Review — Same as Ever Book
Hi friends, I would like to give my insights about the book Same as Ever by Morgen Housel.
We often hear the quote “Only things never change is everything changes” But there are certain things in the world that never be changed by the time. Examples: Human behaviour, greed, emotions, uncertainties in the world, etc.
Morgen Housel presented twenty-three Same as Ever chapters. I want to share a few of the concepts which inspired me.
Hanging by a Thread
If you know where we have been, you realize we have no idea where we are going.
Our lives and history are often shaped by random events which are completely out of our control.
During World War I, one of the American steamships was travelling from New York to Liverpool. The ship's captain shut down the fourth boiler to save money. But this decision would slow the ships’ voyage by one day.
Because of this delay, the American ship and German submarine sailed the same path and finally, the German submarine hit the American ship and twelve hundred passengers were killed.
This incident was the most important trigger for getting the public opinion of America to enter World War I.
If the fourth boiler had not shut down, the American ship would have been reached one day before it met the German submarine and they could have avoided World War I.
You can play this game all day. Every big story could have turned out differently if a few little puffs of nothingness had gone the other direction.
Every current event — Big or Small — has parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, siblings and cousins. Ignoring that family tree can muddy our understanding of events, giving a false impression of why things happened, how long they might last, and under what circumstances they might occur again.
People like to say, To know where we are going, you have to know where we have been. But more realistic is admitting that if you know where we have been, you realize we have no idea where we are going.
The second un-changeable rule is, “Expectations and Reality”.
Expectations and Reality
Once ninety-eight-year-old Chalie Munger was asked, You seem extremely happy and content. What is your secret to living a happy life? Munger replied:- The first rule of a happy life is low expectations. If you have unrealistic expectations you are going to be miserable your whole life. You want to have reasonable expectations and take life’s results, good and bad as they happen with a certain amount of stoicism.
Your happiness depends on your expectations more than anything else. So in a world that tends to get better for most people most of the time, an important life skill is getting the goalpost to stop moving. It is also one the the hardest.
The quality of life goes up, and people’s expectations also rise. Because those improvements also benefit other people around us, whose circumstances we anchor to.
Montesquieu wrote Two hundred and seventy-five years ago, “If you only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are”.
The third un-changeable rule is “The Best story wins”.
The Best story wins
Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1968, did not go according to plan.
King’s advisor and speechwriter, Clarence Jones, drafted a full speech for King to deliver, and based on that he started to deliver his speech.
The first few minutes of the king’s speech followed the script. The video shows him constantly looking down at his notes, and reading the script.
Just then, around halfway through the speech, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson — who was standing to kings’ left, maybe ten feet away. She shouted out “Tell them about the dream, Martin! Tell them about the dream!”
Then Martin, put aside his notes, grabs the lectern and looks out on more than 250,000 people. He took a six-second pause and said:
I have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal”.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
The rest is history. That portion of the speech which is most celebrated around the world is not the speech that he planned to give. King did not prepare this speech.
But this was one of the best stories ever told, evoking emotion and connecting the dots in millions of people’s heads in a way that changed history.
Sapiens is a famous book, by the author Yuval Noah Harari. He became a bestselling contemporary author.
He once agreed I did zero new research. I just read the kind of common knowledge and just presenting it in a new way. Sapiens is famous because of its beautiful writing. The best story wins.
Often, It is not what you say, but how you say it. That matters.
Not only these three chapters, I like all the 23 chapters in the book. If you have the habit of underlining the book, you will find something on every page to underline.
This is the one of best books I read this year.
Thank you for reading. Have a nice day!
