Lesson: Decision Making & Happiness with Kevin Fishner

Step #10 Nihilism: Understand nihilism in order to prioritize your happiness

My philosophy on learning is that the most enjoyable conversations I have with others are people who are lifetime learners and excited to learn about what you're interested in or excited to learn about a new experience and tell you about it. I want to be that kind of person, so you get a lot of enjoyment in having a conversation.

The inspiration and the drive to get better is from Nihilism, and Nietzsche’s the most famous for this. The simplest way to explain it is when you expand time far enough, everything becomes meaningless. So let’s say this conversation, for instance, certainly will be valuable for the next year, hopefully 5, 10 years, but if you expand that out to the next 10,000 years, it's very unlikely that anyone will be able to find this. If you expand this for the next 100,000 years, again, it's very unlikely that someone would be able to find it, a million years 10 million, the scope of time is infinite.

So through that infinity, small periods of time have no meaning. Some would take Nihilism and say, "Okay, nothing that I do has any worth." But I take the opposite approach where nothing that you do would ever be seen by someone else, so make sure what you are doing is meaningful to you because you're the only one that's going to matter in the end.

Improvement is a way for me to show progress to myself. So if I wasn't doing anything, there would be no meaning. But by saying, "One month ago, I was a 1,000 chess score, but now I'm a 1,200 or 1,500,” it shows progress, and with that progress has meaning.

That wasn't a scary thing.