↖ Homepage of the site 'What to do with your life?'
      

How to succeed in life?

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

Default human behavior

Without an elevating education, exceptional circumstances that transform them, or particular predispositions, a human's life is, in general, limited to trying to acquire privileges, preserve them, and transmit them to their descendants. This clearly corresponds to the goal of succeeding in life. To this objective corresponds a moderate interest, or even contempt, for truth.

Limits of succeeding in life

To succeed in life, one must have many fake friends. Fake friends mean aligning with the game of alliances. The price to pay is living 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).
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 of a life is therefore: will my life be dominated by my instincts linked to my genetic heritage, or will a resolutely philosophical attitude enable me to transcend them?

If one lets oneself be guided by instincts, the driving force is social ambition, and one seeks more to succeed in life than to succeed in one's life. The ultimate goal is then one's own satisfaction, and others are reduced to the status of means, with whom one forms situational alliances. Coercion, victimization, and lying then fully belong to the available tools to win 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, surpassing 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's doctrine can be summarized in the form: facing a problem, separate what depends on you from what does not. Strive 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, feeling at peace. When one does not do so, one attaches oneself to the final result, which, of course, often does not depend completely on us; thus one lives in dissatisfaction, frustration, and anxiety linked to one's own powerlessness. One is then led to seek to hide all this through increasingly grand and futile pleasures that become an addiction.
Epictetus simply reminds us that the goal 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 must be done, let come what may. »
Quote from Marcus Aurelius: « Grant me the strength to endure what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be, 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 path consists mainly in discarding beliefs, in order to cast an unbiased gaze upon facts.

It 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 progressively discarding beliefs is the only effective one for making the resolution of cognitive dissonance satisfactory.
It presupposes, first, working to minimize the negative emotions associated in our memory with certain circumstances, thus overcoming our instinctive fears.
It presupposes, next, ceasing to dissociate from reality by passing a judgment on what should be.
It presupposes finally understanding the difference between the modern scientific method and beliefs, and progressively acquiring solid knowledge.

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

The feeling dimension – Epicurus – domesticating pleasure

Epicurus invites us to be selective regarding pleasures.

To succeed in one's life, one should adopt a long-term approach that prioritizes 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 journey toward minimalism. Not the search for an absolute, forced minimalism, but simply the search for the point of equilibrium where the individual feels that, if they go further, they leave their comfort zone and enter a form of personal achievement. This 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 good; these dubious behaviors favor, in the long term, self-deception to maintain a good self-image.

Quote from Epicurus: « Every sort of pleasure is not evil in itself; that alone is evil which is followed by pains much more violent [for oneself or for others] than the pleasures themselves are pleasant. »

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 carpet.
2. Do not let adversity defeat you. We are responsible only for doing what we 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 reasoning level, thus undertaking fundamental work to progressively discard them.

Regarding the third recommendation (Epicurus), we could just as well have proposed learning to face impermanence, or even simply recommend « Carpe diem ». The substance remains the same: live fully with simple pleasures.

Indicators

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

Deepen

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 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 life? What is virtuous training?