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How to succeed in life?

Succeeding in life means occupying a high social position.
Succeeding in one's life means achieving, through work on oneself, the ability to make decisions that are not the product of social ambition and beliefs. This enables and leads to establishing sincere relationships.

Default human behavior

Without an education that elevates, exceptional circumstances that transform, or particular predispositions, a human life generally consists in trying to acquire privileges, preserve them, and transmit them to one's descendants. This clearly corresponds to the goal of succeeding in life. For this goal, there corresponds a moderate interest, or even contempt, for truth.

The limits of succeeding in life

To succeed in life, one must have many fake friends. Fake friends means participating in the game of alliances. The price to pay is living in anxiety and frustration, because the game of alliances is versatile. Furthermore, the pleasures brought by success in life, wealth, power, honors, are frustrating, because they always demand more (Epicurus).
Conversely, 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 great individual choice in life is therefore: will my life be dominated by my instincts linked to my genetic inheritance, or will a resolute philosophical attitude allow me to surpass them.

If one lets oneself be guided by instincts, the engine is social ambition, and one seeks more to succeed in life than to succeed in one's life. The ultimate objective is then one's own satisfaction, and others are reduced to the status of means, with whom one forms alliances of circumstance. Coercion, victimization, and lying then fully become tools at disposal to win in the game of alliances, and one seeks only to maintain a respectable facade.

Recipe for succeeding in one's life

The method proposed for succeeding in one's life, that is to say surpassing our simple genetic inheritance through reason and work, consists in applying the recommendations of three great thinkers: Epictetus, Krishnamurti, and Epicurus.

The action dimension - Epictetus - the right attitude

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

This method is the only one that allows reaching ataraxia, that is to say feeling at peace. When one does not do this, one attaches oneself to the final result, which, obviously, often does not depend completely on us, so one lives in dissatisfaction, frustration, and anxiety linked to one's own powerlessness. One is then led to try to hide all this through ever greater and futile pleasures that become an addiction.
Epictetus simply reminds us that the objective is not so much to succeed as not to have regrets in case of failure.
On this site, the proposed implementation is the practice of problem-solving.

Motto: 'Do what you must, let happen what may.'
Quote from Marcus Aurelius: 'Grant me the strength to endure what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and also the wisdom to distinguish one from the other.'

The reason dimension - Krishnamurti - living in reality

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

This is the perfect complement of Epictetus. Epictetus tells us what to do, Krishnamurti tells us how to prepare to do it well. The approach of progressively discarding beliefs is the only effective one to make the resolution of cognitive dissonance satisfactory.
It first involves working to minimize negative emotions associated in our memory with certain circumstances, and thus surpassing one's instinctive fears.
It then involves ceasing to dissociate oneself from reality by making a judgment on what ought to be.
It finally involves understanding the difference between the modern scientific method and beliefs, and progressively acquiring solid knowledge.

Quote from Marcus Aurelius: 'Better to limp slowly on the right path than to walk with great strides in the wrong direction.'

The feeling dimension - Epicurus - mastering pleasure

Epicurus invites us to become selective regarding pleasures.

To succeed in one's life, one should adopt a long-term approach aimed at privileging the simplest pleasures. For example, a picnic with friends, as opposed to riding a jet-ski around the island. The return to simple pleasures is what gradually frees us from social ambition.
More precisely, succeeding in one's life implies an approach towards minimalism. Not the search for an absolute, forced minimalism, but simply the search for the point of equilibrium where the individual feels that, if he goes further, he exits his comfort zone, and slips into a form of personal achievement. The point of equilibrium varies from one individual to another.
The search for minimalism is very important because it reduces the constraint of money, the associated stress, and dubious behaviors aimed at obtaining more, at the expense of the common interest; these dubious behaviors favor self-deception in the long term to maintain a good image of oneself.

Quote from Epicurus: 'Every sort of pleasure is not evil in itself; only that is evil which is followed by pains much more violent [for oneself or for others] than the pleasures have had enjoyment.'

Alternative recommendations

The first recommendation (Epictetus) can also be formulated in the form of the following double injunction:
1. Deal with problems instead of leaving them under the rug.
2. Do not let adversity crush you. You are only responsible for doing what you have to do; often the final result does not depend solely on our action.

Instead of the first two recommendations (Epictetus and Krishnamurti), we could just as well have formulated a single more general recommendation: learn to practice problem-solving. Problem-solving indeed requires not being biased by one's beliefs at the level of reasoning, thus carrying out a fundamental work to progressively discard them.

At the level of the third recommendation (Epicurus), we could just as well have proposed learning to face impermanence, or even simply recommending 'Carpe diem'. The essence remains the same: fully experiencing simple pleasures.

Indicators

There are two indicators that allow detecting that one is not succeeding in one's life:

Deepening

See the questions
What is a human?
What is the purpose of life?
Should one seek pleasure?
Should one listen to one's emotions?
Putting an end to the abusive use of psychotropics and psychotherapies
Not judging
What is impermanence?
Why must one master one's ego?
Why is minimalism desirable?

What are the conditions to meet to produce serious reasoning? Problem-solving.
What is difficult to overcome to succeed in one's life?
What can help us succeed in our life? What is virtuous training?