Warren Buffett’s Simple Strategy to Improve Your Overall Happiness

Warren Buffett, the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, has been on this planet for 93 years and has seen it all. Even though his net worth is over $100 billion, he’s got an interesting perspective on achieving happiness.

So, what is the secret to his happiness? He said his needs are very simple, and what made him happy at 40 still makes him happy at 90. For instance, Buffett still lives in the same modest house he bought in 1958 for just $31,500 in Omaha.

What Buffett would change to live a happier life

But is there anything Buffett would change to make his happy life even happier? Yes. Sort of. During a lecture he gave at the University of Florida’s school of business circa 1998, an MBA student asked how he’d approach things if he had to do it all over again, to which he replied, somewhat sarcastically:

This will sound disgusting, but the only thing would be to select a gene pool where people lived to 120 or something where I came from.

The rest of his response revealed that his personal philosophy about happiness has very little to do with longevity. In fact, if he were given the option to go back and live life “all over again,” he probably wouldn’t take it.

He told the audience to imagine a barrel with roughly 5.8 billion balls — one for everybody in the world. Each ball will determine essential factors (e.g., birthplace, IQ level, gender, ethnicity, skills, parents) in your “new life.”

If you could put your ball back into the barrel, and they took out 100 balls at random — and you had to pick from one of those, would you put your ball back in?

In addition to not knowing which ball you’ll get, there’s another catch: “Of those 100 balls, five of them will be American. So if you want to be in this country, you’ll only have five balls to choose from,” Buffett explained. “Half of them will be women and half men. Half of them will be below average in intelligence and half above average in intelligence.”

The luckiest 1 percent

He asked the students again: Do you still want to risk taking a second shot at life?

“Most of you won’t want to put your ball back,” he said. “So what you’re really saying is, ‘I’m the luckiest 1 percent of the world right now, sitting in this room — the top 1 percent of the world.”

And that’s precisely how Buffett feels. He added:

I’m lucky to be born where I was because it was 50 to one in the United States when I was born. I’ve been lucky to be wired in a way that, in a market economy, pays off like crazy for me.

Buffett acknowledged that not everyone is as fortunate as him, as it all depends on the system one is born into.

He concluded his lecture by urging the audience to think about happiness from a practical perspective. He emphasized that we cannot relive our lives but can improve our overall happiness by changing our careers, goals, finances, health, and relationships.

“The way to do it is to play out the game and do something you enjoy all your life,” he said. 

He continued: “I urge you to work in jobs you love. You’re out of your mind if you keep taking jobs that you don’t like because you think it’ll look good on your résumé.”