How to live an asymmetric life

If you're ambitious, you've heard a thousand tips on how to live a happier, better life. Forget all of them. I grew up in a blue collar family, and today, I know lots of different billionaires. I've met thousands of successful founders, and I've hired hundreds of people. And across all of those lives, I've spotted patterns in the people who are most happy. But instead of giving you another list on how to live well, I'm going to invert it. Here are five guaranteed ways to live a miserable life. Do the opposite, you might actually live a good one. Step number one, don't have a best friend. If you wanna be miserable, tons and tons of acquaintances will do just fine. One of my favorite philosophers to read about is Aristotle, and he broke friendships into three different types. The first is utility, and these are friends where you get something out of them. For example, money, favors, connections. Basically, once the usefulness ends, so does the friendship. This is sort of like coworkers. The second is pleasure, and these are friends that exist just for fun. You get together, you party, you have a good time, and then once that ends, you're done. It's basically like when you were three years old and you play with another friend. Once the play date is over, the friendship is over. And finally, virtue. These are the rarest and most valuable. These are people who you admire and they admire you back, and they make each other feel better and you stick with them no matter what. In modern terms, they're your best friends. If you wanna have a great life, focus on that last category. The good news, according to Aristotle, is that you only need one to three best friends. I've got three. It's Jack, Ramon, and Neville. If you ever seen that movie, The Town, where Ben Affleck, he goes into his buddy's room and he says, I need your help. We're gonna hurt someone, and I can't tell you what it is, and you can never ask about it. And then the guy responds with, sounds good. Whose car are we gonna take? That's Ramon. I've got one of those friends. A grown man calling another grown man his best friends and me telling them I love him. Make fun of me all you want. But knowing that these guys have my back and have my best interest in mind, it makes me sleep like a baby. Now I wanna show you a study that proves my point. So for the last eighty five years, Harvard has been running the study, which is now the longest study of adult life ever done, and they tracked hundreds of people from youth all the way to old age. The Atlantic, they put together a 15,000 word article all about this study. It's a wonderful article, but I'm gonna save you the time and tell you exactly what the …