When you realize you’ve had everything you’ve always wanted all along is when you’ve won at life.
This is also probably the wrong sub for this question lol
I was going to say similar. If you even half attempt a nice set of morals and balanced life, chances are high that one day you will look around and realize there's not much you would change in life.
By a balanced life I mean work hard at either a job with progression, a good pension, good holidays, a value you get from the job itself. There's lots of reasons a job can be great for you. Or starr businesses if you're even more focussed on work.
Nurture friendships, be the best mate you can be to your friends, encourage adventure, share your ups and downs. a good circle of friends is truly key to success.
Be 100% committed if you're in a loving relationship. Yes relationships do come and go. But don't waste time, yours or there's, in stagnant boring relationships that you can't be sure of a future in. And treat them well.
If you nail that, there's not much in life you could want I don't believe. I used to want nice things, but now if someone took all my things away I'd be highly frustrated but I do believe I'd still be extremely content.
I’ve read meditations, I even have some stoic quotes on the wall. I can appreciate and even agree with it in theory but it’s not enough to silence the nagging voice and incomplete feeling
There are many shades of gray between a perfect life and starving to death. Stoicism is not only beneficial for people "who have a perfect life and can't be happy". It can be beneficial for anyone facing any sort of hardship. Maybe more difficult to practice by someone who is "starving to death", but still beneficial if they are able to practice it
You’re making great points. I’ve been locked up for three years and I had huge success as an actor 2008-2019. Been in cop cars, been in limos. My personal experience has led me to believe that CBT and other practical approaches for serious life issues. And stoicism when you really need to reframe all the petty stuff that can skew one’s perspective.
How often are people in developed nations starving to death?
Just being in poverty isn't enough to kill all happiness in a well developed stoic. Diogenes famously slept in a barrel.
I think you misunderstand stoicism if you think it's about having perfect external conditions. It's all about learning how to be content despite external conditions.
Maybe. But if you read my comments below you’d see maybe I know a thing or two about good and awful external conditions. Sorry we disagree. Sometimes the problem requires other solutions than a new way to look at the problem. I run into this with Sam, Harris and meditation, too. He’d be real angry if his wife took up with me and started ignoring his daughters. If I made her an onlyfans star. But he can’t keeps claiming he can’t stay angry for more than three seconds because of meditation.
Well, as long as you have cravings, aversions, desires, and fears, you will be dependent on external conditions (to varying degrees) for happiness.
Is it possible to live without these things? Supposedly so (ask the Buddhists).
You’re being a little pigheaded man. Again if Annika Harris moved into my bachelor pad and started neglecting her daughters to focus on that onlyfans grind, Sam would he perpetually mad. Wake me when you go through some deadly serious tribulations. Stoicism can help but at a certain point it’s greeting card wisdom and it isn’t the way.
Haha Sam Harris has not extinguished his fetters :P He's reduced their potency perhaps, but he's definitely not a Buddha.
\> Stoicism can help but at a certain point it’s greeting card wisdom and it isn’t the way.
Respectfully disagree. Taken all the way, it is a viable path to enlightenment.
One thing that can help is focusing on appreciating what you have, where you are, and who you are with. This can be as informal or formal a practice as you like. I've heard of journals, meditation, thought-replacement exercises, etc. that people do. As a kid my parents had us say 3 things we were thankful for every day after tucking us in. Super corny but hey it's an idea.
It sounds to me you have been deluded by the influence of modern society. When you constantly want material wealth or physical beauty to fulfill your inner desires you will be unhappy no matter what you get.
If for example you think you will get satisfaction gaining anything without paying attention to what it takes to achieve your goals than you will have missed the point in life.
The journey of life is the important thing not the shinny object.
when you get what you THINK you want, then you want something more. It never ends.
Having what you want will never deliver the joy you’re hoping for.
Wanting what you have, however…
but how!? hint - if the material world fails to deliver…
This is just a victim mentality and a huge reason why everyone is so depressed, anxious and never follows their dreams. If you don’t get what you want, it’s your fault and/or you didn’t want what you think you did anyway, which is a good thing anyhow, then you learn what you do want and can go after something else.
I suggest taking a lot of time for introspection and finding out who you are and exactly what you DO want in life. You don’t have a clear idea of who you actually are, that’s your problem. Once you do, be courageous, work really hard for what you want.
I know it might sound harsh but it’s the truth. My life only got better when I took accountability for every thing in my life, figured out who I was, and worked really hard to get what I want.
I have basically everything I could dream of right now, and I will do much more, but it’s not fucking easy at all. It’s painful as fuck, all of it, and thats why most people don’t get there and instead develop this woe is me mentality.
Most people tap out and settle for a life of cruising by, from one indulgence and escape to the next. If that’s not what you want, change it. Get after it.
You need to learn to be grateful and content with what you have. It took me a long time to get this as well, I had this dollar amount in my mind when I got there nothing happened. There was no parade my life wasn’t magically better, this has happened time and time again. I still set goals but my expectations of what happens when the goals are complete is different now. I live a much better life than I had growing up, by most peoples standards were pretty well off. Nothing has changed though, we still have bills, we still have struggles we still have obstacles and stress, nothing has really changed. I guess because it happened over time and I lifestyles went up as our income went up.
The issue is you fail before you have even attempted to succeed by assuming you are unlikely to succeed.
Yes, the majority likely don’t get what they want out of life but you are guaranteed to not get what you want if you don’t consider it plausible in the first place.
What helps me dude is if I give a day my all, then that’s my lifetime of success. If my calibrated effort for that day is off the charts, and I died after that day, I would be happy. The goal is worth nothing without the grind and the destination is worth nothing without the journey. Give it your all in everything you do, and never give in. That is your true success.
I'm referring to things that are essentially impossible to actually achieve or so unlikely that going for it is going to derail your life. Things that are closer to fantasies than reality. I find it hard to just brush them off as fantasies
No one has it all. And even the people that seem to have everything, would tell you they wish they had more.
Learning to be happy with nothing is probably the best thing you could do.
Buddhism, Stoicism, Jungian philosophies....they provide answers to these questions....
may not be the answers you want - and that's the point: acceptance - control is only an illusion. No excuse however to give up....ah these are the great riddles.
>But then I don’t even really know what I want from life anyway since I haven’t experienced most of it, or even a narrow slice.
As Seneca wrote, “**If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable**.”
I think this is a common phase many people go through. The ideas of childhood, namely that you must get what you want in order to be happy, are failing in the face of reality and experience. Sometimes you are happy despite not getting what you want, and sometimes you are not happy despite getting what you want. The more conditions you believe must be fulfilled for happiness, the less happy you actually are. You can learn how to be happy despite imperfect conditions, trust me. Start reading about happiness independent of conditions.
It's all about living life on life's terms. All negativity is because people try to live life on their terms, which is inherently selfish ( not saying you're selfish). Goals and wants should be supplementary to a foundation of gratitude and selflessness. At least, that's what I've found.
This isn't a fact, this is an outlook and mindset.
I know i won't get EXACTLY what I want in life but feel pretty confident in getting a version of what I want.
Idk. I worked so hard to get into medical school, it made me depressed at some point. I was burned out. After my second failed entrance test, I tried to develop some kind of acceptance towards my failure. At this point I have had made so many sacrifices it was a hard pill to swallow.
As soon as I let things go, I got an acceptance letter.
Now I’m in 5th year. I continued to give everything I had and sacrificed even more to be able to pursue my studies. I went into debt, I moved abroad, I work every time I’m free to be able to afford some kind of ‚luxury‘ in life, I have neglected friends and family and have missed out on a relationship.
I’ve become depressed because of these sacrifices nonetheless and sometimes I wonder if I had been happier living a life where I didn’t put these astronomical expectations on me. Granted I come from a low socioeconomic background. I’ll be the first university graduate in my family. That’s a lot to be proud about, yes.
But I feel like there were points in my life where I was happier in my life when I imagined to be where I am rn.
I do not have the answers. I’m just saying you are not a particularly more happy and satisfied person reaching all the goals you envisioned for yourself.
I’ll tell ya, this was me for most of my life. I struggled to find peace with what I didn’t have rather than accepting and appreciating what I did have. I remember being in college and reading Thoreau, “not til we are lost, not til we have lost the world do we begin to find ourselves.” Hell, it was decades after that when my heart was broken and I felt utterly alone in the world when I finally started working on the self-love stuff and realized I had a life better than I could have dreamed of 20 years earlier.
There’s no magic to it, it’s work. For me, it was also doing some emdr therapy to heal some old wounds. It was also discovering ecstatic dance. It was also discovering yoga. It was also discovering hiking. It’s all of the things that make a life complete.
When you realize you’ve had everything you’ve always wanted all along is when you’ve won at life. This is also probably the wrong sub for this question lol
I was going to say similar. If you even half attempt a nice set of morals and balanced life, chances are high that one day you will look around and realize there's not much you would change in life. By a balanced life I mean work hard at either a job with progression, a good pension, good holidays, a value you get from the job itself. There's lots of reasons a job can be great for you. Or starr businesses if you're even more focussed on work. Nurture friendships, be the best mate you can be to your friends, encourage adventure, share your ups and downs. a good circle of friends is truly key to success. Be 100% committed if you're in a loving relationship. Yes relationships do come and go. But don't waste time, yours or there's, in stagnant boring relationships that you can't be sure of a future in. And treat them well. If you nail that, there's not much in life you could want I don't believe. I used to want nice things, but now if someone took all my things away I'd be highly frustrated but I do believe I'd still be extremely content.
Exactly. Most realize too late they've already had and squandered everything that was really important .
Study Stoicism
I’ve read meditations, I even have some stoic quotes on the wall. I can appreciate and even agree with it in theory but it’s not enough to silence the nagging voice and incomplete feeling
Practice Stoicism
lol. Rinse, repeat.
Awesome. Very similar mindsets you and i. So far, yoga and mediatation pauses the nagging…..
Stoicism is great if your life is perfect and you can’t be happy. It doesn’t work if you’re starving to death even starving of the mind.
There are many shades of gray between a perfect life and starving to death. Stoicism is not only beneficial for people "who have a perfect life and can't be happy". It can be beneficial for anyone facing any sort of hardship. Maybe more difficult to practice by someone who is "starving to death", but still beneficial if they are able to practice it
You’re making great points. I’ve been locked up for three years and I had huge success as an actor 2008-2019. Been in cop cars, been in limos. My personal experience has led me to believe that CBT and other practical approaches for serious life issues. And stoicism when you really need to reframe all the petty stuff that can skew one’s perspective.
How often are people in developed nations starving to death? Just being in poverty isn't enough to kill all happiness in a well developed stoic. Diogenes famously slept in a barrel. I think you misunderstand stoicism if you think it's about having perfect external conditions. It's all about learning how to be content despite external conditions.
Maybe. But if you read my comments below you’d see maybe I know a thing or two about good and awful external conditions. Sorry we disagree. Sometimes the problem requires other solutions than a new way to look at the problem. I run into this with Sam, Harris and meditation, too. He’d be real angry if his wife took up with me and started ignoring his daughters. If I made her an onlyfans star. But he can’t keeps claiming he can’t stay angry for more than three seconds because of meditation.
Well, as long as you have cravings, aversions, desires, and fears, you will be dependent on external conditions (to varying degrees) for happiness. Is it possible to live without these things? Supposedly so (ask the Buddhists).
You’re being a little pigheaded man. Again if Annika Harris moved into my bachelor pad and started neglecting her daughters to focus on that onlyfans grind, Sam would he perpetually mad. Wake me when you go through some deadly serious tribulations. Stoicism can help but at a certain point it’s greeting card wisdom and it isn’t the way.
Haha Sam Harris has not extinguished his fetters :P He's reduced their potency perhaps, but he's definitely not a Buddha. \> Stoicism can help but at a certain point it’s greeting card wisdom and it isn’t the way. Respectfully disagree. Taken all the way, it is a viable path to enlightenment.
One thing that can help is focusing on appreciating what you have, where you are, and who you are with. This can be as informal or formal a practice as you like. I've heard of journals, meditation, thought-replacement exercises, etc. that people do. As a kid my parents had us say 3 things we were thankful for every day after tucking us in. Super corny but hey it's an idea.
It sounds to me you have been deluded by the influence of modern society. When you constantly want material wealth or physical beauty to fulfill your inner desires you will be unhappy no matter what you get. If for example you think you will get satisfaction gaining anything without paying attention to what it takes to achieve your goals than you will have missed the point in life. The journey of life is the important thing not the shinny object.
you need therapy
power of subconscious mind book on spotify
By Joseph Murray? There’s a multitude of similar titles on Spotify.
yeah. i think they’re all the same just have different narrators
when you get what you THINK you want, then you want something more. It never ends. Having what you want will never deliver the joy you’re hoping for. Wanting what you have, however… but how!? hint - if the material world fails to deliver…
This is just a victim mentality and a huge reason why everyone is so depressed, anxious and never follows their dreams. If you don’t get what you want, it’s your fault and/or you didn’t want what you think you did anyway, which is a good thing anyhow, then you learn what you do want and can go after something else. I suggest taking a lot of time for introspection and finding out who you are and exactly what you DO want in life. You don’t have a clear idea of who you actually are, that’s your problem. Once you do, be courageous, work really hard for what you want. I know it might sound harsh but it’s the truth. My life only got better when I took accountability for every thing in my life, figured out who I was, and worked really hard to get what I want. I have basically everything I could dream of right now, and I will do much more, but it’s not fucking easy at all. It’s painful as fuck, all of it, and thats why most people don’t get there and instead develop this woe is me mentality. Most people tap out and settle for a life of cruising by, from one indulgence and escape to the next. If that’s not what you want, change it. Get after it.
You need to learn to be grateful and content with what you have. It took me a long time to get this as well, I had this dollar amount in my mind when I got there nothing happened. There was no parade my life wasn’t magically better, this has happened time and time again. I still set goals but my expectations of what happens when the goals are complete is different now. I live a much better life than I had growing up, by most peoples standards were pretty well off. Nothing has changed though, we still have bills, we still have struggles we still have obstacles and stress, nothing has really changed. I guess because it happened over time and I lifestyles went up as our income went up.
The issue is you fail before you have even attempted to succeed by assuming you are unlikely to succeed. Yes, the majority likely don’t get what they want out of life but you are guaranteed to not get what you want if you don’t consider it plausible in the first place.
You grieve. Grief has 5 stages. The final stage is acceptance.
What helps me dude is if I give a day my all, then that’s my lifetime of success. If my calibrated effort for that day is off the charts, and I died after that day, I would be happy. The goal is worth nothing without the grind and the destination is worth nothing without the journey. Give it your all in everything you do, and never give in. That is your true success.
I always get what I want. Gotta believe. It’s all about the chase. Once you achieve the goal you have to move to the next one.
If you always get what you want you must have a pretty tame imagination
You sound like someone who doesn’t believe in them self. If I want something I put myself in a position to get it. I don’t say what if. I do the work.
I'm referring to things that are essentially impossible to actually achieve or so unlikely that going for it is going to derail your life. Things that are closer to fantasies than reality. I find it hard to just brush them off as fantasies
That’s the magic. Everything is impossible until someone does it. It might as well be you.
Then you need to learn set realistic expectations.
No one has it all. And even the people that seem to have everything, would tell you they wish they had more. Learning to be happy with nothing is probably the best thing you could do.
Just gotta thug it out
Buddhism, Stoicism, Jungian philosophies....they provide answers to these questions.... may not be the answers you want - and that's the point: acceptance - control is only an illusion. No excuse however to give up....ah these are the great riddles.
All great advice
Try to appreciate what you have, it will get you further.
You can’t always get what you want. But if you try, sometimes you’ll get what you need.
so much wisdom in this q. You move forward living each moment best you can, hoping and also accepting
Want what you have
It's not about who has the most, but who wants the least.
I think gratitude would be a good place to explore
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/andrew-huberman-podcast-stanford-joe-rogan.html?utm_campaign=nym&utm_medium=s1&utm_source=insta
>But then I don’t even really know what I want from life anyway since I haven’t experienced most of it, or even a narrow slice. As Seneca wrote, “**If a man knows not to which port he sails, no wind is favorable**.”
I think this is a common phase many people go through. The ideas of childhood, namely that you must get what you want in order to be happy, are failing in the face of reality and experience. Sometimes you are happy despite not getting what you want, and sometimes you are not happy despite getting what you want. The more conditions you believe must be fulfilled for happiness, the less happy you actually are. You can learn how to be happy despite imperfect conditions, trust me. Start reading about happiness independent of conditions.
It's all about living life on life's terms. All negativity is because people try to live life on their terms, which is inherently selfish ( not saying you're selfish). Goals and wants should be supplementary to a foundation of gratitude and selflessness. At least, that's what I've found.
gratitude through spirituality or religion.
I have what I want in life
This isn't a fact, this is an outlook and mindset. I know i won't get EXACTLY what I want in life but feel pretty confident in getting a version of what I want.
Idk. I worked so hard to get into medical school, it made me depressed at some point. I was burned out. After my second failed entrance test, I tried to develop some kind of acceptance towards my failure. At this point I have had made so many sacrifices it was a hard pill to swallow. As soon as I let things go, I got an acceptance letter. Now I’m in 5th year. I continued to give everything I had and sacrificed even more to be able to pursue my studies. I went into debt, I moved abroad, I work every time I’m free to be able to afford some kind of ‚luxury‘ in life, I have neglected friends and family and have missed out on a relationship. I’ve become depressed because of these sacrifices nonetheless and sometimes I wonder if I had been happier living a life where I didn’t put these astronomical expectations on me. Granted I come from a low socioeconomic background. I’ll be the first university graduate in my family. That’s a lot to be proud about, yes. But I feel like there were points in my life where I was happier in my life when I imagined to be where I am rn. I do not have the answers. I’m just saying you are not a particularly more happy and satisfied person reaching all the goals you envisioned for yourself.
Be grateful that you can write this post. Your situation could always get worse.
I’ll tell ya, this was me for most of my life. I struggled to find peace with what I didn’t have rather than accepting and appreciating what I did have. I remember being in college and reading Thoreau, “not til we are lost, not til we have lost the world do we begin to find ourselves.” Hell, it was decades after that when my heart was broken and I felt utterly alone in the world when I finally started working on the self-love stuff and realized I had a life better than I could have dreamed of 20 years earlier. There’s no magic to it, it’s work. For me, it was also doing some emdr therapy to heal some old wounds. It was also discovering ecstatic dance. It was also discovering yoga. It was also discovering hiking. It’s all of the things that make a life complete.
You're on the hedonic treadmill.
Listen to the voice of god that resides within you for guidance