If you're ambitious, you've heard a thousand tips on how to live a happier, better life.

Forget all of them.

I grew up in a blue-collar family, and today I know lots of different billionaires.

I've met thousands of successful founders, and I've hired hundreds of people.

And across all of those lives, I've spotted patterns in the people who are most happy.

But instead of giving you another list on how to live well, I'm going to invert it.

Here are five guaranteed ways to live a miserable life.

Do the opposite, you might actually live a good one.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

Step number one, don't have a best friend. If you want to be miserable, tons and tons of acquaintances will do just fine. One of my favorite philosophers to read about is Aristotle, and he broke friendships into three different types. The first is utility. And these are friends where you get something out of them. For example, money, favors, connections. Basically, once the usefulness ends so does the friendship this is

sort of like co-workers the second is pleasure and these are friends that exist just for fun you get

together you party you have a good time and then once that ends you're done it's basically like

when you were three years old and you play with another friend once the play date is over the

friendship is over and finally virtue these are the rarest and most valuable.

These are people who you admire and they admire you back and they make each other feel

better and you stick with them no matter what.

In modern terms, they're your best friends.

If you want to have a great life, focus on that last category.

The good news, according to Aristotle, is that you only

need one to three best friends. I've got three. It's Jack, Ramon, and Neville. If you ever seen that movie The Town where Ben Affleck, he goes into his buddy's room and he says, I need your help, we're going to hurt someone, and I can't tell you what it is, and you can never ask about it. and then the guy responds with, sounds good, whose car are we going to take?

That's Ramon. I've got one of those friends. A grown man calling another grown man his best friends and me telling them I love him, make fun of me all you want. But knowing that these guys have my back and have my best interest in mind, it makes me sleep like a baby. Now, I want to show you a study that proves my point. So for the last 85 years, Harvard has been running this study, which is now the longest study of adult life ever done, and they tracked hundreds of people from youth all the way to old age. The Atlantic, they put together a 15,000-word article all about this study. It's a wonderful article,

...