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How to succeed in life?

Succeeding in life is about occupying a high social position.
Succeeding in life is about, through self-work, becoming capable of making decisions that are not the product of social ambition and beliefs. This leads to, and enables, the establishment of sincere relationships.

Default human behavior

In the absence of an uplifting education, exceptional circumstances that transform a person, or particular predispositions, a human’s life is essentially about trying to acquire privileges, keep them, and pass them on to one's descendants. This clearly corresponds to the goal of succeeding in life. This goal corresponds to a moderate interest, or even contempt, for truth.

The limits of succeeding in life

To succeed in life, you need many false friends. False friends are about joining the game of alliances. The price to pay is to live in anxiety 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).
On the contrary, when one seeks to succeed in one’s life, money is just a constraint, which can be strong when circumstances are unfavorable, or when needs are too great.

The big individual choice in life is therefore: will my life be dominated by my instincts linked to my genetic heritage, or will a determined philosophical attitude allow me to transcend them.

If one lets oneself be guided by one's instincts, the driving force is social ambition, and one is more interested in succeeding in life than in succeeding in one's life. The ultimate goal is then one's own satisfaction, and others are reduced to mere means, with which one forms temporary alliances. Coercion, victimization, and lying then fully become the tools at one's disposal to win at the game of alliances, and one seeks to maintain only a respectable facade.

Recipe for succeeding in life

The proposed method for succeeding in life, that is to say, transcending our simple genetic heritage through reason and work, is to apply the recommendations of three great thinkers: Epictetus, Krishnamurti, and Epicurus.

The action dimension - Epictetus - the right attitude

Epictetus’s teaching can be summarized as follows: when facing a problem, separate what is up to you from what is not up to you. Strive with all your strength, determination, and intelligence on the part that is up to you, and do not waste worry over what is not up to you.

This method is the only one that allows one to reach ataraxia, that is to say, to feel peace. When one does not do this, one becomes attached to the final result, which obviously does not depend entirely on us, so one lives in dissatisfaction, frustration, and anxiety linked to one’s own impotence. One is then driven to hide all of this through increasingly grand and trivial 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 case of failure.
On this site, the proposed implementation is the practice of problem solving.

Motto: 'Do what you must, let what will be, be.'
Quote from Marcus Aurelius: 'Give me the strength to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and also the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.'

The reason dimension - Krishnamurti - living in the real

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

This is the perfect complement to Epictetus. Epictetus tells us what we should do, Krishnamurti tells us how to prepare ourselves to do it well. The process of gradually getting rid of beliefs is the only effective way to make the resolution of cognitive dissonance satisfying.
It first requires working on minimizing the negative emotions associated in our memory with certain circumstances, and thus overcoming one's instinctive fears.
It then requires ceasing to dissociate oneself from reality by making a judgment on what should be.
Finally, it requires understanding the difference between the modern scientific method and beliefs, and gradually acquiring solid knowledge.

Quote from Marcus Aurelius: 'It is better to walk slowly on the right path than to take big steps in the wrong direction.'

The feelings dimension - Epicurus - taming pleasure

Epicurus invites us to become selective at the level of pleasures.

In order to succeed in life, one must adopt a long-term approach to prioritize the simplest pleasures. For example, a picnic with friends, as opposed to going around the island on a Jet-ski. Returning to simple pleasures is what gradually frees us from social ambition.
More precisely, succeeding in one's life implies a move towards minimalism. Not the search for absolute, forced minimalism, but simply the search for the balance point where the individual feels that, if they go further, they leave their comfort zone and fall into a kind of personal feat. The balance point varies from one individual to another.
The search for minimalism is very important because it reduces the constraint of money, the associated stress, and the doubtful behaviors aimed at obtaining more at the expense of the common good, these doubtful behaviors favoring, in the long run, self-deception to maintain a good self-image.

Quote from Epicurus: 'No kind of pleasure is in itself a bad thing; it is only that which is followed by much more painful sensations [for oneself or for others] than the pleasure has of agreeableness.'

Alternative recommendations

The first recommendation (Epictetus) could just as well be formulated in the form of the following double injunction:
1. Deal with problems instead of sweeping them under the carpet.
2. Not to be discouraged by adversity. One is only responsible for doing what one has to do; very often the final result does not depend only on our action.

Instead of the first two recommendations (Epictetus and Krishnamurti), one could just as well have formulated a single more general recommendation: learn to practice problem solving. Problem solving does indeed require not being biased by one's beliefs in reasoning, so it implies a fundamental work to gradually get rid of them.

Regarding the third recommendation (Epicurus), one could just as well have proposed learning to face impermanence, or even simply recommending 'Carpe diem'. The core idea remains the same: fully living simple pleasures.

Indicators

There are two indicators that allow one to detect that one is not succeeding in one’s life:

Deepen the topic

See the questions
What is a human being?
What is the purpose of life?
Should one seek pleasure?
Should one listen to one's emotions?
Ending the abusive use of psychotropics and psychotherapies
Not to judge
What is impermanence?
Why is it necessary to master one's ego?
Why is minimalism desirable?

What conditions must be met to produce serious reasoning? Problem solving.
What is difficult to overcome to succeed in life?
What can help us succeed in our life? What is virtuous training?