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How to succeed in life?

To succeed in life is to occupy a high social position.
Succeeding in life means managing, through work on yourself, to become capable of making decisions that are not the product of social ambition and beliefs. This allows, and leads, to establish sincere relationships.

Default human behavior

In the absence of an education that elevates him, of exceptional circumstances that transform him, or of particular predispositions, the life of a human is limited on the whole to trying to acquire privileges, to preserve them, and to transmit them to his or her family. descendants. This clearly aligns with the goal of achieving success in life. This objective corresponds to a moderate interest, even contempt, for the truth.

The limits of succeeding in life

To succeed in life, you have to have a lot of fake friends. Fake friends are part of the game of alliances. The price to pay is to live in anguish and frustration, because the game of alliances is fickle. Moreover, the pleasures brought by success in life, wealth, power, honors, are frustrating, because they always demand more (Epicurus).
Conversely, when we seek to succeed in life, money is just a constraint, which can be strong when circumstances are unfavorable, or when needs are too great.

The great individual choice of a life is therefore: will my life be dominated by my instincts linked to my genetic heritage, or will a resolute philosophical attitude allow me to overcome them.

If we let ourselves be guided by our instincts, the driving force is social ambition, and we seek more to succeed in life than to succeed in life. The ultimate objective is then one's own satisfaction, and the others find themselves reduced to the state of means, with which alliances of circumstances are made. Coercion, victimization and lies are then fully part of the tools available to win the game of alliances, and we only seek to maintain a respectable facade.

Recipe for success in life

The method proposed for achieving success in life, that is to say, going beyond our simple genetic heritage through reason and work, consists of applying the recommendations of three great thinkers: Epictetus, Krishnamurti and Epicurus.

The action dimension - Epictetus - the right attitude

Epictetus' doctrine can be summarized in the form: when faced with a problem, separate what depends on you from what does not depend on you. Fight with all your strength, your determination, and your intelligence on the part that depends on you, and do not worry about the part that does not depend on you.

This method is the only one that allows you to achieve ataraxia, that is to say feel at peace. When we don't do it, we attach ourselves to the final result, which obviously often does not completely depend on us, so we live in dissatisfaction, frustration and anxiety linked to our own helplessness. We are then led to try to hide all this from ourselves through ever greater and futile pleasures which become an addiction.
Epictetus simply reminds us that the goal is not so much to succeed as to have no regrets in the event of failure.

Motto: “Do what you must, come what may.” »
Quote from Marcus Aurelius: “May the strength be given to me to endure what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be, but also the wisdom to distinguish one from the other. »

The dimension of reason - Krishnamurti - living in reality

For Krishnamurti, as for Buddhists in general, the spiritual approach consists mainly of getting rid of beliefs, to be able to look at the facts without prejudice.

C'est le parfait complément d'Epictète. Epictète nous dit ce qu'il convient de faire, Krishnamurti nous dit comment se préparer à le faire bien. La démarche de se débarrasser progressivement des croyances est la seule efficace pour rendre satisfaisante la résolution de la dissonance cognitive.
Elle suppose tout d'abord de travailler à minimiser les émotions négatives associées dans notre mémoire à certaines circonstances, et de dépasser ainsi ses peurs instinctives.
Elle suppose ensuite de cesser de se dissocier de la réalité en portant un jugement sur ce qui devrait être.
Elle suppose enfin de comprendre la différence entre la méthode scientifique moderne et les croyances, et acquérir progressivement des connaissance solides.

Quote from Marcus Aurelius: “It is better to limp slowly along the right path than to stride in the wrong direction. »

The feelings dimension - Epicure - domesticating pleasure

Epicure invites us to become selective when it comes to pleasures.

To succeed in life, you need to have a long-term approach aimed at favoring the simplest pleasures. For example, a picnic with friends, as opposed to going around the island on a Jet-ski. The return to simple pleasures is what gradually frees us from social ambition.
More precisely, succeeding in life implies a move towards minimality. Not the search for an absolute, forced minimality, but simply the search for the point of balance where the individual feels that, if he goes further, he leaves his comfort zone, and shifts into a form of personal feat. The balance point varies from one individual to another.
The search for minimality is very important because it reduces the constraint of money, the associated stress, and questionable behaviors aimed at obtaining more, to the detriment of the common interest, these questionable behaviors favoring in the long term lying to yourself to maintain a good self-image.

Quote from Epicurus: “All kinds of pleasure are not evil in themselves; only this is an evil which is followed by much more violent pain [for oneself or for others] than its pleasures have pleasure. »

Alternative recommendations

The first recommendation (Epictetus) can also be formulated in the form of the following double injunction:
1. Deal with problems instead of brushing them under the rug.
2. Don't let adversity get you down. We are only responsible for doing what we have to do; very often the final result does not depend only on our action.

Instead of the first two recommendations (Epictetus and Krishnamurti), we could just as easily have formulated a single, more general recommendation: learn to practice problem solving. Problem solving requires not being biased by one's beliefs at the level of reasoning, and therefore carrying out in-depth work to gradually get rid of them.

At the level of the third recommendation (Epicure), we could just as easily have proposed learning to deal with impermanence, or even simply recommended “Carpe diem”. The essence remains the same: to fully experience simple pleasures.

Indicators

There are two indicators that allow you to detect that you are not succeeding in your life:

Go deeper

View questions
What is a human?
What is the purpose of life?
Should we seek pleasure?
Faut-il écouter ses émotions ?
En finir avec le recours abusif aux psychotropes et psychothérapies
Ne pas juger
Qu'est ce que l'impermanence ?
Pourquoi faut-il maîtriser son ego ?
Pourquoi la minimalité est-elle désirable ?

What conditions must be met to produce serious reasoning? Problem solving.
What is difficult to overcome to succeed in life?
Qu'est ce qui peut nous aider à réussir notre vie ? Qu'est ce que l'entraînement vertueux ?