Freedom From Expectations

🧶 Tags:: #literature_Notes
🗃 Resources:: The Almanack of Naval Ravikant (2020)
2026-06-10

Don't spend your time making other people happy. Other people being happy is their problem. It's not your problem. If you are happy, it makes other people happy. If you're happy, other people will ask you how you became happy and they might learn from it, but you are not responsible for making other people happy.

I don't measure my effectiveness at all. I don't believe in self-measurement. I feel like this is a form of self-discipline, self-punishment, and self-conflict.

If you hurt other people because they have expectations of you, that's their problem. If they have an agreement with you, it's your problem. But if they have an expectation of you, that's completely their problem. It has nothing to do with you. The sooner you can dash their expectations, the better.