5 Philosophies That I (Try To) Live By Everyday

I really believe that, in order to live a meaningful life, we need to have a set of systems or structures as a backbone to keep life in order. It’s crucial to have values or principles that we can live by and fall back to during tough times. This helps to keep ourselves accountable for our everyday actions and behaviours.

Personally, there are 5 philosophies that I try to adhere to every day which governs my daily life. In this blog entry, I will share what those 5 philosophies are!

But before that, let’s break down to the most basic question: What is philosophy?

Philosophy is derived from the Greek word “philosophia”, which means “love of wisdom'”.

Full disclosure, I’m very new to philosophy. I was always interested and curious about this subject in the past, but I never got around to explore it that much due to my studies. However, in the last few months especially during MCO, I’ve been educating myself in philosophy by getting to know the key figures behind this subject and the ideas that they try to convey.

I find philosophy very fascinating because it delves into deep questions about life, about human nature and the how everything in the Universe is interconnected.

It is through philosophy that we develop the way we think. You can see how the moral zeitgeist shifts over the centuries, for example on certain topics pertaining to morality, ethics, our mortality, our relationship with others and philosophy discusses these issues.

PHILOSOPHY #1

The first philosophy on my list is the philosophy of stoicism. Some of the famous figures of stoicism include Seneca, Epictetus, the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius and Zeno. What is stoicism? Stoicism is essentially “a way of life”. Like all things in life, there are some things within our control, and some beyond our control. In stoicism, the stoics believed that the only and highest good thing is living a life of virtue. And in those moments when things are out of our control, we need to focus only on what we can control, which are our thoughts, emotions, behaviour, reaction etc. In general, stoicism is more of a lifestyle than it is an idea. And it’s not a one-time thing because in order to master stoicism, you need self-discipline and consistent practice until it becomes second nature.

Stoicism has a few core principles or teachings in order to live a life of virtue. Below are a few:

1. Summum Bonum

• “Summum bonum” is defined as “the supreme good from which all others are derived”.
• Under this principle, the stoics advocate to always do the right thing, live according to your moral code and for the common good.

2. Amor Fati

• Which means, “A love of fate”.
• The stoics love everything, including the good and bad, the positive or negative.
• They believed that there are no such things as obstacles. Instead, we should see them as an opportunity for growth and to take the hurdles as fuel to achieve our goals.

3. Premeditatio Malorum

• Which means “Premeditation of Evils”.
• The idea behind this phrase is to always have low expectations and think about the worst case scenario, because what can go wrong, WILL go wrong.
• If things turn out better than you expected, then that’s a bonus!
• But when the worse happens, you won’t be disappointed because you’ve mentally prepared yourself and have anticipate it.
• As Epictetus taught, problems are overcome by regularly anticipating potential setbacks that can happen in life, imagining what it would be like to face typical misfortunes philosophically. 

4. Memento mori

• Which means “Remember Death”.
• Everyday we should meditate on our mortality, it does sound depressing to some but the stoics believed that thinking about our death is the key to happiness.
• Because when we are constantly reminded of our mortality, we will not take life for granted, we will live life to the fullest, we will take immediate actions and not procrastinate on things that matter to us, and we will act as if today is our last day.

PHILOSOPHY #2

The next philosophy by an Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl. He’s also one of the survivors of the dreadful Holocaust during World War II. During his periods of imprisonment, he was put in four different Nazi concentration camps in Auschwitz, Poland which is well-known its gas chambers torture.

Viktor Frankl is also the author of a book called, “Man’s Search For Meaning”, a memoir of his experience in the camps and this book also happens to be one of my favourites!

There’s a quote by him that stuck with me until this day:

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom”.

To put it simply, when something happens to us, or when someone does something to us, there is this gap or space before we react to it. And thus, in that gap or space, we have the ability to decide what our reaction will be. This idea is similar to stoicism — things will happen to you everyday, some we can control, and the others are beyond our power. For example, we can’t control the weather, we can’t control the traffic, we can’t control how others will treat us, but we can control how we will react to them — and that is where your power and freedom lies.

PHILOSOPHY #3

The third philosophy is by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and it’s from his famous quote:

“He who has a ‘why’ to live can bear almost any ‘how'”.

Viktor Frankl cited this quote numerous times in his book as well. During his times in the Nazi concentration camps, as a psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl observed what went through the minds of the prisoners at that time. He realized that the prisoners are most likely to survive when they have a big enough reason to live, despite the insurmountable challenges facing them. It is when they find meaning or purpose behind the suffering, it is when they have a “why” to live. We can apply this to our daily life as well. Too often we go through life and sleepwalking through the day while doing the things that don’t fuel us. It is ultimately our responsibility to find our own meaning or purpose in life: What drives you? What are you passionate about? What makes you come alive? What makes you want to get up every morning?

And go do that.

PHILOSOPHY #4

The fourth philosophy is by the Algerian philosopher, Albert Camus. This philosophy is extracted from the last line of his book “The Myth Of Sisyphus”, which says:

“One must imagine Sisyphus happy”.

Sisyphus is based on a Greek legend, and he was known as God in a place called Corinth. As a God, he was very devious, manipulative and tyrannical. This made the other Gods livid, including the God Zeus, the father of Hercules. Zeus tried to punish Sisyphus multiple times, however Sisyphus managed to outwit Zeus and even cheated death twice. Zeus was enraged, and eventually decided to punish Sisyphus once and for all. Sisyphus was to carry a boulder up a hill, but just before reaching the peak, the boulder would roll back down, which then forces Sisyphus to carry it back up again and this never-ending cycle continues for eternity.

This act of Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill repeatedly is actually a metaphor for the monotony of our everyday life, whereby we repeat the same tasks everyday, doing the same routine, meeting the same groups of people, going through the same patterns and motions over and over again.

However, Albert Camus suggests that, instead of giving in our life to fate, what if we rebel or revolt against the system? What if we go against the crowd and create our own rules? Our own standards of living?

And what if we imagine Sisyphus happy? What if we imagine him actually enjoys carrying the boulder up the hill and having to do it all over again, and not seeing it as a burden or punishment?

This story is a reminder that, regardless of the circumstances that we will confront, we should not give in and surrender to “fate”. Instead, we must own it and embrace it wholeheartedly.

PHILOSOPHY #5

The last philosophy on my list is from this line by the French philosopher, Jean-Paul Sartre which is:

“Existence precedes Essence”.

This line is from his book “Existentialism is Humanism”, where he presents his philosophical idea of “Existentialism”. Existentialism is basically the idea that, when we are put on this Earth, we are essentially nothing — no meaning, no purpose. Thus, it is our responsibility as human beings to create our own meaning and purpose in life. We are what we make of life, because there is no one divine plan or universal value that will do that for us. Here he puts it nicely:

“Man is nothing other than his own project. He exists only to the extent that he realizes himself, therefore he is nothing more than the sum of his actions…responsible for what he is…free…condemned to be free…commit[ing] himself to life”.

In other words, we are the captains of our own ship and the cartographer of our own life map.

That sums up my blog entry for today. I really believe that we should all have our own personal principles or philosophies that we can emulate in our every day life. I hope this has been a beneficial read for you! Comment below and share what are your philosophies? As always, take care and stay safe! xx