How to Live Well. A Guiding Path For Our Human Experience.
- 13 hours ago
- 12 min read
Living well is subjective. It means something different for each of us.
There is no one size fits all. We are all unique at birth, have different experiences, learn from different sources, are influenced by different environments and in turn develop our own outlook, values and goals.
To map a path that can help each of us, as individuals, to navigate our way to a life well lived, we must acknowledge this.
To do this then, we will take advantage of well worn timeless principles, models, theories and strategies from the great minds of history. And then use systems thinking to curate and thread their lessons together in a useful and practical way - that we can each leverage for our own unique journeys.
Let's first take a lesson that Charlie Munger repeated frequently from the mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi - "Invert, always Invert." Or in other words - what do we not want to do.
Let's now combine this lesson with another useful model - thinking in first principles. By combining these two, we can deduce a starting point. If we look at our experience of life from a very high-level, focusing on what we all universally have to do most moments of every day, we can conclude that managing our thoughts and in turn, avoiding bad decisions and making good decisions - in each moment is Step 1 towards living well.
Many of the great minds that came before us have realised this power in first focusing on our own thoughts and actions. Viktor Frankl's works, stated that, between a stimulus and a response, there is a space in which a person retains the freedom to choose their attitude and action. Epictetus detailed his Dichotomy of Control, dividing all circumstances into things that are up to us and things that are not, and our acceptance of this reality.
From these and other lessons we can develop a practical framework - lets call it, Step 1 - The Three Choices Framework.
In every situation we always only have three ultimate choices - Choice 1, Take Full Responsibility, The Path of Growth; Choice 2, Do Nothing, The Path of Stagnation; Choice 3, React Negatively, The Path of Destruction.
After determining there is only one useful position to take in all of life's moments - taking full responsibility - we can now move on to, where do we go?
This is where we begin to lean into the uniqueness of every individual's journey - our individual Direction.
Where do you want to go in life? What is the purpose of life? What should I do with my life? These are all very open-ended questions many wise and worldly have pondered for centuries. To avoid circular arguments, leading to stagnation - let's disregard any broad pondering for now and find a practical way to begin moving forward.
Utilising First Principles thinking again, and partnering it with our ability to choose our thoughts in any moment - we can narrow down that our ability to decide on our own individual Values provides a starting point for our own individual Direction.
Even if we do not have answers for the big questions or control of some of the external outcomes we may currently wish for, we can still define our own Values - these in turn can begin to form our guiding frame of reference.
When clearly defined and understood our Values influence how we make decisions, where we invest our time, who we build relationships with, and the quality of our experience.
Even as our Values evolve, or perhaps completely change over time, they still remain our constant foundation - our guide in each moment. This ensuring that even if we do not know the destination of our life, we will always feel aligned with our life - creating a more permanent sense of fulfillment.
Next step.
With our Values as our guide we can now begin to contemplate further into what we want, or again, what we don't want. What we call defining our Goals.
When aligned what our Goals really do is give form to our Values. Where we aim is where we are likely to go. Clarifying our Goals helps us take ownership of our Direction rather than arriving somewhere unintentionally - or from someone else's intentions.
Goals help us decide what to pursue, what to prioritise, and what to leave aside. While like Values our Goals will change as circumstances and our understanding evolves, they provide focus and momentum in the present.
As for what specific Goals to set - let's circle back to that soon.
First, as we all know, Goals are just ideas or dreams unless we take Action. An Action Plan translates our aligned Values and Goals into movement. It helps us prioritise, focus, assess progress, and adapt as our circumstances change.
We have now systematically built a fly-wheel to drive our momentum through life - via the Values, Goals and Action Plan trio - let's call it our Direction fly-wheel.
Why is this Direction fly-wheel so important to the goal of this video - to Live Well. Biologically we are programmed for energy conservation, we are much like electricity in that way, in that we often take the path of least resistance - which as we have already determined in the Three Choice's Framework - is sub-optimal for living well - leading us downhill towards a life of stagnation or worse, destruction.
Now, coming back to where we left off at the end of the Goals section - where do we point our Direction fly-wheel, what do we next prioritise, where do we go?
What all these questions are essentially asking is - is there a Path through life for me to follow?
For centuries many great minds have discussed the path through life for the human experience - philosophers, psychologist, theologians and many other thinkers. All with many different approaches and again much of the output and ideas can be quite open-ended and esoteric. So, to again stay focused for our practical purpose of living well, let's remove any of the 'big questions' and circular debates and keep it purely user friendly and actionable.
Taking the best of what is laid out for us, via objectively reading from a broad range of texts, we can see threads begin to emerge. Over and over again if you overlay much of what many are saying in a variety of different ways is that the human path through life, at a very high-level is the journey from a focus on the Self to Others to All.
The Path is essentially always the same, the journey is unique for us all.
To clarify for ourselves - life is a Complex Adaptive System, meaning it has emergent properties, it is not linear - we do not simply progress along this Path we need to constantly monitor and maintain our journey on this Path.
For example a young couple who are progressing into the testing experience of parenthood - one of the Others steps of their journey - soon learn they also need to ensure they look after themselves. The same for an altruist who wants to give as much as they can to a cause that benefits many - they quickly find they will only be of limited service if they leave nothing for themselves to continue on with.
With the high-level Path mapped out, we now need to give it meaningful structure and detail. Upon continuing to dive deeper into a broad range of texts we can be guided to define what we will call the Phases, Pillars and Aspects of our Path.
Let's start with Phase 1: Foundations. The Foundations of what are required for the human experience. Important, as a stable foundation reduces fragility and increases choice later in life.
Let's layer Foundations into two Pillars - Basics and Health. Under Basics let's ensure we have a Clean Living Environnment - Aspect 1 - and our Safety & Security - Aspect 2 - are both met. For Health, let's take ownership of our Energy Managment - Aspect 3, Nutrition - Aspect 4 and Movement - Aspect 5.
Before moving further along our Path, let's pause here.
As you may notice, we can now see a hierarchy of needs appearing along our Path - as a Paramedic follows a system of triage to determine the priorities to address first in a patient - Airway, Breathing, Circulation, Disability, Exposure etc - so we can now begin to assess our own position and heirarchy of needs within our life to prioritise.
So this is where we can begin to get a sense of what Goals to first set - an assessment of our current position on the Path when assessed along side our Values. If we notice we have work to do on our Foundations, we have somewhere to start building momentum from. This in turn providing us more leverage and resilience moving forward on our journey along the path to living well.
With our Foundations - Phase 1 - considered, next we look towards Phase 2 - our Stability. Stability allows us momentum to compound forward, rather than reset or decline over time.
For Stability, let's review our Finances - Pillar 3 and Potential - Pillar 4. For Finances, delving into our positions and capabilities for our Income - Aspect 6, Financial Management - Aspect 7 and Investing - Aspect 8. For Potential, assessing our Emotions - Aspect 9, Focus - Aspect 10 and Strength - Aspect 11.
You will likely now notice how when overlayed on The Path our Values are beginning to help to create more clarity for the next steps of our Direction. For example, if you value Strength, this aspect may have instantly drawn your attention as a priority over other Aspects. But always remember to be objective and be aware of what Carl Jung called the shadow self, and others call blockages, unmet needs or similar concepts and terms. What this means is - are you artificially drawn to particular aspects, as that is where you are most comfortable or where you are trying to make up for something? Or are you actively avoiding certain aspects due to some blind spot, bias or other?
Being as objective and honest with yourself, as you can, feels uncomfortable now, but clears your way moving forward. Remind yourself personal growth is never easy, and then continue to progress one step at a time - we will come back to the power of one step at a time towards the end of this video.
For these first two Phases of Foundations and Stability you will notice there was a focus on the Self, from here as we move forward the focus shifts from Self to Others and then All.
Next, Phase 3: Connections.
To form strong Connections, we can assess and work on Community - Pillar 5, Relationships - Pillar 6 and Communication - Pillar 7.
Starting with Community, we need to audit the Environment - Aspect 12 - that we surround ourselves with, the Mentors - Aspect 13 - that influence our life and our Network - Aspect 14.
As we then zoom into our Relationships, we first need to take time to look at our relationship with our Self - Aspect 15, then our relationship with Others - Aspect 16 - and then our Compassion - Aspect 17.
To better equip ourselves for growth within this phase of our lives we need to work on the Intent - Aspect 18, Clarity - Aspect 19 and Harmony - Aspect 20 of our Communications.
This Community Phase can be difficult for many of us, it is easy to take it for granted, ignore it completely or accept it as it is without question, again this is where we need the lens of our Three Choices Framework combined with our stated Values - to empower us to move forward.
With our first three Phases now considered, we move on to what we can contribute to the world, Phase 4 - Development.
Our Development is what reveals our individuality and in turn builds our capabilities. This Phase is where we can really dive into, begin to understand and lean into our Uniqueness - Pillar 8 and Competence - Pillar 9.
To Understand our own Uniqueness we first need to Explore - Aspect 21 - the world to better understand it and how we may approach it. With this worldly understanding we now objectively Observe - Aspect 22 - ourselves prior to Discovering - Aspect 23 - how our capabilities and inclinations intersect with real-world opportunities over time. Being further informed of our Uniqueness we now proceed with more confidence towards building out our Competence. We deepen our Knowledge - Aspect 24, apply ourselves to our Practice - Aspect 25, and commit to becoming a Professional - Aspect 26 - in our craft.
With all this work we have committed to so far - we now try to put the compounding effects of time to work to build Phase 5 - our Mastery. Leveraging the previous four Phases, our dedication to Mastery now guides us to Pillar 10 - Create & Build and Pillar 11 - Autonomy.
To proficiently Create & Build, we need to develop our Inspiration & Vision - Aspect 27 - for our field, gain an aptitude at Planning - Aspect 28, and actually be able to Execute - Aspect 29. Reminding ourselves again that the goal is to Live Well, we want to build our Autonomy via ensuring Alignment - Aspect 30 in our lives, Astuteness - Aspect 31 - in how we act, and Independence - Aspect 32 - in how we do so - to provide us the best chance of doing our best work - in a way that contributes to the next and last Phase.
Phase 6 - Meaning.
Our final Phase on our journey through the human experience is obviously essential to our goal of living well. This Phase could again potentially circle us back to these big, open ended questions that could stifle progress or cause confusion - so again, let's flank them, instead of asking the perpetually debatable, 'what is the meaning of life' question - lets refuse to define it so specifically.
But let's also provide a fair reason as to why we can and should.
We earlier discussed that life is a Complex Adaptive System, meaning it has emergent properties and is not linear. So from this we can deduce that so too can be Meaning - in that it can be an emergent property the emerges from how we live our life.
This definition also provides us agency and adaptability. It does not require specific conditions to find or create Meaning. Specific conditions often being fleeting and completely out of our control - remembering the Epictetus lesson from the start of this video.
Now to improve the likelihood for Meaning to emerge in our lives let's add three more focus areas to our attention - Pillar 12 - Wisdom, Pillar 13 - Fulfillment and Pillar 14 - State.
To grow our Wisdom, we build the ability for Detachment - Aspect 33 - and partner it with sound Judgement - Aspect 34. To harness Fulfillment we understand the potential of Selflessness - Aspect 35 - and a perspective of Holism - Aspect 36. Finally, for our State we practice Peace & Joy - Aspect 37 - across our whole journey.
With the final Phase of Meaning coming into place we can now see how The Path can create an Orientation for our Human Experience. But we need to also continually remind ourselves that orientation can change based on our vantage point. As we have resigned ourselves to accept life as a Complex Adaptive System with emergent properties, and not a linear journey - we concede that though The Path is linear in it's structure, our experience of it will not be. We will go back and forth and up and down through the Phases, Pillars and Aspects across our whole journey - this fact is what unites us all despite our different specific human experiences.
Knowing this fact and utilising our Three Choices Framework, to make a constructive decision, we frame it as an opportunity for our continued personal growth. Hence, our Direction fly-wheel, for ensuring our continued momentum no matter our changing circumstances and perspectives.
When we first understand, see or hear of this path through the human experience for the first time, we often arrive at the same conclusion - ohhh... that's a lot of work.
It both is and it is not. Once you begin to more deeply understand it, you realise there is actually Meaning to be found in just commiting to this journey, to simply practicing Step 1 - The Three Choices Framework, to not overthinking life too much and just consciously moving forward a little each day.
This may feel like a dichotomy, but it is actually all quite aligned. It is how The Three Choices Framework, your Direction fly-wheel and The Path all assimilate with great minds such as Frankl and Epictetus, and the nature of our own personal Goals and desires. Try as you may sometimes, some external circumstances will simply be out of your control, so what do you do in that reality?
Simply continue to do your best.
Many great minds have landed on this same simple guide...
"Strive on with diligence." Siddhartha Gautama
"Fulfill your task as a Roman and a man, with energy and with unfeigned, loving, and cheerful gravity." Marcus Aurelius
“Once when the Master was standing by a stream, he said, Could one but go on and on like this, never ceasing day or night.” Confucius
"We must cultivate our garden." Voltaire
"As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death." Leonardo da Vinci
This is the optimistic approach to life. We understand not all will go our way. We plan to continually improve a little each day. We find meaning in our growth. We do our best, in each moment and in turn we live our unique lives well.
Like most of life, the answer is not easy to implement, but it is worth it. So leverage the knowledge of great minds and implement their timeless principles. The full Framework including the Direction fly-wheel and the Path, including specific sections for each Aspect to help further guide your decisions - Self Reviews, Models & Theories, Lessons, Case Studies and a Library - are all open for you at strategyofone.com. We hope it is useful.
Thank you for watching. Take care and all the best.
Useful Readings:
Origin Story: A Big History of Everything — David Christian
The Lessons of History — Will & Ariel Durant
The Meaning of Human Existence — Edward O. Wilson
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst — Robert M. Sapolsky
The Undiscovered Self — Carl G. Jung
Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Toward a Psychology of Being - Abraham Maslow
Poor Charlie’s Almanack — Charlie Munger
Poor Richard’s Almanack — Benjamin Franklin
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder — Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Discourses and Selected Writings — Epictetus
Meditations — Marcus Aurelius
Man’s Search for Meaning — Viktor E. Frankl
Full reading list at strategyofone.com/library
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