is almost impossible to give advice on. I would say the best way I could avoid these is simply to plan my life ahead to hopefully avoid as many of these situations as possible.
How To Avoid Toxic People?
Toxic people will try to manipulate you or even hurt you for their own gain. The Best advice I can give is just to avoid these people like the plague. Whenever a toxic person comes into your life, cut them out completely. No Matter who they are, cut them out and never look back.
How to Avoid Anxiety, Stress, and Depression.
This Part is probably the most COMPLICATED part. Many people in the world including myself have conditions that cause them to always be anxious and/or depressed. If that wasn’t all, to make things worse life in general is stressful. Many people may see these things as unavoidable and for you they may be. That being said, for this part I will try and focus on limiting the amount of anxiety, depression and stress instead of trying to get rid of it completely as that may be impossible for some people.
One good way to reduce these things that has been scientifically proven is to exercise regularly.
The National Library of Medicine talks about the benefits of exercise to Mental Health.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470658/
The list of benefits goes on to include :
- Improved sleep
- Increased interest in sex
- Better endurance
- Stress relief
- Improvement in mood
- Increased energy and stamina
- Reduced tiredness that can increase mental alertness
- Weight reduction
- Reduced cholesterol and improved cardiovascular fitness
I suggest a Minimum of 2-3 days a week in the gym. You should strive for 30-60min of exercise during your workouts. Your workouts should include some weight training as well as cardio in order to be a healthy individual.
What is Success?
Success is a relative term and just like happiness it means different things to different people.
In my mind it is very simple.
Success = Money
You may disagree however If you think up of anyone that is known to be successful chances are they aren’t poor. They may not be millionaires but they definitely don’t live paycheck to paycheck.
The most simple way to be successful is to become Rich. This is way easier said than done however I can point out some key things that will help you on your way to success
Build Your Credit Score.
This is super generic but very necessary in life. You need good credit to live a decent life. You need credit to buy a house or to buy investments. You need credit to buy a car or get any type of loan.
How do I build my credit?
The first and easy way is to PAY YOUR BILLS.
How I personally started my credit is I went and got a secured credit card. Basically you give them a deposit of lets say $200 and they give you a credit card with a $200 limit. Now in order to build your credit you don’t want to use all your credit so I would buy one thing with my card every month, Typically between $5-$20. Then you just pay the bill immediately when the bill comes out.
Over Time your credit score will increase and you will be able to get more credit. Once my credit got to about 650 I would apply for a new card every 3-6 months. This would cause my score to go down initially but normally in the long run my score would get even higher.
I have two basic rules to keep track of Credit card debt.
Rule 1. Only spend what you have. If I swipe for $20 I make sure I have that money in the bank before I swipe the credit card.
Rule 2. Only have an active balance on a maximum of two credit cards at the same time. This way when you alternate using cards for their benefits it’s easy to remember what bills to pay because you pay off the card before you start to use a different card.
Once your credit score is 700+ you will get approved for pretty much whatever you’re trying to get a loan for. I bought my first car with a 701 credit score with 7% interest. The interest was high at the time however you can sometimes negotiate a lower rate or refinance later.
Don’t Spend All Your Money
You should be able to control your spending with a budget. The best and most simple budget is the 50/30/20 budget.
50% – Needs – Bills, food, car, etc.
30% – Wants – Fast Food, expensive clothes, supplements, etc.
20% – Save/Invest
Realistically speaking your bills will probably be more than 50% however the basic fundamentals still apply 80/10/10 , 65/25/10, whatever the case is each category needs a percent.
In order to make things easy, make an Excel document to organize your spending and budget.
I Personally Do My Budgeting Differently.
I start with Saving and Investing. An automatic deposit into my second checking account ensures I always have money saved up. Then from that account an automatic deposit goes into my investing account.
Total percentage of my pay that goes to these things is a minimum of 20%.
I then split my spending into 3 categories
Regular Spending – This is any bill that is the exact same every month. Car Loan, Insurance, Netflix etc.
Irregular Spending – This is anything that could possibly change week to week. Going out money, supplements, Groceries.
(In this category I try to slightly overestimate my costs.)
Yearly Bills – Anything billed once a year Like Amazon Prime or a VPN service.
This pattern makes the most sense to me so I know what I can change and what will always be the same every month.
Educate Yourself
This is self explanatory… or is it?
When someone says to “go educate yourself” they are typically referring to college. I am not. I am speaking of a broad version of education. You need to learn more things. The reason why you need to learn more things is because knowledge is power.
The best example I can give you is the Bachelor’s Degree. Depending on what source you are looking at your average BA makes significantly more money than just a High School graduate.
“On an annual basis, median earnings for bachelor’s degree holders are $36,000 or 84 percent higher than those whose highest degree is a high school diploma”
On average someone with a BA will make 84% MORE than someone without it. That is significant and probably an inflated number. In my opinion it would be more realistic to say 30%-50% more depending on the specific job and degree.
You don’t have to go to college, however that is the most simple and easy path. There are many people who became successful because they self-educated themselves. A few of those people are Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs and many more. They all worked hard and taught themselves the skills they would need to succeed.
Don’t Drop Out
I am not advocating you dropout or quit school, I am merely giving an example. I personally believe that an individual should do as many things as possible to help their chances of success. If you have a good business idea or are good at investing (or want those things) I think you should still go to college and work on both ideas simultaneously. This will give you the highest odds of success. If your business idea flunks you will still have a college degree to rely on.
Read books and articles and do plenty of research on whatever it is you want to do. You should be devoting at least 1 hour of your day to your research. I research a lot into the stock market as well as real estate because those are things that I have seen to make people very successful. I also am in college to try and get my business degree which will also help me become successful. I have studied tax laws, charts, patterns, houses, apartment buildings, small businesses, big businesses, profitable businesses, businesses that went bankrupt and so many other things.
Do Your Research.
Invest
You need to Invest both your time and your money. These are fundamentally the same thing
Time = Money
People all over the world trade their time for money, and those same people trade back that money for time. Let’s say you work a 9-5 job and after tax you get about $10/hr. If you work 8 hours a day and 40 hours a week you would have $400 dollars. You take that money and buy food. You didn’t take the time to grow vegetables or raise livestock, you just went to the store and bought the finished product. Somebody else took the time to Grow that food and Raise the livestock, and because they spent that time they received money from the distributor who eventually re-sold the product to you at a higher price. The entire process of raising a chicken is about 12 weeks. Then it probably takes another week to butcher it and get it into the store. Let’s say a total of 20 weeks went into that chicken you bought at the store for $1.50 a pound.
Everyone trades Time for Money and Money for time. It’s all about your perspective and what you do with your time and money.
The trick is to get your Money to make more money so you don’t have to keep trading time…
How Do You Do That?
This is very simple assuming you followed the previous steps. You take your Good Credit, combine it with your good spending habits and your education and you should already know what you want to invest in and how you are going to do it.
I Invest in the stock market because it’s easy and you can do it with almost any amount of money.
This is a 10 year chart comparing the NASDAQ to the NASDAQ ETF known as QQQ.
This is not investment advice this is just an example.
Over The course of 10 Years QQQ has done 373% that averages to be about 37% yearly.
Clearly there is no guarantee that it will do the same thing for the next 10 years but lets check it out anyway. We are going to talk about compound interest and we are going to use the Hypothetical 37% as well as 18.5% because that is exactly half of the original.
Lets say You start investing at 18 Years old and you decide to do long term investing. You decide to deposit $100 a month for the next 15 years into you stock broker account. How much money will you have on your 33rd Birthday? Lets find out!
I will Assume the market only does HALF as good as previously so 18.5% yearly.
After only depositing $18,000 you end up with Over 76k!! Congrats! Now this may not seem like a lot of money but lets change it to $200 a month and see what happens.
Now Look at that! That’s a bit better. It would cost you 36k butttt you would end up with 152k. That’s enough for a small house!
Lets try this ONE MORE TIME. This time we will keep the $200 a month and the 15 years. Lets say the market magically does the 37% as previously noted.
NOW THAT’S NICE!
It still only Costs 36k but you end up with OVER 700k!
Clearly this is all theoretical but the point is there. Long term investing is very beneficial if you do good research and work hard.
Go ahead and see for yourselves the power of compound interest.
https://www.investor.gov/financial-tools-calculators/calculators/compound-interest-calculator
I personally Use Yahoo Finance to look at graphs but you can pretty much use any stock website.
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