How I 10x'd my income and 0x'd my happiness
How I 10x'd my income and felt exactly the same.
For 2 years I lived on a grad school stipend. 40% of it went to a therapist.
The plan was simple: finish the degree, land a good-paying job, and then life would start. Then I wouldn't count every ruble. Then I'd buy the things I'd been putting off. Then I'd be happy.
2 years I held onto this. It helped me wake up at 7 AM for classes. Helped me not compare myself to consulting colleagues who were already flying to the Maldives. Helped me grind, stay focused, not get distracted.
Finished the degree. Got an offer from Yandex Taxi. Salary 10x my monthly expenses at the time.
First 2 weeks. First paycheck. Ding.
I sat down that evening, opened my banking app, stared at the number, and asked myself the question I'd been deferring for 3 years:
What should I spend this on to become happier?
I thought about it for a day. Then 2. Then 3.
Headphones. Sony WH-1000xm4.
That was it. I couldn't think of anything else. (Still use them every day, by the way.)
I was stunned. 3 years of rationing every expense. 3 years of telling myself "later." Later arrived, and I couldn't find a single thing to spend money on that would make me dramatically, noticeably, differently happy.
Not a little bit happier. Dramatically, as promised.
Just emptiness. Then shock. Then reluctant acceptance.
Time passed. I read, thought, talked to a lot of different people trying to understand what was wrong with my mental model.
Then I found the Naval Ravikant Almanack:
"Happiness is such an overloaded word. For me these days, happiness is more about peace than it is about joy. Peace is happiness at rest, and happiness is peace in motion."
For 3 years I wasn't looking for peace. I was waiting for joy, a spike, a rush. The hedonic treadmill in its cleanest form: buy something, feel good, adapt, need the next thing.
What I actually needed was peace.
Peace is the state where you have no impulse to change anything. No comparing yourself to others, no competing. Just accepting what's there.
The default state you get back to when you remove the constant feeling that something's missing. You don't add happiness. You stop subtracting it.
Once I understood this, I started noticing how rarely I actually get there.
Walking down the street: constant mental commentary. That person's better dressed. I want that car. The weather is terrible. Moscow in winter is awful.
Nonstop background noise of comparison and judgment. Everything measured against some imagined better version. Zero stillness.
I started practicing just accepting. The brain resists — it loves judging and comparing. But when you manage to switch that off even for 2 minutes, there's this genuine quiet. It's worth more than any headphones.
TL;DR
2 years of postponing life. Then it arrived and the happiness wasn't in it. Because happiness isn't getting what you wanted. It's stopping wanting.
Stay tuned 🥷🥷🥷