How To Create An Authentic Life
One of the scariest thoughts is living a life that you didn’t want. To have gone through life simply existing and doing things you’re supposed to do without any conscious thought behind it. Not knowing whether it was something you really wanted.
Especially nowadays when we are all so connected. There is an added pressure of keeping up with the Joneses. To be part of a rat race that you don’t remember signing up for. On top of that, there is this obsession with being productive, having a side hustle, spending every minute of your time learning and growing, and this constant hustle puts blinders on you. All you see is the next task, the next goal, the next project, and soon enough, your entire life has gone by and then you pause and look around and see that you’re lost. You aren’t remotely where you want to be.
You can turn around or jump off the assembly line and carve a new path but you can’t get that time back.
The idea of the grass being greener on the other side or of sacrificing one’s present happiness and peace of mind for some future profit can deprive us of living an authentic life. And it’s that authentic life that matters.
Each individual will have their own criteria for what they regard to be an authentic life. Someone who can help us navigate and create our own authentic life is William Irvine, the author of A Guide To The Good Life. In his book, he stresses the importance of living your life according to your own philosophy.
The first step is figuring out what you want out of life.
In asking what you want out of life, I am asking the question in its broadest sense. I am asking not for the goals you form as you go about your daily activities but for your grand goal in living. In other words, of the things in life you might pursue, which is the thing you believe to be most valuable?
Of course, this line of thinking isn’t new or revolutionary. There have been many philosophers, humanitarians, and even self-help authors who have mentioned such things. But that doesn’t take away from what Irvine is underlining. If you wish to live an authentic life, you need to have an aim or a goal.
Tim Ferris, author of The Four Hour Body, has often spoken about the fact that to grow, you need to track. For example, if you wish to lose weight, it’s important to track your workouts, calories, macronutrients, weight, and yourself through progress pictures. Through such variables, you can see if you’re heading toward your goal, moving away from it, or if you’re stagnant.
Similarly, in life, when you isolate a few markers which correlate to your own authentic life, you can see if you’re making progress or not. These markers have to be individualized but for myself, they include having a trusting and fulfilling relationship with my significant other, an attempt to be more present in the day, my goals as a writer, and my relationships with my family, to name a few.
Each thing is then further broken down into tangible progress markers. And this is important so you don’t end up going toward a life that you don’t even care about.
Why is it important to have such a philosophy? Because without one, there is a danger that you will mislive-that despite all your activity, despite all the pleasant diversions you might have enjoyed while alive, you will end up living a bad life. There is, in other words, a danger that when you are on your deathbed, you will look back and realize that you wasted your one chance at living. Instead of spending your life pursuing something genuinely valuable, you squandered it because you allowed yourself to be distracted by the various baubles life has to offer.
The second component is a strategy to attain this goal. This is where I believe Irvine separates himself from others, as he is aware that we can’t get everything we want in life. Life is full of sacrifices, some of which are in our control, while others just happen to us.
She (the philosopher) will therefore help us sort through our goals and place them into a hierarchy. The goal at the pinnacle of this hierarchy will be what I have called our grand goal in living: It is the goal that we should be unwilling to sacrifice to attain other goals. And after helping us select this goal, a philosopher of life will help us devise a strategy for attaining it.
If you could just get one thing out of life that would make all the trials and tribulations worth it, what would it be? A stable home? A loving relationship? A work accomplishment? Fit body? Calm mind? A social cause? A character trait? A personal achievement?
Questions like these require deep thought and can often be uncomfortable to answer. Partly because it’s much easier to attempt and achieve something lower in the hierarchy because we’ll feel less pain if we fail to achieve it.
However, if you attempt to achieve the thing that is the most valuable then you have to accept that you might never get there. And that failure can be petrifying. But there is no other way than to declare your intention and go after it.
This is also important because you will know what is enough. The issue many people face nowadays is that there is always some new shiny thing to chase after. All that chasing can lead you astray from the life you want. But if you have a concrete picture of what you want, if you achieve it, you know you don’t have to keep searching and chasing.
Achievement isn’t the be-all or end-all. The magic lies in the pursuit of the higher goal. Even if you come up short, that attempt will lay the foundation of an authentic life that is truly your own.
Originally published at http://learnedliving.org on October 31, 2023.