Ryan Daniel Moran explains why successful people like Chris Cornell and Robin Williams stayed unhappy: our brains constantly compare ourselves to others and hunt for problems. As you achieve more, your baseline shifts and expectations rise. He suggests active appreciation practices like journaling and daily gratitude to break the cycle.
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What's the reason why people get successful and are still unhappy? And how do you maintain happiness even when you get successful? The week that I'm recording this, there was a tragedy in the world. A guy named Chris Cornell, the lead singer of Audioslave and Soundgarden, committed suicide. And there's some people who are, you know, saying it was the medication that gave him the thought to kill himself. But it got me thinking about people who from the outside look like they have everything and yet are miserable inside. I think of somebody like Robin Williams. Robin Williams was beloved by the world. He was rich, he was famous, everyone loved him. He made millions and millions of people happy. And yet inside he was unfulfilled. And he took his life. If you look at certain areas of the world, particularly in areas of affluence, by the way, if you look at LA.
Versus the Dominican Republic, if you've ever been to the Dominican Republic, they have nothing. And they're so appreciative of everything. If you've been to any third world country where they have nothing, it's been my experience that their level of happiness is higher compared to people in the average person in la, for example, where it is all about what you look like, what you drive, what you do for a living. And here is the reason why our brains really only know how to do a couple things. It's find problems and it's compare. Now our brains make all of its evaluations based on comparison because it has to find a baseline somewhere. So one of the reasons why I think young people, particularly now, are viewed as spoiled and ungrateful, although that's been the case with every generation. But maybe particularly now, who knows, is because they don't have a baseline of what it means to suffer, of what it means to have nothing. I was in Ohio, which is where I'm from. I was visiting my grandparents who are in their late 80s, and my grandparents grew up in the Depression era. So their baseline for what they have is not to even have 2 ply toilet paper, right? I might be exaggerating, but they're used to a certain level of what they have, so they appreciate everything. My grandma said to me, I'm getting near the end of my life and I'm so complete with the life that I've had, the Lord can take me anytime because I have had a great life and I am so grateful for that now. My grandma raised five kids, one of whom was disabled. She lived in a 12 to 1500 square foot house for most of her life in Cleveland. Ohio did not trust travel much. I don't know that she's ever left the country. And she is so grateful for the life that she has had. Her baseline, her baseline for what she has is very low because of how she grew up. In the same way.
Our brains compare beauty, progress, our brains compare richness, happiness, all based on comparison. What you are comparing things to. I have a mentor. His name is Travis. He's one of my oldest mentors. Oldest, meaning he's been mentoring me for about 10 years now. And Travis says every time I'm having a bad day or I'm feeling down on myself, I ask myself one question, and it's who am I comparing myself to? Because your brain evaluates things based on the delta, based on the change. Am I rich or am I poor? Well, depending on who I compare myself to, that will give me the net score. That will give me the delta in which I will determine if I am happy, rich, or poor. That, by the way, is the reason why I bought this car. I bought this Tesla because growing up there was. You didn't buy new cars. As far as I know, I might be the first person in my family to buy a brand new car and drive it off the lot. And when I bought a brand new car, I bought a shiny with leather seats, double sunroof, turbocharged kia Sportage for $30,000. And I kept up at night thinking about that $30,000 that I spent, because that was diff. That was. That was out of my comfort zone, if you will. So when it was time for me to replace Bruce, who I still own, who I still love, still love Bruce to this day, I bought this car, I bought Tesla because I wanted, every time I got behind the wheel, for my brain to normalize, for my brain to create a baseline of a certain level of expectation.
So success is this process of constantly stretching that baseline of what we compare ourselves to. But there's a danger, and this is why successful people are unhappy. The danger is when you raise your expectations, when you raise your baseline. Now you have a. You have a different level of comparison, and you're comparing ahead. So you're always playing this losing game of comparing yourself to where you want to go rather than where you came from. And we play this game of always comparing ourselves to people who we perceive as ahead of us because we've normalized the baseline that we have risen to. So this is the solution. This is how you stay hungry and humble and happy. I know a few people, a few people. People in my life who have the rare combination of being incredibly success minded but also happy. And they practice active appreciation sometime every day. Whether it's journaling, whether it's speaking it, whether it is prayer, whether it is through meditation, they are practicing active appreciation, which means looking at the things in our life and appreciating it for all that it has brought to us. Consciously. The fact that if you're an entrepreneur, you get to create your own reality. Even though being an entrepreneur can be super stressful and super intimidating, you get to create your own reality. And the way that I evaluate the things that I want to be appreciative or that I need to appreciate is if something was taken away from me, what would I absolutely pine for? For example, right now I'm in the neighborhood where I used to have a house here in South Austin. And I hated this house. I don't know why I moved there. I didn't like it. Never a day did I appreciate this house. But when I drive past it, there's a sense of longing. There's a sense of wanting to be.
Back in that house, of longing for those memories that I had there. Which is weird because I hated that house. I didn't enjoy it at all. So why does that happen? Well, it happens because we tend to look for problems in the moment and miss the things like ignore the things that we will miss later. So what are the things that if they were taken away from us? If I had lost that house, would I long for it? I do now sometimes. If anything happened to my daughter, all I would want would be to have my baby girl back. All that I would want is to have her back. So I should be freaking out, out every day in happiness because she's been given back to me, because I've never lost her. If I.
Stopped being an entrepreneur, if I was injured in an accident and I couldn't walk, if I lost a family member who was close to me, all I would want would be to have that thing back. And if you practice that active appreciation, that's how you will stay humble and happy, yet be hungry for what it is that you want to build. What if taken away from you, would you pine for? Would you long for? That's the thing. That's the thing that you are overlooking on a regular basis. That's where you need to practice active appreciation. And that's how you achieve success and long term happiness.
