"Who can doubt...that life is the gift of the immortal gods, but that living well is the gift of philosophy?" -Seneca
We hear it time and time again: enjoy the process. A step further, many esteemed individuals hold fast to the idea that success requires an enjoyment of, or at least a commitment to, the process. While true for anyone who seeks to accomplish anything of note, we needn’t isolate the significance of process only to pursuits of particular feats of achievement. Contentment in life itself and in its component parts requires an acknowledgement of the following: much of life is process. Much of life is the in between. Life can be milestones (particularly when we imagine the reel of our lives), but most of life’s experiential content is what happens between them—the small comprising and enabling the context for the big. Life is as much ceremonies and summits as are the days of hoping, seeking, sulking, and training that went into them. Life is the whole and the parts, the beginning, middle, and end. It’s you on vacation and the you working diligently before and after it. It’s the business launch and the buildup, as the latter is where the meaningful work took place.
Living well requires the diligent referencing of our own internal barometer. Bombarded with imagery of what living "should" look like, it becomes critical to determine what it looks like for us, and at times even more revealingly, what it doesn’t.
Read more“We must act with all urgency, then, not only because we are drawing closer to death at every moment, but also because our power to understand things and pay close attention to them gives out before the end.” -Marcus Aurelius
Many of us are familiar with the phrase, “tyranny of the urgent.” Made popular by the book of the same name, it’s the descriptor for what happens when the emergence of some immediate need (commonly referred to in the corporate world as a “fire”) monopolizes our attention and temporarily supersedes our larger, potentially more important pursuits. It’s called tyranny because of the sense of helplessness that often accompanies these tasks, convincing us we've no other choice but to tend to them. A similar sensation occurs when we’re approaching any sort of deadline. Wrought with anxiety over the consequences of not meeting it, we rally our best efforts and resources to see the project through within the established timeline. As such, the result is astounding: the task gets completed.
There are few things more powerful, more focused, than a person who has to do something, be it for their career, survival, or otherwise. When called to operate at a specific level within specific time bounds to achieve a specific task, we become near-unstoppable.
Read more"In general remember that it is we who torment, we who make difficulties for ourselves—that is, our opinions do." -Epictetus
If you’ve been exposed to any semblance of motivational jargon, you’ve heard the following adage more than once: be fearless. Don’t let fear rule you! Fear is the enemy! The irony of preaching fearlessness as the answer is that achieving this clichéd state isn’t what induces action. Fear itself does that. It could be argued that without fear, we wouldn’t actually do anything. Some of our greatest accomplishments come after moments in which we were filled to the brim with fear—that project launch, that presentation, that pressing question that changed everything. It’s the very harnessing of this fear that leads us to astounding ourselves. With that in mind, it may be safe to conclude that “fearlessness" isn’t what we need; a set of right fears is.
Read more"Let us cut out all distractions and work away at this alone for fear that otherwise we may be left behind and only eventually realize one day the swiftness of the passage of this fleeting phenomenon, time, which we are powerless to hold back. Every day as it comes should be welcomed and reduced forthwith into our own possession as if it were the finest day imaginable. What flies past has to be seized at." -Seneca
Imagine a world where, in each moment, you were acutely aware of the swiftness of the passage of time. There’s a human tendency to only acknowledge this swiftness in retrospect. How am I already ___ years old? I can’t believe it’s already midway through the year. Can you believe we graduated ___ years ago? And not only is the acknowledgement of time’s passage usually in retrospect, but it’s typically in an air of lamenting. We lament the fact that we’re already so old, or that we’re already out of that situation that we’re now suddenly certain was ideal. Luckily for us, the Stoics had a solution to this perpetual melancholic nostalgia: in all circumstances, remember that everything is always changing; love this fact and live accordingly.
Read more"For nothing should be done without an end in view." -Marcus Aurelius
Imagine having an aim to your life so meaningful and suited to your desires and strengths that every experience feels pointed and purposeful. Imagine being so dedicated to that aim that you know instantly when something isn’t in line with it, and you exit accordingly.
The opposite isn't so hard to imagine either. You regularly find yourself exhausted and unamused; your focus rarely extends beyond that of the immediately gratifying.
Read more"Just as a well-filled day brings a blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death.” -Leonardo Da Vinci
What’s incredible about this quote is its simultaneous simplicity and profundity. There’s a good chance that, if you’re reading this right now, you’re alive. That very fact holds you accountable to having a philosophy for your life, and living it out as best you can. And I don’t mean that in some weak-mannered, in-the-clouds, Joel Osteen “Life Your Best Life Now” type of way. I mean literally--have you taken ownership of your life? Or would your experience be best depicted as just floating from opportunity to opportunity?
Read moreWhy does philosophy matter? The answer to this is as complex as it is simple, and for the purposes of kicking things off, we’ll start simple. Philosophy matters because whether consciously or subconsciously, some philosophy is guiding your life. Depending on how much control you’ve taken over your guiding philosophy, this fact should be either wonderfully empowering or completely horrifying. So, if there is indeed a philosophy guiding your life (be it one of your conscious choosing or not), why wouldn’t we want to take complete control over which one? Philosophy, in my opinion, is best defined as this- the set of thoughts and ideas that inform how we perceive our lives and the world at-large.
Read more