


anyone else love mindset as much as me
By Eckhart Tolle
Life unfolds between the polarities of order and chaos. It is important at this time to recognize these two fundamental opposites, without which the world could not even be. Another word for disorder is âadversity.â When it becomes more extreme, we might call it âchaos.â
We would prefer, of course, to have order in our lives, which means to have things going well. We would like relative harmony in our lives. Yet, that very often is marred by the eruption of some form of disorder. And, usually, we resent thatâwe get angry, or despondent, or sad.
Disorder comes in many, many forms, big and small. When disorder comes it usually creates a kind of havoc in our lives, accompanied by strong underlying beliefs. âThereâs something very wrong, this should not be happening, maybe God is against me,â and so on. Again, we need to understand that disorder, or adversity, is inevitable and is an essential part of a higher order.
 From a higher perspective, a higher level, the existence of order and disorder, or order and chaos, is a necessary part of the evolution of life.
 Many people have found that they experience a deepening, or a deeper sense of self or beingness, immediately after and as a result of having endured a period of disorder or chaos. This is sometimes called âthe dark night of the soul,â a term from medieval Christianity used to describe the mental breakdown that many mystics experienced prior to awakening spiritually. There was an eruption of disorder, of destruction. Then, out of that, a deeper realization arose.
 And although that can be very painful, the strange thing is, itâs precisely there that many humans experience a transcendence. A strange fact is that it almost never happens that people awaken spiritually while they’re in their comfort zone. Or that they become deeper as human beings, which would be a partial awakening. It almost never happens. The place where the evolutionary shift happens, or the evolutionary leap, is usually the experience of disorder in a personâs life.
And so your life then moves between order and disorder. You have both, and theyâre both necessary. Thereâs no guarantee that when disorder erupts this will bring about an awakening or a deepening, but thereâs always the possibility. It is an opportunity, but often, it is missed.
 So here we are at this time, and our mission is the same: to align with the present moment, with whatever is happening here and now. The upheaval that weâre experiencing at the present time probably will not be the last upheaval thatâs going to come on a collective level. However, it is an opportunityâbecause although this is a time for upheavals, it is also a time for awakening. The two go together. Just as in an individual life, you need adversity to awaken. It’s an opportunity but not a guarantee. And so what looks tragic and unpleasant on a conventional level is actually perfectly fine and as it should be on a higher level; it would not be happening otherwise. Itâs all part of the awakening of human beings and of planetary awakening.
To learn more about Eckhartâs teachings on Conscious Manifestation, click here.
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The post The Opportunity in Adversity appeared first on Eckhart Tolle | Official Site – Spiritual Teachings and Tools For Personal Growth and Happiness.


Thanks
Do you ever feel like youâre completely overwhelmed with things to do, yet youâre still not doing enough? Maybe you thought youâd be further ahead in life than you are right now, or maybe you have this list in the back of your head of things you *should* be doing.
No matter what, whatever youâre doing doesnât quite seem to be enough. Seeing other people’s successes can trigger this feeling of inadequacy. Setting unrealistic expectations for yourself can also cause this feeling that nothing is ever quite good enough.

Of course, thereâs always room for improvement in our lives, but it feels like a never-ending rat race when youâre constantly chasing the next thing. Itâs overwhelming to feel like you need to do everything.
When you start to feel like you’re not doing enough, itâs easy to overwhelm yourself even more. Feeling like you should or could be doing more only puts more stress on your already heavy shoulders.
In this post, Iâm sharing how Iâve been dealing with this feeling of not doing enough. You’ll also find some practical tips to counter this fear if youâve been feeling the same way.
What Causes the Fear of Not Doing Enough?

Pressure
Though Iâm doing plenty, thereâs always more I think I could or should be doing because thereâs pressure to always be busy. This pressure can manifest itself from internal expectations you set for yourself, as well as those from the outside world, like work, society, relationships, etc.
Family members and friends who have good intentions might say things like, âYou should be doing thisâ or âI saw this person doing this, you should try it too.â
Maybe you feel like youâre not getting any recognition for what youâre doing at work, so you start to think youâre doing something wrong or simply not doing enough. That pressure only adds to the weight of your to-do list.
Something Iâve learned is that I often overwhelm myself more than anything else. A simple check-in helps when I feel overwhelmed. I ask myself, âAm I the one causing this extra stress?â If the answer is yes, I take ownership of the issue and try to take things off my to-do list. If itâs caused by someone else, I ask myself, âHow can I set better boundaries with this person or communicate my needs better?â
Related Post: 5 Tips To Pause Hustle Mode And Slow Down
Comparison
Another reason for feeling inadequate is the comparison game. I often feel like Iâm not doing enough because I compare myself to other people. In reality, whatever I see from other people is a highlight reel, a curated version that they want me to see. Thatâs not necessarily bad because creating (even if itâs sharing your mundane daily life) is an art. Making life seem more interesting is an art.
But I realize that I donât often find myself comparing my life to my close friends and family. I think thatâs because I see their successes, but I also see their struggles. It reminds me that we all have highs and lows.
When I find myself in the comparison trap, I remember that Iâm not seeing the full picture of someoneâs life. Whatever theyâre doing does not affect how well Iâm doing. In reality, theyâre probably comparing themselves to someone else too.
Related Post: 5 Tips For Dealing With Your Inner Critic
Whatever youâre doing is enough. There is nothing more you have to add to your to-do list. Focus less on what you âshouldâ be doing and focus more on what you âneedâ to be doing. You already know what that is deep down.
Perfectionism
Not feeling good enough can also come from perfectionism, even from the most mundane of things. I posted a quote on Instagram the other day and as soon as Iâd posted it, I felt like it wasnât any good. It was literally just a quote on a social media platform. It doesnât matter in the grand scheme of things, but I felt like there was something better I could have posted. Something more meaningful. Something more impactful.
I have to remind myself that even the smallest thing can be meaningful. Having someone comment and say “I needed this reminder today” is enough. The simple act of me sharing something is enough.
Sometimes I have to take a step back and remember that every little step is part of something bigger. Every little step we take contributes to our growth or our decline.
In the book, The Power of Focus, the authors talk about how everything in life is built on tiny little actions. Good friendships flourish from small efforts – sending a text, sharing a meme, or meeting up for coffee. Over time, these little things build a closer relationship. Other relationships dwindle because you stop texting, stop checking in, or get into an argument and donât attempt to smooth it over.
Every little thing youâre doing is adding up to build something greater. This reminds me that the small things Iâm doing- no matter how perfect or imperfect they are – actually are worthwhile. Whatever youâre doing is enough.
3 Tips For When You Feel Behind

When you find yourself thinking âIâm not doing enoughâ, here are a few things that can help:
1. Stop making your to-do list so long. Do fewer things with intention.
When youâre working on a bunch of things at once, you might feel like youâre making progress, but divided attention makes it difficult to actually get ahead. Progress requires dedicated focus.
Stop overwhelming yourself and do fewer things extraordinarily well. If youâre thinking, âBut thereâs so much I could do…how do I know what to focus on?â You know what you need to do deep down. You know what you could do, but what do you need to do? Ask yourself this question often.
Thereâs always something more that could be done, but itâs not always necessary. Focus on whatâs necessary. Focus on what fits into the vision you have for your life, business, career, family, and health.
Related Post: Why You Need To Define Your Top Priorities In Life
2. Set realistic boundaries and expectations for yourself.
You cannot do everything. Be realistic with the amount of time and energy you have to dedicate to things. Whatever youâre doing is already enough.
If you feel like youâre behind, think of what youâve already accomplished in the past year. Think of how youâve changed and grown over the past five years.
Stop comparing your life to everyone elseâs and set expectations you know that you can achieve, regardless of what other people think.
Related Post: 5 Ways To Say No & Stop Over-Committing Yourself
3. Track where your time goes.
If you often get to the end of the week and wonder whether youâve accomplished anything, keep a log of what you do on a daily basis. I tracked my time for a week and saw that I was spending a lot of time on things that werenât even important to me.
Evaluate your time and see where your efforts are going. Youâre going to a) realize youâre doing more than you think and/or b) realize youâre spending your time in the wrong ways. If you think youâre spending it in the wrong ways, mindfully plan your schedule using time blocks based on your top priorities.
Related Post: How to Plan Your Daily Schedule For Success
Your Turn!
Think of one thing youâve been putting consistent effort into lately. How does this add up to something bigger? If you feel like sharing, leave a comment with your answer below!
If you found this post helpful, bookmark or pin it for later so you can revisit it whenever you start to fear that youâre not doing enough.
The post Feel Like You’re Not Doing Enough? Read This. appeared first on The Blissful Mind.


Amazing post
“So, when are you having kids?” my aunt asked me soon after I got married. At that point, I had just been married for a few months. I didn’t even know *if* I wanted kids, much less *when* I was having them.
Caught off guard, I replied matter-of-factly, “I have not decided if I want to have kids.” Little did I realize that I would spend the next hour listening to stories of women who put off having children until it was too late, as well as women who had difficulty conceiving for various reasons, with the implicit message being that I was going to regret it if I didn’t hurry and work on producing babies.
This would be my life for the next few years, where I would receive constant questions around “When are you having kids?” from relatives and random people, followed by a routine, almost ritualistic pressurization to have kids.
Lest you think that it ends after having a child, it doesn’t. The people who previously tried to tell you to have “just one kid” when you were indifferent to the idea, will now tell you to have “just one more.” It seems like you just can’t win. đ©đȘ
The problem with asking people “When are you having kids?”
I understand why people like to ask this question. Find a partner, settle down, get married, and have kids. This is the life path that we’ve been taught to follow since young. This is the life script that we’ve been told is *the* way of life, that would bring us ultimate joy and happiness.
This is especially so in the Chinese culture, where having kids is seen as the ultimate goal in life. There are even sayings built around this notion, such as çćżèČ愳 (shÄng Ă©r yĂč nÇ), which means to birth sons and raise daughters, and ććæ»Ąć (zÇ sĆ«n mÇn tĂĄng), which means to be in a room filled with children and grandchildren, used to signify the epitome of happiness.

A multi-generation family, often used to depict a vision of happiness in the Chinese culture
So after you get married, people automatically assume that you should have kids. “When are you having kids?” they ask, somehow expecting you to give them a straight answer to what is really a personal question.
The problem with this question is that it’s rude. It’s presumptuous. It’s also insensitive.
1) Happiness can come in different forms
Firstly, everyone has their own unique path in life. Some people want kids, while some don’t. Some think that having kids is the greatest joy in life, while some see them as a burden to their already stressful life. At the end of the day, having kids isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. There are significant ups and downs that come with having a kid, and for some people, the ups may not justify the downs. For these people, it may simply be better to remain childless, rather than having kids just to fit in or to fit societal expectations, and then set their lives up for unhappiness. To assume that everyone should have kids, just because you think that having kids is great and important, is rude and disregards that person’s own preferences in life.
For example, Oprah Winfrey is an inspiring woman and humanitarian who chose not to have kids, but has instead dedicated herself to her personal life purpose of serving the world. Oprah hosted her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show for 25 years, founded a leadership academy for girls and became a mother figure to the girls in attendance, and started her own television network. These are things that most do not get to do in their lifetime. Through the years, she has inspired millions and become a champion for people worldwide. As she says,
“When people were pressuring me to get married and have children, I knew I was not going to be a person that ever regretted not having them, because I feel like I am a mother to the world’s children. Love knows no boundaries. It doesnât matter if a child came from your womb or if you found that person at age two, 10, or 20. If the love is real, the caring is pure and it comes from a good space, it works.” — Oprah[1]
Is she not being a responsible or purposeful person or woman by choosing not to have kids? Definitely not. In fact, I dare say that she lives a much more purposeful life than many in the world, including some people who choose to have kids.
There are many famous celebrities who have chosen not to have kids as well.
- Chelsea Handler is a talk show host who chose not to have kids. She has said honestly in interviews that she doesn’t have the time to raise a child, and she doesn’t want her kids to be raised by a nanny.[2][3]
- Betty White is an actress and comedian who chose not to have kids because she’s passionate about her career and she prefers to focus on it.[4]
- Ashley Judd is an actress and politican activist who chose not to have kids because she feels that there are already so many orphaned kids in this world. To her, her resources can be better used to help those who are already here, and I respect her for such a noble choice.[5]
And then there are others, such as Cameron Diaz, Chow Yun Fat, Marisa Tomei (the actress for Peter Parker’s aunt in Tom Holland’s Spider Man film series), RenĂ©e Zellweger, and Rachael Ray. These people choose not to have kids for different reasons, such as because they’re already pursuing paths deeply meaningful to them, because they do not wish to be tied down with a child, or because they just don’t feel a deep desire to have kids.
Not having kids has not prevented these people from being happy in life, and there’s no reason to assume why people must have kids in order to be happy. People need to stop painting this narrative that one must have children in order to be happy. There are plenty of people with kids who are unhappy, and plenty of people without kids who have found inner fulfillment in life through other ways. There is no one path to happiness, and people need to realize that.
2) You may well cause hurt and pain
Secondly, you never know what others are going through.
Some people may want kids, but maybe they are facing fertility struggles. For example,
- Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan went through three miscarriages before having their firstborn.[6]
- The Obamas had a miscarriage before they had their daughters via IVF.[7]
- Friends star Courteney Cox had a total of seven miscarriages before having her daughter, as she has a MTHFR gene mutation which raises the risk of miscarriage-causing blood clots.[8]
About 10% of women have difficulty getting pregnant or staying pregnant,[9] while 13.5% of known pregnancies end in miscarriages, with the figure rising as the maternal age rises.[10]
For some people, the journey to conceive is fraught with deep pain, struggle, and losses as they experience miscarriages, undergo round after round of invasive fertility treatments, and wait in hope of the double blue lines on their pregnancy kit each month.
And then there are people who cannot have their own biological children due to issues with their reproductive system, which could have been there since birth.

Barack and Michelle Obama had a miscarriage before they had their daughters via IVF
While you may be think that you’re being helpful or funny by asking people when they’re having kids, your question may well trigger hurt and pain. As Zuckerberg said,
“You feel so hopeful when you learn you’re going to have a child. You start imagining who they’ll become and dreaming of hopes for their future. You start making plans, and then they’re gone. It’s a lonely experience.”[6]
3) Not everyone is in a position to have kids
Thirdly, having kids is simply not a reality for some people due to their circumstances in life.
Some people may lack the financial resources to have kids, a reality in a place like Singapore.
Some people may be facing problems with their marriage, in which case their priority should be to work on their marriage, not to have kids.
Some people may be so burdened with caring for their dependents that they are unable to consider kids, at least not at the moment.
And then there are people facing chronic health issues, issues that you don’t know and can’t see, which make pregnancy difficult due to the toll it would take on their body.
4) Some couples could still be thinking
And then there are people who are neutral to the idea of having kids, like myself when I just got married. These people need time to think it through, because having kids is a permanent, lifelong decision with serious consequences. There’s no reason to assume that having a kid should be an automatic decision, because you’re bringing a whole new life into this world. This is a decision that will change your life forever, as well as the life of the child you’re bringing into the world.
For those yet to have kids, they need the space to figure out what they want, not have people breathe down their neck day in and out about having kids.
My experience
For the initial years after I got married, I just wasn’t thinking about kids. Firstly, having a child is a lifelong decision, and I wanted to enjoy married life with my husband before diving into a decision as serious as that. Secondly, both my husband and I were genuinely happy spending the rest of our lives with just each other — we didn’t feel the need to have kids at all, not in the way my culture obsesses about it. Thirdly, my husband was dealing with some personal problems, and I was fully focused on supporting him through these. These were issues that we needed to sort through before considering kids, if we were to want kids.
Yet I kept getting nudges to have kids, even though I never said anything about wanting them.
“So, when are you having kids?”
“This person’s baby is so cute, isn’t it? Why don’t you hurry up and birth a baby?”
It was as if I was some vehicle, some production machine to have kids, where my own views in the matter didn’t matter. The most frustrating thing was that I kept getting this question, while my husband would never get it (as a man), not even when we were in the same room together.
It was as if my sole reason for existence as a woman was to have kids, and until I had them, I was regarded as unworthy or incomplete.
The decision to have kids
Yet the decision to have children is a personal one. It is also a complex one. It is a decision that will permanently change the lives of the couple in question.
It is not a decision that one should be pressurized into making because their mom wants to carry grandchildren or their aunt wants to play with kids. It’s a decision that a couple should make because they genuinely want to nurture another life.
Because when a child is born, the people bugging others to have kids aren’t the ones who will be caring for the baby 24/7, whose lives will be set back by years (even decades) as they care for a new life, or who will be responsible for every decision concerning the child for the next 18-21 years.
It will be the couple.
And the people who aren’t ready, who were pressured into having kids because they were told that it was the best thing to do, may have to deal with regret as they are stuck with a decision they cannot undo. Because there are people who regret having kids, and we need to be honest about that. These people regret, not because of the child’s fault, but because they were simply not ready to have kids, be it financially, emotionally, or mentally. Unfortunately, the children are the ones who eventually suffer, from living in dysfunctional households to dealing with issues of violence, abuse, and anger.
We need to recognize these realities, and not make parenthood seem like it’s some magical band-aid that solves a lack of purpose or life’s pressures. Things don’t magically get better because people have kids; existing problems usually worsen as having a child puts a big strain on a couple’s lives. Digging into people’s plans to have kids, and pressurizing them into one of the biggest life decisions they can ever make, will only stress them out and perhaps push some into depression. As this redditor shared,
“I have a friend who went through 6 years of miscarriages and fertility treatments before the doctors figured out the problem and she had her son. The nosy ladies at her work and her in-laws questioned her constantly. The depression from that made it harder for her to conceive.”
Stop asking couples when they’re having kids
So, if you tend to ask others when they’re having kids, it’s time to stop that. It’s rude, insensitive, and it disregards people’s privacy. Itâs also none of your business.
The reality is that if people want kids, they will work on having kids. They don’t need you to prod them about it.
If they don’t have kids, it’s either because
- they really don’t want kids,
- they are not in a position to consider kids right now, or
- they want kids but they are facing some struggles.
For people in group (c), they aren’t going to share such deeply personal experience over some afternoon coffee chat, and certainly not by you asking, “When are you having kids?”
The best thing you can do is to give people their personal space. Understand that having kids is a personal decision, and people don’t have to share or explain anything. Respect that others have their right to privacy. Respect that people are individuals on their own path, and this path may not involve having kids. And this doesn’t make them incomplete or lesser in any way.
Instead of asking women or couples, “When are you having kids?”, talk to them like how you would a normal person. There’s no reason why conversations should suddenly revolve around childbearing after marriage; it’s not like a person’s identity changes to revolve around having kids. A person still has their own passion, goals, and dreams. Talk to them about what they’ve been doing. Understand their interests. Know them as a real person, not some random being here to fulfill society’s checklist.
If you’re really interested in someone’s plan to have children, you can simply ask, “Are you and your partner planning to have kids?” If they wish to share more, they will do so. If they give a generic answer, then take the hint and move on.
Ultimately, having kids or not doesn’t change a person’s self-worth. A woman is complete with or without kids. A marriage doesn’t need kids to be deemed complete. Having kids should be a conscious choice, not a result of external pressure. Don’t judge people by whether they have kids or not. Some people will have kids, and some people will not have kids. Some will have kids early, while some will have them later in life. All of these are different paths and there’s nothing wrong with them.
For Me
For my husband and I, we eventually had a few discussions and decided to have a baby, and had our baby girl this year (2020). đ Yet other people’s comments and nudges to have children didn’t make me want to have children; it only annoyed me and made me want to avoid these people, because having a child is a personal decision between me and my husband, that has nothing to do with them. It was after we had the space to settle down and enjoy married life without kids, and took some time to actively pursue our goals and interests, that we finally felt ready to try for a kid last year.
In the meantime, I hope all of you are doing well. There are other things that I’m working on, other things that are happening that I look forward to sharing in time to come. Sending lots of love to you, and remember that whatever life challenge you’re facing, you have it in you to overcome it. I’ll talk to you guys soon! đ


posts about mindset are why I love social media
Do you ever feel like youâre completely overwhelmed with things to do, yet youâre still not doing enough? Maybe you thought youâd be further ahead in life than you are right now, or maybe you have this list in the back of your head of things you *should* be doing.
No matter what, whatever youâre doing doesnât quite seem to be enough. Seeing other people’s successes can trigger this feeling of inadequacy. Setting unrealistic expectations for yourself can also cause this feeling that nothing is ever quite good enough.

Of course, thereâs always room for improvement in our lives, but it feels like a never-ending rat race when youâre constantly chasing the next thing. Itâs overwhelming to feel like you need to do everything.
When you start to feel like you’re not doing enough, itâs easy to overwhelm yourself even more. Feeling like you should or could be doing more only puts more stress on your already heavy shoulders.
In this post, Iâm sharing how Iâve been dealing with this feeling of not doing enough. You’ll also find some practical tips to counter this fear if youâve been feeling the same way.
What Causes the Fear of Not Doing Enough?

Pressure
Though Iâm doing plenty, thereâs always more I think I could or should be doing because thereâs pressure to always be busy. This pressure can manifest itself from internal expectations you set for yourself, as well as those from the outside world, like work, society, relationships, etc.
Family members and friends who have good intentions might say things like, âYou should be doing thisâ or âI saw this person doing this, you should try it too.â
Maybe you feel like youâre not getting any recognition for what youâre doing at work, so you start to think youâre doing something wrong or simply not doing enough. That pressure only adds to the weight of your to-do list.
Something Iâve learned is that I often overwhelm myself more than anything else. A simple check-in helps when I feel overwhelmed. I ask myself, âAm I the one causing this extra stress?â If the answer is yes, I take ownership of the issue and try to take things off my to-do list. If itâs caused by someone else, I ask myself, âHow can I set better boundaries with this person or communicate my needs better?â
Related Post: 5 Tips To Pause Hustle Mode And Slow Down
Comparison
Another reason for feeling inadequate is the comparison game. I often feel like Iâm not doing enough because I compare myself to other people. In reality, whatever I see from other people is a highlight reel, a curated version that they want me to see. Thatâs not necessarily bad because creating (even if itâs sharing your mundane daily life) is an art. Making life seem more interesting is an art.
But I realize that I donât often find myself comparing my life to my close friends and family. I think thatâs because I see their successes, but I also see their struggles. It reminds me that we all have highs and lows.
When I find myself in the comparison trap, I remember that Iâm not seeing the full picture of someoneâs life. Whatever theyâre doing does not affect how well Iâm doing. In reality, theyâre probably comparing themselves to someone else too.
Related Post: 5 Tips For Dealing With Your Inner Critic
Whatever youâre doing is enough. There is nothing more you have to add to your to-do list. Focus less on what you âshouldâ be doing and focus more on what you âneedâ to be doing. You already know what that is deep down.
Perfectionism
Not feeling good enough can also come from perfectionism, even from the most mundane of things. I posted a quote on Instagram the other day and as soon as Iâd posted it, I felt like it wasnât any good. It was literally just a quote on a social media platform. It doesnât matter in the grand scheme of things, but I felt like there was something better I could have posted. Something more meaningful. Something more impactful.
I have to remind myself that even the smallest thing can be meaningful. Having someone comment and say “I needed this reminder today” is enough. The simple act of me sharing something is enough.
Sometimes I have to take a step back and remember that every little step is part of something bigger. Every little step we take contributes to our growth or our decline.
In the book, The Power of Focus, the authors talk about how everything in life is built on tiny little actions. Good friendships flourish from small efforts – sending a text, sharing a meme, or meeting up for coffee. Over time, these little things build a closer relationship. Other relationships dwindle because you stop texting, stop checking in, or get into an argument and donât attempt to smooth it over.
Every little thing youâre doing is adding up to build something greater. This reminds me that the small things Iâm doing- no matter how perfect or imperfect they are – actually are worthwhile. Whatever youâre doing is enough.
3 Tips For When You Feel Behind

When you find yourself thinking âIâm not doing enoughâ, here are a few things that can help:
1. Stop making your to-do list so long. Do fewer things with intention.
When youâre working on a bunch of things at once, you might feel like youâre making progress, but divided attention makes it difficult to actually get ahead. Progress requires dedicated focus.
Stop overwhelming yourself and do fewer things extraordinarily well. If youâre thinking, âBut thereâs so much I could do…how do I know what to focus on?â You know what you need to do deep down. You know what you could do, but what do you need to do? Ask yourself this question often.
Thereâs always something more that could be done, but itâs not always necessary. Focus on whatâs necessary. Focus on what fits into the vision you have for your life, business, career, family, and health.
Related Post: Why You Need To Define Your Top Priorities In Life
2. Set realistic boundaries and expectations for yourself.
You cannot do everything. Be realistic with the amount of time and energy you have to dedicate to things. Whatever youâre doing is already enough.
If you feel like youâre behind, think of what youâve already accomplished in the past year. Think of how youâve changed and grown over the past five years.
Stop comparing your life to everyone elseâs and set expectations you know that you can achieve, regardless of what other people think.
Related Post: 5 Ways To Say No & Stop Over-Committing Yourself
3. Track where your time goes.
If you often get to the end of the week and wonder whether youâve accomplished anything, keep a log of what you do on a daily basis. I tracked my time for a week and saw that I was spending a lot of time on things that werenât even important to me.
Evaluate your time and see where your efforts are going. Youâre going to a) realize youâre doing more than you think and/or b) realize youâre spending your time in the wrong ways. If you think youâre spending it in the wrong ways, mindfully plan your schedule using time blocks based on your top priorities.
Related Post: How to Plan Your Daily Schedule For Success
Your Turn!
Think of one thing youâve been putting consistent effort into lately. How does this add up to something bigger? If you feel like sharing, leave a comment with your answer below!
If you found this post helpful, bookmark or pin it for later so you can revisit it whenever you start to fear that youâre not doing enough.
The post Feel Like You’re Not Doing Enough? Read This. appeared first on The Blissful Mind.


Who else loves self-improvement ?
“To win true freedom, you must be a slave to philosophy.”âEpicurus
The great philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein was once sitting in a park having a philosophical discussion with a friend when his friend, quite animated, stood up and said loudly, “That is a tree! I know for a fact that that is a tree!” An awkward pause ensued as the two men realized that passersby had stopped and were now staring at them. Wittgenstein, thinking quickly, turned to the people and said, “Do not worry, this fellow is not insane… we are merely doing philosophy.”
When most people think of philosophy, they likely imagine indecipherable books that stretch on for a thousand pages, saying and solving nothing. They envision stuffy old men in misbuttoned shirts, untied shoelaces with mismatched socks, shuffling about hallways of some archaic university, mumbling to themselves, completely unaware of the humanity around them.
As an undergraduate in university, when I told people that I was considering choosing philosophy as a major, they often looked at me with some mixture of horror and confusion, as though I had just told them I was considering shoving a stick of butter up my ass. One friend even went as far as to say, “Dude, why would you do that to yourself?”
Philosophy has been a favorite punching bag for centuries. The criticisms are worn and weathered: philosophy doesnât actually solve anything; philosophers simply argue about arguing; science tells us all we need to know, therefore philosophy is no longer relevant, and so on.
These criticisms are hardly new. And they havenât been limited to whinging college students or skeptical parents either. In fact, the critics have been many of the famous philosophers themselves. Albert Camus vehemently insisted that he was not a philosopher and would correct journalists if they referred to him as one. Schopenhauer considered most of the philosophers of his dayâstalwarts such as Hegel, Fichte, and Schellingâto be navel-gazing hucksters and frauds. Karl Marx even went so far as to write, “Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.”1
Ouch…
But it was those intellectual titans of our ageâMonty Pythonâwho perhaps captured these criticisms best with their classic satirical bit, “Philosophy Football:”
Caption: “Hegel is arguing that reality is merely an a priori adjunct of non-naturalistic ethics, Kant via the categorical imperative is holding that ontologically it exists only in the imagination, and Marx is claiming it was offside.”
All of this is to say that from the outset, I realize that Iâm marching into an uphill battle here. Philosophy isnât for the cool kids. Philosophy is seemingly lots of mental effort for little reward. Philosophy is not practical nor does it solve any relevant questions anymore. We have science. We have big data and artificial intelligence. Who cares if we can ever actually know if a tree is a tree, right?
Needless to say, I disagree with the haters. Philosophy is useful. Itâs also important. In fact, I will go as far as to argue that philosophy is likely more useful and important to the average person in the 21st century than any other time in human history.
So buckle upâshitâs about to get real⊠just as soon as we figure out what exactly the word “real” means.
Contents
What is Philosophy?
“Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don’t know.” â Bertrand Russell
Hereâs a funny little quirk about those criticisms of philosophy: in order to criticize philosophy, you must engage in philosophy.
Philosophy is the inquiry into our understanding of reality, knowledge, and how we should live. When you string thoughts together into a coherent belief system, you are weaving together a philosophy. When you make value judgments to determine what is good and what is bad, you are relying upon a philosophy. When you are laughing at the ridiculousness of a book that has statements such as, “Being is the being of a being,”âwell, hate to break it to you, but you are engaging in philosophy.2
Philosophy is, therefore, undismissable for the simple reason that it encompasses all of conscious experience. To criticize philosophy, you must rely on some degree of philosophy. To shit on systematic frameworks of understanding, you must generate a systematic framework of understanding.
This little logical conundrum is known as the “performative contradiction.” And where does it come from? Thatâs right, motherfuckers: it comes from philosophy.
Philosophy boils down to three major questions:3
- What is true about existence? (Metaphysics)
- How can we know that it is true? (Epistemology)
- What actions should we take as a result of this knowledge? (Ethics)
I would say, “Thatâs it,” but all three of these questions have resulted in thousands of years of inquiry and debate with little consensus emerging on any of them.
That may sound ridiculous but that doesn’t mean that huge progress has not been made in philosophy. Much has. Over millennia, epistemology has given us science, logic/reason, economics, psychology, and many of the theories of knowledge that underpin our political systems and societies today.
Similarly, over the millennia, our understanding of ethics has progressed to the point where we no longer enslave vast portions of the population, systematically burn people alive for their beliefs, or watch people get eaten alive by angry lions in an arena for weekend entertainment.
Today, concepts such as democracy and human rights have generally been accepted the world over. In fact, the “expanding circle” of empathy has grown so much in recent centuries that we now not only concern ourselves with human welfare, but we see the treatment of animals and the environment as ethical issues as well.4
And in terms of metaphysics⊠well, in the past four hundred years weâve gone from, “I think; therefore, I am,”5 to “Maybe youâre living in a giant computer simulation?”6
So, uh, I guess thatâs progress?

Why does philosophy matter?
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” â Socrates
Philosophy matters because at some point in our lives we must all ask and answer these questions for ourselves.
- What is true?
- Why do I believe it to be true?
- How should I live based on what I believe?
A failure to answer one or more of these questions will quickly result in what we generally label as a mental or emotional crisisâwe fall into depression, succumb to anxiety, struggle to find any sense of meaning or purpose.
Philosophy, therefore, has an immediate and profound impact on our well-being and daily lives. A man knows heâs a brilliant salesman. His entire identity is wrapped up in his ability to accomplish his job, to do his work, and to impress his colleagues.
Then, one day, he gets fired. And not only is he shown that what he believed to be true was wrong, but it now calls into question his actions and motivations for the past twenty years. He doesnât know whatâs true. He doesnât trust himself to figure out whatâs true. He no longer knows what to do. Heâs a mental and emotional wreck.
These sorts of events happen to us all. They may be triggered by the loss of a loved one, a dramatic health scare, or just straight up getting our ass kicked at work. But our mental structure for how we see and understand the world collapses and we find ourselves lost, unable to determine what is true about ourselves, about our lives, or about the world.
In fact, you may have heard of these sorts of experiences referred to as an “existential crisis”âas in, “Janeâs husband fucked the mailman and now sheâs having an existential crisis.” Itâs a term that was originally borrowed from existential philosophers such as SĂžren Kierkegaard and Jean-Paul Sartre and has since become a mainstay in psychology and psychiatry.
The existentialist philosophers said that to regain our composure and mental strength, we need to reconstruct a mental scaffoldâwe must redefine what we know to be true, how we know it to be true, and how it should dictate our actions. We must find new sources of meaning, more fundamental definitions of identity and purpose, more useful principles for relating to the world.
In many ways, this sort of philosophical reinvention is what therapy is designed to help us do. Practices such as meditation or journaling can be useful, as well. Using these tools, we can slowly re-evaluate our values, shift our beliefs, and take new actions to create a better life for ourselves…
…that is, we can do philosophy.
Philosophy teaches us the fundamental techniques for finding meaning and purpose in a world where there is no given meaning, no cosmic purpose. Philosophy gives us tools to determine what is likely to be important and true and what is likely frivolous and made-up. Philosophy shows us principles to help direct our actions, to determine our worth and values, to generate a magnetic field to direct our internal compass, so that we may never feel lost again.
Philosophy in the 21st Century
“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster. For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
If we all need to answer the three fundamental questions for ourselves to remain emotionally and mentally healthy, then I would argue that 21st-century life disrupted our ability to answer these questions unlike ever before.
- What do I know to be true? The flood of information has paradoxically not made us more confident of what is true and untrue, but less. Between fake news, bad science, social media rumors, and manipulative marketing and propaganda, it is harder to know if you can trust the information you come across than any time before.
- How do I know that itâs true? Whatâs more, our traditional methods of ascertaining what we know about the world have come under fire. Science is facing a widespread replication crisis.7 Scandals of corruption are being unearthed in almost every major institution. Authorities are distrusted. And to throw even more gasoline on the fire, we are more aware of our own proclivities for irrational biases, prejudices, and false assumptions. Not only do we not know whatâs true, but we donât even know how to figure out whatâs true much of the time.
- How should I live based on what I believe? Without knowing what is true nor how to go about finding truth, it is less clear than ever before how we should live. What is good? What is useful? What is important? We all think we know, but thereâs a general uncertainty that I think pervades most of our culture and generates a constant sense of existential anxiety and insecurity.
Philosophy is more important than ever before because it has been deeply contemplating these questions for thousands of years. It has been aware of the traps and failings of the human mind, of the inconclusiveness of all knowledge, of the almost impossible task of deciphering the moral good and acting upon it. When it comes to these existential questions, there are more than a few giantsâ shoulders on which we may stand upon.
Below, Iâve written about three distinct ways philosophy can improve your life. It helps you better question what you know. It helps you choose how to live. And it helps you have an impact on the world.
Iâll go over each topic and then at the end of the article, I will give some book recommendations as well as pointers on how to start learning about philosophical ideas on your own.
Philosophy Helps You Question What You Know
“The only thing that I know is that I know nothing.”âSocrates
The beautiful thing about philosophy is that it is in a permanent state of questioning. There is no form of knowledge so assured that philosophy hasnât grabbed it by the neck and had its way with it a few times.
Take, for example, RenĂ© Descartes. In 1641, Descartes decided to tackle the first of the primary philosophical questions: “What do I know is true?”
Within about ten pages of writing, Descartes quickly realized that there was almost nothing that you could come up with that you couldnât imagine a way that it wasnât true. The room you are sitting inâit could be a hallucination. Your memories could be invented or made up. The news you read or hear about, an elaborate lie.
Descartes went so far as to posit what we today know as “The Matrix” scenario: that we could be asleep and this entire life a dream. In fact, even our choices and decisions could be controlled by some evil, manipulative force. Our self-control could merely be an illusion. He created a thought experiment of an evil demon who could be tricking you into believing that you are alive and free and enjoying this fine afternoon drinking a milkshake. Yet, none of it is real.
Therefore, when it came down to it, Descartes realized that the only thing he could say with absolute certainty was that he existed. Maybe the room was fake. Maybe the world was a dream. Maybe his friends and family never existed. But by the given fact that he could even ask these questions in the first placeâthe fact that something was conscious and awareâhe must exist in some form. He then wrote one of the most famous lines ever: cogito, ergo sum.8
“I think; therefore I am.”
Descartesâ deconstruction of knowledge cleaned the slate and made way for a burst of intellectual creativity in Europe, which has since become known as The Enlightenment. Descartes believed that his insight would provide a fresh beginning for metaphysics (or, the “What can we know that is true?” question) and would lay the foundation for a new form of understandingâan understanding based on logic, reason, and evidence.

And indeed, it would. Descartes would be hugely influential on a new methodology of understanding that would later come to be known as natural philosophy, or what we today refer to as “science.”
But the mindfuckery didnât end there. Roughly a hundred years after Descartes, the Scottish philosopher David Hume, at the tender age of 29, published A Treatise on Human Nature, where he demolished the idea of cause/effect and or the assumption that we can predict anything at all.
Bear with me here, as this might sound insane. Hume said, logically speaking, that it is impossible to prove that anything will occur in the future, no matter how often or how regularly it has occurred in the past. If the sun has risen in the east every day for millions of years, that still doesnât prove it will rise again in the east tomorrow. It simply makes it insanely probable that it will rise in the east.

We can never be certain something will happen, no matter how many times itâs happened before. The best we can do is come to extremely probable approximations. Just as Descartes showed that we can never be certain that our perceptions are true, Hume showed that we can never be certain that our understanding of cause/effect is true either.
This blew the minds of just about everyone who was paying attention at the time⊠which was like maybe a few dozen wealthy white dudes.9
But still⊠As the 18th century proceeded, Humeâs influence grew, and soon his arguments became impossible to ignore. Not much later, a young man in Prussia named Immanuel Kant read Humeâs ideas and said it jolted him awake from a “dogmatic slumber.” It ignited a desire to pick up the mantle of understanding human knowledge and push further, to discover how we can know anything at all. Humeâs writing inspired Kant to become a philosopher.10
Kant took Descartesâ and Humeâs ideas and went even further. He said that there is a difference between our perception of something and the “thing-in-itself.” I can see the tree outside my office windowâI am experiencing the light reflecting off of the surface of the tree and interacting with my retinas to stimulate the nervous system in such a way that the appearance of a tree is generated in my mind. I can theoretically reach out and “touch” the treeâthat is, I can experience the nerve impulses that trace up my arm from the atoms in my fingers coming close enough to the treeâs atoms that the subatomic forces push them apart and signal to my nervous system that I am “touching” the tree.
But I can never know the tree. I can never experience life as the tree experiences life. No matter how much sensory data I gather about the tree, I can never experience the tree⊠I can only experience the data. I am limited by my biological equipment to only interpret the tree with the means I haveâsight, touch, sense, taste, etc.
Therefore, one could say that I do not know that there is a tree. All I know is that there are cognitive reflections occurring in my mind of a tree. The treeâs true existence, its fundamental treeness, is forever unavailable to me.
Now, I know what youâre saying⊠“Yeah, Mark, but seriously. That is a tree. I know that that is a tree!”
And now whoâs the crazy man standing in the park?

Okay, okayâso why the fuck am I bothering going through all of this? This is just mental masturbation, right? What does this have to do with anything?
These inquiries into human understanding raise many important points. But here are two:
- In the past century, psychologists have caught up to what these philosophers were saying: that we are limited and confined by our biological and neurological hardware. Any notion of objective truth will always be bent and twisted by the need to fit our limited sensory faculties.
Our perceptions are flawed, our memories often imagined, our ability to reason often impaired. Much of what we believe to be “true” at face value is inaccurate, at best, and completely delusional, at worst.11 This has real-world implications as we struggle to ascertain what is really going on around usâwhat is real and what is fiction, what is propaganda and what is legitimate inquiry. It is a call for us to be vigilant, critical, and humble of our own beliefs.
As George Orwell said, “To see what is in front of oneâs nose requires constant struggle.”
- Because human understanding is limited, we must be careful about what we choose to accept as true. Generally, philosophy has concluded that science is the best method of ascertaining and acting on knowledge, but it also admits that in most situations, solid scientific evidence is not going to be available or possible.
Philosophy reminds us that many of our most closely cherished beliefsâbeliefs about freedom, morality, and (especially) Godâare not fundamentally provable by any sort of epistemological method. Everything, to a certain extent, must be taken with some degree of faith. Therefore, we need to be smart about what belief systems we buy into and which belief systems we ignore.
All of this is a very roundabout way of saying that not only is it more accurate to remain uncertain of most issues and circumstances, but itâs also more beneficial to you and the people around you.
Unfounded certainty breeds tyrannical, narcissistic behavior. Unfounded certainty alienates you from the perspectives and beliefs of others. Unfounded certainty prevents you from learning and growing from your failures.
Itâs on this point that Buddhism was perhaps 2,000 years ahead of the west when it explicitly pushed a philosophy of “not knowing” and detachment from any tangible desire in the real world.
Whatever you believe you know to be trueâyou donât. None of us do. Weâre all floundering around in a metaphysical abyss. And we must each construct some form of understanding out of nothing to keep us afloat. If it is impossible to definitively answer the question, “What is true?” Then the next best question is, “What is worth believing?”
Philosophy Helps You Choose How to Live
“If you shape your life according to nature, you will never be poor. If you shape your life according to people’s opinions, you will never be rich.” – Epicurus
Once you begin to question the significance and veracity of everything that happens in your life, you will begin to realize that much of what you believe and value was not determined by youâit was determined by the people and culture around you.
You didnât decide you liked dogsâyou just grew up with a dog. You didnât choose to value proprietyâyour community did. You didnât think about wanting to be a doctorâyour parents threatened to disown you if you didnât go to medical school.
At some point in our lives, we must all step back and question the values that we were raised with and ask ourselves if those values are serving us. In many cases, we grew up with good values, especially if we had parents who were present and functional and didnât vomit on our birthday cake.

But every family has its dysfunction. Every culture has its obsessions. And inevitably, as adults, we start to uncover places where the values and beliefs we grew up assuming to be true are not helping us, but rather hurting us.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche called this questioning of what we grew up believing, “the reevaluation of values,” and said that if one has the mental and emotional courage to question these inherited values and beliefs, they would become what he referred to as the Ubermensch, or “Superman.”
The Ubermensch, according to Nietzsche, was not limited by traditional or conventional beliefs of his/her time period. Even concepts of good and evil should be called into question, he said. Thus, the Ubermensch is not only willing to face social rejection or ridicule but in many cases, he welcomes it because it is merely further evidence of his willingness to define values for himself.12
Nietzsche believed that in the future, with the rapid acceleration of science and technology and the outsized social influence they wrought, only the Ubermensch would be able to remain thoughtful, independent, and mentally sound. Everyone else would be too easily corralled into this social movement or that religious doctrine. He argued that the Ubermensch would enter a realm “beyond good and evil,” a place where traditional morality was questioned and cast aside in favor of something deeper and more transformative.13
Nietzsche didnât live long enough to explain what that “something deeper” would look like, but his work did prophesize much of what has occurred in the past 100 years:
- He believed that with the waning influence of religion, people would be attracted to political and social movements with religious fervor.
- He believed this zealotry would unleash wars and violence on a scale the world had never seen before.
- He wrote that much of the population, with their lives made so easy and comfortable by modern conveniences, would experience a pervading nihilism and listlessness.
Nietzsche went insane in 1890. It would take another fifty years for a group of French philosophers known as “existentialists” to finally pick up where Nietzsche left off.
Whereas Nietzsche wrote of the coming age of nihilism, philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean Merleau-Ponty wrote from within the thick of it. All of them were victims and survivors of World War II, confronting the inherent meaninglessness of life head-on.
Nietzsche wrote of the courage to choose oneâs own values in heroic and lofty terms. He saw it as a daunting task only taken up by the chosen few. But the existentialists wrote of this task as an inherent responsibility for each individual. For Sartre, those who failed to consciously choose what they valued in their lives lived an inherently inauthentic life.14
Much of my work over the years has been in line with thisâan attempt to help people “reevaluate their values” and to define what matters for themselves among a flood of useless information.15
This conscious choosing of oneâs beliefs and values not only has repercussions for oneâs own mental and emotional well-being, but it also determines the kind of footprint you leave in the world. In fact, as weâll see, the people who make the greatest footprints tend to have clearly defined philosophical belief systems for themselves.
Philosophy Helps You Make an Impact on the World
“The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” – Marcus Aurelius
In 1949, Simone de Beauvoir published The Second Sex. The book starts out tame enoughâthe first seventy pages explain, in scientific detail, the biological differences between men and women.
But upon arriving at Part II, the book quickly takes a revolutionary turn. Beauvoir announces boldly that, “One is not born but rather becomes a woman,” and the reevaluation of gender norms and the social definitions of sex began.
The Second Sex makes a simple observation: there are two definitions of “woman”âthe biological definition and the social definition. The biological definition is solid and physical, and (mostly) fixed.
But the social definition is fluid. It evolves and changes shape based on the time and location of the culture. This social definition of womanhood is not a moral truth but rather a reflection of the economic and social realities of each society. Beauvoir then argues convincingly that the reality of most womenâs lives in the western world did not live up to the values espoused by the Enlightenment. And because the definition of “woman” is flexible and can be molded, she aimed to recast the definition in a way that precipitated positive change.
Itâs a dense philosophical work, numbering over 800 pages, with long prodigious passages attacking the notion of womanhood from every angle imaginable. There are over 100 pages dedicated to Freud and the psychoanalytic definitions of femininity and another 100 pages looking at the developmental effects of cultural pressures on girls beginning in early childhood.
In contrast to today where way too much “activism” happens on Twitter with the caps lock key on, Beauvoir put together a towering intellectual work, cast in hard science and bolted together with airtight reason.

The book was a scandal upon release. The Vatican quickly added it to its list of banned books. Women began to create networks to smuggle the book throughout Europe. Once translated to English, hundreds of pages were cut due to fear of public revolt. It took almost ten years for any publisher in the United States to agree to publish it at all.
But eventually, it was published. And while it didnât tear up the bestseller lists, it quietly infiltrated the culture via the vast networks of bored, college-educated housewivesâsmart, ambitious young women who had gone to college, aced their studies, and then sat around their empty kitchens for the next ten years.
One of these housewives was a woman named Betty Friedan. After reading The Second Sex, Friedan attended her fifteen-year college reunion where she couldnât help but notice all of her girlfriends from years before seemed to be suffering the same affliction as her: lonely, bored, depressed.
Friedan decided to write a book about the experiences of the American housewife. She wrote about them in moral terms. She called the book, The Feminine Mystique. In it, she explained the dehumanizing effects of the traditional gender roles of womenâs lives.
She lambasted everything from the editors of womenâs magazines being male, to the loss of agency due to women being expected to give up their careers to raise children, to the stultifying boredom of repetitive housework. Friedan took the heady and abstract arguments of Beauvoirâs reevaluation of gendered values and crystallized them into daily life of the American woman.
The result set off a firestorm. The modern feminist movement in the US was born.
In my opinion, Beauvoir will one day be considered the most influential thinker of the 20th century. Regardless of how you feel about the state of feminist activism, The Second Sex perfectly illustrates the outsized influence philosophical thoughts can have on the world.
This is why nothing appears to ever “get solved” with philosophy: its ideas move so slow over such a staggering amount of time that itâs only possible to properly gauge their influence hundreds of years after the fact. We could trace similar genealogies of socialist and communist thought back to Marx (1840s), capitalism and free commerce back to Adam Smith (1770s), the political philosophy of liberalism, democracy, and human rights back to John Locke (1680s), or the classification of the sciences all the way back to Aristotle (circa 330s BC).
Because philosophy deals with concepts that are so abstract and universal, the effort that goes into redefining our definitions of ideas such as justice, equality, freedom, and gender require not only monumental intellectual effort to redefine (Marxâs Das Kapital clocks in at nearly 2,000 pages longâand was still unfinished when he died), but it takes generations for the ideas to properly disseminate across populations and be translated down into day-to-day applications.
For every Beauvoir, you need dozens of Friedans. And for every Friedan, you need thousands of activists and adherents for any tangible change to actually take place.
But I believe that if you look at all of the people with the greatest impact on the planet right now, they are all driven by some form of personal philosophyâthey too, have been forced to go through the work of “reevaluating all values” and defining good and evil for themselves. They have taken on the responsibility for choosing their own meaning and giving it to the world.
For example, much of the ethos of Silicon Valley (“move fast and break things”) is built off a philosophy that is part techno-utopian (derived from science fiction) and part libertarian (faith that market-driven innovations produce better outcomes for all). Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps the most visible of all Silicon Valley tycoons, built his credibility by espousing a personal philosophy of “connecting the world” and “bringing humanity closer together.”
(Note: This was back in the mid-2000s before we all discovered how fucking awful people wereâit sounded like a great idea at the time.)
Another example: Alan Greenspan has quietly been one of the most influential figures in the world over the past 50 years. Greenspan, who in his younger years was a close friend and follower of Ayn Rand, became the Chairman of the Federal Reserve in 1987 and presided over one of the biggest economic booms in history.
During this period, he adopted a more activist approach to managing the economy via interest rates and debt. His policies remain influential and controversial, even to this day. Critics have argued that everything from the 2008 collapse to the growing inequality across the developed world can be attributed to the banking practices Greenspan pioneered during his tenure.
Another: Xi Jinping has reshaped the political economy of China, making it more aggressive and less democratic.16Xi has done this by going against his predecessors, reviving millennia of Chinese thought. He has then combined these traditional ideas with Maoism to justify clamping down on dissent, committing atrocities, and becoming more antagonistic towards the rest of the world.
Another: Most recently, a set of ideas loosely identified as “critical race theory” (CRT), with the help of famous authors such as Ibram X. Kendi and activist reporters at the New York Times, have become prevalent in schools, universities, activists communities, and news media in the United States. CRT teaches that not only is racism prevalent, itâs ubiquitous. Everyone and everything is either racist or anti-racist. And squashing racism should take precedence over all other concerns.17
The examples are endless. Philosophies emerge from the abstract clouds of ideas and gradually trickle down to ground-level activists and politicians who, over the course of generations, materialize these ideas into the world. Once made real, these philosophical principles are then put into action and reshape our lives.
And unless you are aware of them, unless you are aware of the intellectual forces molding and dictating the discourse underpinning your day-to-day life choices, you are helpless but to be influenced by them.
Where to Start with Reading Philosophy
Okay, so hopefully your nipples are all hard for philosophy now.
Good. Letâs talk books. If youâre a complete newbie to philosophy and are intimidated by the length and density of most philosophical works, thatâs fine. We can break you in slowly. Iâve included a list of “entry point” books below that discuss major philosophical ideas of the western canon so you can have a little familiarity before diving in yourself.
There are also philosophical novels and memoirs. Many philosophers preferred this format rather than the classic essay. They are certainly easier to read, but sometimes their arguments and points arenât as clear.
Finally, I included both easier philosophy books and more difficult and serious books. Obviously, none of these lists are exhaustive. These are mostly biased by my own taste and stuff that I have read and enjoyed. If youâd like more recommendations, you can check out the book recommendations section of the website.
Iâd advise using study aids as youâre reading, as well, especially for the harder books. I highly recommend the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Itâs an incredible resource for summaries of major works and simpler explanations of difficult concepts. Itâs also free.
Also, surprisingly, Wikipedia entries for major philosophers and their works are often very good. Donât be afraid to hop on and read a summary of a book you just finished if you arenât confident you understood all of it.
Happy reading. And happy mindfuckery.
Entry Points to Philosophical Ideas
- Sophieâs World by Jostein Gaarder – An easy-to-read novel that also serves as an introduction to the entire western canon.
- A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by William Irvine – an introduction to Stoicism.
- The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt – A summary of ancient wisdom on happiness combined with modern psychology research on happiness.
- The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker – Becker relies on the work of Freud, Kierkegaard and Otto Rank to put together an existential framework for how fear of death inspires us to create meaning.
- The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday – A great entrypoint to Stoic philosophy but also ancient philosophy, in general.
- Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope by Mark Manson – Plugging my own shit here, but needless to say, if you got through this article and enjoyed it, you will love the book.
Philosophical Novels and Memoirs
- The Stranger and The Plague by Albert Camus
- Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre
- Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Candide by Voltaire
- Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
- Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche
- Manâs Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl
Easier Philosophy Books
- The Republic by Plato
- Meditations on First Philosophy by Rene Descartes
- Ethics by Benedict Spinoza
- Letters from a Stoic by Seneca
- Nature and Other Essays by Emerson
- Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche
- Fear and Trembling by Soren Kierkegaard
Serious Philosophy
- A Treatise on Human Nature by David Hume
- Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
- Phenomenology of Spirit by G.W.F. Hegel
- The World as Will and Representation by Arthur Schopenhauer
- Being and Nothingness by Jean-Paul Sartre
- Reasons and Persons by Derek Parfit
- Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology, I, III, 1, 6, C, 1845-6â”
- The book this line appears in is Martin Heideggerâs Being and Time. I would get you the page number but Iâm still mildly traumatized from my last attempt to read it.â”
- There are more questions, of course. I am leaving others out simply for the sake of brevity, most notably aesthetics and the philosophy of language. But these are the three biggies, in my opinion.â”
- The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress is a 1981 book by Peter Singer bridging the topics of sociobiology and ethics. In it, Singer defines the ethical progress of history as an âexpanding circleâ of empathy. Initially, we only empathize with ourselves and maybe some family members. Later, we were able to sympathize with strangers who are similar to us, then those dissimilar to us. Now our empathy can expand to include all of humanity and even non-human creatures.â”
- Descartes, Rene (1641) Meditations on First Philosophy. (D. A. Cress, translator). Indianapolis, Indiana. Hackett Publishing. pp. 19.â”
- See: Bostrom, N. (2003) âAre you living in a computer simulation?â Philosophical Quarterly. Vol. 53, No. 211. Pp. 243-255.â”
- Baker, M. (2016). 1,500 scientists lift the lid on reproducibility. Nature News, 533(7604), 452.â”
- Descartes, Rene (1641) Meditations on First Philosophy. (D. A. Cress, translator). Indianapolis, Indiana. Hackett Publishing. pp. 19.â”
- Fun fact: David Hume and Adam Smith were, like, besties. Check out: Rasmussen, Dennis, (2017) The Infidel and the Professor: David Hume, Adam Smith, and the Friendship that Shaped Modern Thought. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.â”
- Another fun fact: before he was into philosophy, Kant was into astronomy. In fact, he was the one who figured out how the planets of the solar system were formed.â”
- Donald Hoffman’s book, The Case Against Reality, presents a fascinating argument about how we almost certainly do not experience reality or even a close approximation of it. For a summary of some of his key ideas, see: Hoffman, D. (2019). Do we see reality? New Scientist, 243(3241), 34â37.â”
- Nietzsche, F. (1885) Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book For Everyone and No One (R. J. Hollingdale, Translator) New York: New York, Penguin (1963) pp. 214-5.â”
- Nietzsche, F. (1887) Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. (W. Kaufmann, Translator) New York: New York, Random House (1966) pp. 124-131.â”
- For an introduction to existentialism, see: Sartre, Jean-Paul (2007) Existentialism is a Humanism. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press.â”
- Manson, M. (2016) The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life. New York: New York, Harper One. And yes, I just cited myself, motherfucker.â”
- Greer, T. âChinese Leader Xi Jinpingâs Mind Explainedâ Foreign Policy. Retrieved: 3 September, 2020.â”
- See: Kendi, I. X. (2019) How to Be an Antiracist. New York: New York, New York: One World, Random House. For criticism of CRT, see: Lindsay, J. & Pluckrose, H. (2020) Cynical Theories, Durham, North Carolina: Pitchstone Publishing.â”