This is more easily understood with an example. Let’s say your end state was to get a new job. You identified your key tasks: find good opportunities, update your resume, submit applications, prepare for interviews, etc. You executed them well and were offered a good position. Your mission was a success but for some reason it doesn’t excite you the way you thought it would. The suffering is hidden right there at the end of the sentence “the way I thought it would.”

Your end state must be specific and controllable, you cannot control your emotions and therefore they must be omitted from your end state. You cannot make yourself feel a certain way, so don’t try.

I know this seems insane, but just stick with me. This is a principle called non-striving and it is taught in some shape or form in nearly every widely practiced religion. It is complex and we will come back to it many times. It runs through almost everything we will discuss on this page. Here is what you need to know right now: any expectation built around how an event should make you feel is a mission you are doomed to fail.

Not because emotions don’t matter but because they are not within your control. Go confidently about the key tasks you have identified and let go of how the results should make you feel. Don’t look for happiness in external things and events, it isn’t there. Ask yourself this: can I be ok with feeling sad? If your mind immediately said “F*** no!” Ask it “Why not?”

“Is it reasonable to expect to feel happy all the time?”

“If I let go of attachment to my emotions, what would be left?”

I will give you the answer to this one, and please just believe me for now. When you let go and stay present with things exactly the way they are, there is peace and under that peace there is great joy.

Trust me, this is much more easily said than done, but we will work on it together. Don’t think too hard about it, this is a problem your brain can’t solve. There is a much greater intelligence in you than your brain, you will find the answer there. For the next two weeks just do this exercise. As best as you can, try to notice your brain’s habitual tendency to immediately judge everything that happens to you as either good or bad. Try to do this throughout the entire day but at first it will be very helpful if you set aside specific time, maybe five minutes, to do it actively. Make it time when your brain is not engaged in some type of complex task. Getting yourself ready for the day in the morning is a good option for most people. Once you have tried, please come back to the group and tell us your experience.

Lastly, do not let this be a one time exercise, do your best to continue it indefinitely. This page, at its core, is about helping you to live your happiest life. That will naturally require a balance between spiritual and practical. These skills build on each other. They are interwoven and mutually enhancing. Come back to this post, and any other when you need to refresh the idea or engage with the group.

To let go means to give up coercing, resisting, or struggling, in exchange for something more powerful and wholesome which comes out of allowing things to be as they are without getting caught up in your attraction to or rejection of them, in the intrinsic stickiness of wanting, of liking and disliking. It’s akin to letting your palm open to unhand something you have been holding on to.

- Jon Kabat-Zinn

My uncle said this to me at an otherwise uneventful family party. It may not be elegant but it is true.

We haven’t talked about this yet, but I am a veteran and still an active member of the National Guard. So let me talk Army to you for a minute.

The Army uses something called an Operations Order (“OPORD”, pronounced Op-Ord) to direct units to execute a mission. It is a long, dry, painstakingly detailed document that contains all the necessary instructions to accomplish a complex task. They are essential to the Army planning process and are an extremely effective tool. The only problem is, no one reads them. Except for one part. Everyone who is in the know reads the Commander’s Intent, which is generally made up of two subsections: key tasks and the desired end state.

Key tasks are what you are directed to do. The desired end state describes the conditions that must exist at the conclusion of the mission for it to be considered a success. Here is the critical part, if the end state is met, the mission is a success regardless of whether the key tasks were accomplished. Very often we get too caught up in the tasks and forget about the end state and that is what makes us miserable.

Let me give you an example. After college my friends and I were scattered all over the country. Five years passed and I had fallen out of touch with one of them. He moved back to Virginia, I was living in New Jersey, so we made plans to meet up. We had a great plan, food, drinks, an excursion to Washington DC, etc.

But we botched the execution. Too much whiskey on night number 1 erased a whole weekend of plans. All we did was sit around the house and have some laughs about the good old days.

Driving home I remember feeling like we had blown it. But we didn’t; I had just gotten caught up in the tasks, and forgotten about the end state: Reconnect with an old friend.

Apply this to everything in your life: your career, your relationships, your goals. Before anything important, take a few moments and define two things: your key tasks, which are important but not essential, and your desired end state, which is how you will determine if your mission was a success. Don’t neglect the key tasks, they are important, but keep them subordinate to the end state.

One final thing. Your end state must be specific and controllable. For this reason, emotions must be omitted. You cannot force yourself to feel a certain way and therefore it cannot be part of your end state. Go confidently about the key tasks you have defined and let go of how those things are supposed to make you feel, allow yourself to experience them exactly as they are. This is more easily said than done. It is one of the most important concepts we will discuss on this page. Don’t worry about it for now, we will come back to this in detail in the next one.

At the end of the day, ask yourself one question: have the events which took place brought me closer to my desired end state? Closer to your definition of riches which we spoke about a few weeks ago. That is the question that needs answering. It will not be a straight line from here to there, that’s all right, don’t get caught up in the little stuff. Achieve the end state within the bounds of legal, moral and ethical service and your mission is a success.

It [the commander’s intent] is usually the shortest of all paragraphs, but it is always the most important, because it states—or it should—just what the commander intends to achieve. It is the one overriding expression of will by which everything in the order and every action by every commander and soldier in the army must be dominated.

-Field Marshall William Joseph Slim

I call it the ownership statement. It is the essential denial of your ego that you must embrace before you can accomplish your dreams. It sounds simple, but it’s not. Most people think they already do it, but they don’t.

A lot of people get defensive when I say this and I understand why. I am not saying that there are no factors outside of your control. There are. Financial hardship, physical/mental disability and many other factors are real and out of your control. What I am saying is that any time or energy you spend focused on the things you cannot control is a waste, and it will stifle your progress whether it is true or not.

Here is how I learned this. I am not a morning person. Never was. After college I found myself in a situation where I had to wake up early to maintain my physical conditioning. There simply wasn’t enough time in the evenings for me to workout consistently. At first I told myself it was too hard. That I was stressed and busy and the situation wasn’t fair. I had convinced myself that it wasn’t my fault; but of course it was. I decided I had to try, if after a little while I decided it really was too hard then at least I would be in control. I would have decided to give up, not had my fitness stolen from me.

That first morning everything in me told me I didn’t need to get up. That it was too early and I was pushing my body too hard. That I didn’t sleep well and I could try again tomorrow. It was just me though, if I didn’t get up it would be because I chose to and for no other reason. I pushed myself up and guess what? There was no external force that pushed me back down, it was just me and my thoughts.

Now people call me an early bird. They say “I could never do that, I’m just not a morning person.” I don’t argue with them. I just remind myself that I wasn’t born this way either. I am this way because I chose to be.

Your baseline assumption has to be, everything that happens to me is my fault. Not because that is always completely true. But because it is the only position from which you can take control over your life. You don’t have to look very far to find amazing stories of people who have overcome unbelievable hardships to realize that no challenge is too hard for the human spirit. So trust me, whatever it is, it is your fault. Or don’t. But if you don’t I bet 5 years from now you will still be telling yourself it is not your fault, and it still will be.

We’ll come back to that but first let’s talk about getting rich.

You probably assumed I meant financially wealthy. That’s what we all want, isn’t it? I don’t think so. I think for a lot of us “rich” is a catchall term we use for a life that will make us happy. The problem with that is it makes what we are looking for unclear, which leaves us searching for something we can’t find- because we don’t know what it is.

We should stop doing that. If someone offered you a life where you love what you do and are well respected by the people around you. Where you are physically healthy and in relationships that fulfil you. Where you have the time and energy to pursue the things that are most important to you; and where you are truly, genuinely happy but broke as hell. Would you take that deal?

I would.

The point is this, it is necessary to define what your most fulfilling life looks like. Rich, in the way I’m going to use it here, is the combination of perspective, peace of mind, financial security and personal freedom that brings you the greatest possible amount of satisfaction. The specific mix will be different for everyone. But if you don’t know what yours looks like, I promise you won’t find it.

So here is where we start. Write down what your version of rich looks like. It doesn’t have to be a 20-year financial plan with milestones and benchmarks. It actually shouldn’t be. Think more broadly about the qualities and characteristics of a life that you believe will bring you the greatest amount of happiness. Remember where you wrote it so you can reference it in the future to see if you are still moving in the right direction.

I can’t tell you what your list will look like, but I would bet it looks something like:

• I feel loved and respected by the people I surround myself with

• I feel like I have challenged myself and accomplished something of value

• I have the financial security to pursue the goals and hobbies which are most important to me

• I feel like I have a positive impact on my community/the world

• I have peace of mind because I am able to cope with the events of my life

• I have fun and am able to enjoy the experiences that make up my life

I will leave you with one final thing. Even achieving everything you want will not make you happy. Nothing on its own can make you happy. Achieving these things will help, but they won’t get you all the way there. The final and most essential step is developing a mindset that allows you to appreciate your life without wanting it to be different than it is. We will come back to this many times. For now, just remember that if you don’t know where you are going you definitely won’t get there.

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