The Inversion Question

We all try and think oh, what should we do to become happier, smarter, healthier or richer etc. It seems like a reasonable way to ask the question to get to where you want to go. But what if we also used the inversion question to answer the goal you are after? It’s quite counterintuitive and all you are doing is asking the opposite of what you want. It’s looking at the question with a different lens from the opposite view.

Let’s take a common questions, “How do I become happy?”… to answer that there are so many possibilities.

IF we instead ask, “How do I become utterly unhappy?”

1. Zero exercise.
2. Staying indoors all the time.
3. Eating tons of processed foods and sugar.
4. Uninspiring work.
5. Spending time with boring friends. (See People are energy)
6. Watch a lot of Netflix & spend your free time on Social Media (FB, IG, etc)

I’ve been using this concept for a while. It reminds of what Annie Duke, writes about in her book, “Thinking in Bets”, about pre-mortems and backcasting.

So by avoiding those six things then you have figured out a large chunk of what to do you maintain your happiness levels.