Late last year, Charlie Munger, vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett’s longtime friend and business partner, died too young in November 2023 at age 99. Throughout their tenure at the helm of Berkshire, he and Warren Buffett oversaw a staggering growth of approximately 2,000,000% from the company’s initial value, equivalent to an impressive 20,000-fold increase. This remarkable achievement occurred because they strategically invested the company’s capital in a diversified portfolio of thriving enterprises, all without resorting to excessive borrowing. A remarkable success story derived from indefatigable minds and unrelenting discipline. 

Apart from his collaborative efforts in leading Berkshire and engaging in various business and philanthropic endeavors, Charlie was renowned for his adept and versatile intellect. Having received training as an Army-Air Force meteorologist during World War II and later pursuing a legal education, Munger transitioned to a business-focused career. His intellectual prowess extended across diverse fields, and he was known to be in a perpetual search for an understanding of how the world works and how the people within it operate. Charlie Munger simply never stopped learning because he recognized that life never stops teaching. 

Munger’s perspectives on business and life exhibit rare and consistent precision, and trustworthy authenticity. His speeches and writings from the past continue to resonate logically and remain valid today, rooted in the profound wisdom of acquaintance with and mastery of consciousness and absorption. Acquired knowledge from study; acquired wisdom from observation. 

As I was setting down to make my New Year’s resolutions this year, a ruminant annual process that reminds me that I’m never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream, I started thinking long and hard about what I didn’t want to be or do. My to-do list started to drift to more of a don’t do list, and my resolutions started to become deliverances resembling “anti-resolutions.” 

It was amazing how much easier it was creating an anti-New Year’s resolution list that had me focused on the person I do not want to be rather than the person that I wanted to be. It became a list focused on getting it right—pruning old goals, identifying signs of self-sabotage, drawing boundaries, reforming unproductive habits, etc. A roadmap focused on getting to the right destination by removing as many roadblocks and detours as possible. It occurred to me that the best way to ensure things add up in my life was to start subtracting. Unfollowing and unfriending a form of myself that I didn’t want to be. 

To complicate is easy. To simplify is difficult. Simplifying your life through anti-resolutions is about focusing on what is truly important to you and removing all of the things that stand in the way of your focus on the important things. Eliminating the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak. Knowing when and how to let things go and understanding that some things cost way more when we keep them. For me, that meant getting back to climbing mountains instead of carrying them. 

One of my favorite Munger speeches is his now internet famous “How to Guarantee a Life of Misery” graduation speech delivered to The Harvard School (an elite college preparatory school in LA) on June 13, 1986. My anti-resolution process inevitably led me to revisit this speech as a means of clearing my perceptions, recovering my capacity for pure observation and action, and eschewing misery for happiness. Avoiding misery really started to punctuate my anti-resolution list. 

Reflecting on the prospect of giving a speech to an audience which included his son as a recent graduate, Charlie, in his characteristic manner, took a unique approach. Instead of contemplating what should be said to garner love and appreciation, he harked back to the twenty graduation speeches he had witnessed over the years. One particular speech that left a lasting impression on him was by Johnny Carson, a Hollywood icon. Carson's speech intriguingly presented a “Prescription for Getting Guaranteed Misery in Life.” Inspired by this, Charlie decided to share an expanded version of Carson’s wisdom during his own address. Carson succinctly outlined three definite factors he believed would inevitably lead to a life of misery: the consumption of substances in an attempt to alter mood or perception, the corrosive effects of envy, and the destructive force of resentment. By solely fixating on these three elements, one could effectively attain the most miserable life they could desire.

Charlie Munger, deeply impressed by Carson’s insights, took it upon himself to further elaborate on this perspective. In doing so, he introduced four additional ingredients that, according to him, would absolutely guarantee a path to misery:

“First, be unreliable. Do not faithfully do what you have engaged to do. If you will only master this one habit you will more than counterbalance the combined effect of all your virtues, howsoever great. If you like being distrusted and excluded from the best human contribution and company, this prescription is for you. Master this one habit and you can always play the role of the hare in the fable, except that instead of being outrun by one fine turtle you will be outrun by hordes and hordes of mediocre turtles and even by some mediocre turtles on crutches.

…

My second prescription for misery is to learn everything you possibly can from your own personal experience, minimizing what you learn vicariously from the good and bad experience of others, living and dead. This prescription is a sure-shot producer of misery and second-rate achievement.

You can see the results of not learning from others’ mistakes by simply looking about you… I recommend as a memory clue to finding the way to real trouble from heedless, unoriginal error the modern saying: “If at first you don’t succeed, well, so much for hang gliding.” The other aspect of avoiding vicarious wisdom is the rule for not learning from the best work done before yours. The prescription is to become as non-educated as you reasonably can.

…

My third prescription for misery is to go down and stay down when you get your first, second, third severe reverse in the battle of life. Because there is so much adversity out there, even for the lucky and wise, this will guarantee that, in due course, you will be permanently mired in misery.

…

My final prescription to you for a life of fuzzy thinking and infelicity is to ignore a story they told me when I was very young about a rustic who said: “I wish I knew where I was going to die, and then I’d never go there.” Most people smile at the rustic’s ignorance and ignore his basic wisdom. If my experience is any guide, the rustic’s approach is to be avoided at all cost by someone bent on misery. To help fail you should discount as mere quirk, with no useful message, the method of the rustic, which is the same one used in Carson’s speech.”

Munger’s whole speech can be read here. To summarize, the Seven Rules for A Life of Misery are: 

1. Let addiction take over: consume chemicals to alter your mood or perception
2. Envy others 
3. Be resentful
4. Be unreliable
5. Don’t learn from past mistakes or the mistakes of others 
6. Give up when adversity hits
7. Don’t think backward (don’t think about problems in reverse)

The crucial, final message conveyed was to “Invert, always invert,” a life-defining principle of analysis that Munger stood by. For those not inclined towards embracing a life of misery, Johnny Carson and Charlie Munger employed a unique strategy: they flipped the question of how to be happy on its head. While Carson may not have been certain about the precise factors leading to a happy life, his own experiences guided him in identifying what didn’t contribute to happiness. The rationale was simple: by steering clear of the elements that induce non-happiness, one could pave the way for a genuinely happy life. This is the essence of Munger’s brilliant speech—the recognition that, instead of directly pursuing happiness, one can strategically focus on sidestepping the sources of misery to foster a fulfilling and joyful existence. Resultingly, he gave me a great start to the anti-resolution checklist. Extreme hopes can be born from examining extreme misery. 



While I’m not going to get into the weeds on just what my anti-New Year’s resolution looks like, I can tell you that my year will be a success or failure based upon how well I can avoid misery. And that gives me hope and empowerment, for misery is always self-created. Misery is caused by you, only by you and nobody else but you. And nobody deserves misery. 

Very truly yours,