Philosophy and Life Design: 5 Mindsets for a Philosophical and Scientific Approach to the Question of How to Live
H ave you ever felt that you’ve bumped up against a problem that was incredibly difficult, and then spent days, weeks, months, or even years worrying over it, analyzing it, reflecting on it, trying to figure out what to do next?
Let me tell you, I’ve been there. Especially as a philosopher, reflection can lead to cycle upon cycle of analysis, worry, and speculation.
Reflection is a powerful philosophical tool. But if it’s is actually going to shape our lives for the better, it needs to lead to the right kind of action.
And often, reflection, analysis, worry, and speculation are often not our best tools for discovering what works. They sometimes lead us to spin our wheels as we run over different options in our mind again and again. Most of us have, at one point or another, lost our way and confused ourselves by not using these tools in the right way.
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But don’t despair! I’m here to tell you, from hard-won personal experience, that there’s a way to learn to use these tools much more effectively. There’s an antidote to this kind of impractical reflection, a way to effectively use philosophy to shape your life for the better.
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There’s a path forward, and that path is to develop a Good Life Designer Mindset This is a method I’ve developed by creatively fusing philosophy with ideas and concepts offered by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans incredible book Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life.
I first encountered Designing Your Life when I was stuck in a cycle of anxious reflection about what I wanted to do with my doctorate in philosophy. I found it an immensely powerful resource. It offers a framework for building a better life that is both actionable AND that resonated with me as a philosopher. Indeed, it was this book that helped me figure out that I wanted to start The Promise of Philosophy to empower people to transform their lives — and thus the world — for the better.
I use Designing Your Life as a foundation for the Good Life Designer Mindset that’s a core element of my life improvement approach. I take life design concepts and infuse them with philosophical rigor and sophistication. The results are distinctly unique, nuanced, philosophically rich, yet easy-to-implement and concrete methods to truly transform your life for the better.
If you’ve ever felt stuck in your career. If you’ve ever felt that you’re drudging away at a job you hate until the time comes to die. If you feel a vague sense of discontent with your life or something inside you that screams you that you want something different, something more, then you owe it to yourself consider the GoodLife Designer mindset.
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In this post, I focus on the Five Mindsets necessary for developing and embodying the approach of a Good Life Designer. I show you how can create both a philosophical and scientific approach to figuring out what a truly good life is for you.
1. Approach All Problems with Curiosity and Expansive Thinking
A constantly curious mind is essential to crafting a Good Life Designer Mindset. Curiosity leads to seeing things differently, trying different things, and discovering new things and solutions rather than getting stuck with your first idea — a first idea that’s often born out of unexamined, limiting mindsets. By cultivating a curious mind and inquisitive mind, you can more readily push through limiting perspectives and develop more exciting and liberating ways forward.
This kind of deep curiosity is incredibly powerful because it invites exploration by “making everything new.” It is inherently playful and creative. It’s the key to learning to see opportunities everywhere. As Burnett and Evans put it, “being curious is the way to ‘get good at being lucky.’ In other words, you don’t find success or “luck” by making the universe somehow magically start doing things for you, noticing just how many opportunities there are around you that the universe is already offering.
A key part of cultivating this curiosity and open-mindedness in the right way consists of curiously listening to as many different points of view and opinions as possible. Everybody has something to offer. And the voices and contributions of those who are often dismissed or under-appreciated are especially important. So be sure to look with curiosity at how those who bring a different perspective might provide a missing piece of the puzzle.
2. Collaborate in Creative Communities
When building your way to a better life, always remember. You are not alone in this world or in your path.
The best designs are not the product of one individual’s creative efforts and capabilities. A single designer cannot create the iPhone, a flatscreen TV, or an espresso machine alone. The same goes for the best designed and well-lived lives. They are the product of synthesizing the ideas and ingenuity of many different individuals working together.
So don’t try to do it by yourself. Reach out. Speak to people in your life who you trust, people who energize you, and people who will gladly help you create a better life. You’ll hear them speak back. You’ll hear them understand, and together, you will be able to create an even better future.
And be sure to share your input on how they might build their way toward a better life. You can help them as much as they can help you. The important thing is that you actually try to figure it out together, in a creative and collaborative community. When we do so, we are able to put together better solutions and better designs than we could ever do by ourselves.
3. Experiment and Evaluate a Variety of Solutions
This is the most important part of a commitment to building your way forward rather than merely trying to think your way forward. As Burnett and Evans put it, “There is no sitting on the bench just thinking about what you are going to do. There is only getting in the game.”
So experiment. Try out different possible solutions. See the ways different things work and don’t work. This is much more fruitful than trying to think your way you the perfect solution before you try it out and see if it actually works out as you hoped it would.
To build a good life that works for you, you have to try things. You have to test things out,. You have to fail until you find what works to solve the problem. If you do so, you will realize that
And often by doing so, you realize that the real problem is entirely different from what you first thought it was.
Don’t become attached to a particular outcome. Don’t become hypnotized by an idealized final result. Focus instead on how different solutions can provide a part of the puzzle. Focus on actually experimenting with different solutions. and learning from these experiments.
It’s important to remember. Life is messy. Mistakes will be made. You will try things out that don’t work and need to be discarded. All that is okay. All of that is par for the course. Let go of the need for things to go perfectly. Learn to let go of your first ideas, of your good-but-not great solutions. And instead focus on what you can learn from different experiments, especially the failures. By doing so, you can find unexpected amazing designs that provide incredible solutions to different problems. Many inventions like the Slinky, Teflon, Super Glue, and Sticky Notes have been created this way. Your next unexpected breakthrough in life could come in this way.
4. Reconceptualize/Reframe What Doesn’t Work to Find a Better Way Forward
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Whenever you get stuck, you can get unstuck by taking a step back and changing your perspective. You can change the way you code the problem/the way you conceptualize the problem/the way you frame the obstacle you face.
By actively reconceptualizing your problems when you get stuck, you can realize what biases might be limiting your perspective and making a problem seem intractable and overly oppressive. Reframing can liberate you from these limiting and oppressive biases.
Even more exciting, reframing can open up new solution spaces. It can literally change the space of possibilities. It can make new solutions possible. Reconceptualization or reframing can open up a way forward when none seems possible.
We must always be on the lookout for what to reframe what the world brings us in order to find the right problems and the right solutions.
Often this kind of reframing involves locating limiting or dysfunctional beliefs that keep people stuck in ways of thinking and living that do not work for them but that they keep playing out and replacing them with beliefs that guide and empower them to build a better way forward. The following are some key examples of limiting beliefs and some philosophical reframes that we can give to them:
Limiting/Oppressive Belief: I have to move forward by finding the one right idea and then executing it
Philosophical Reframing: I can move forward by exploring any number of different possibilities for my future.
Limiting/Oppressive Belief: I need to figure out my best possible life, make a plan, and then execute it.
Philosophical Reframing: I get to choose which of many great lives to build my way forward to at different points of my life.
Limiting/Oppressive Belief: to be happy, I need to succeed.
Philosophical Reframing: to be happy, I need to design a life that works for me.
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Reframing in this way helps us see that happiness does not come from reaching the destination of success but from building a life that works well for you, a life that creates opportunities, that generates new possibilities, that evolves and grows.
And this reframing leads to the last core good life design mindset:
5. Cultivate Awareness of the Dynamical Nature of the Life Design Process
The deepest philosophical reframe for building your way to a better life is a shift from an outcome-focused, static approach (trying to bring about a certain state or outcome that you’re after) to a process-focused dynamical approach (creating for yourself a certain way of interacting with the world, navigating, and building your way toward better lives).
Limiting/Oppressive Belief: The quality of your life depends on your outcomes and current success
Philosophical Reframing: The quality of your life depends on your mindset and trajectory.
Life is not static. It’s not about what you get. It’s not a destination to be reached and then be satisfied. Life is dynamic. It’s about growth and change. It’s a journey, an experience for you to enjoy as it unfolds.
When you fully embrace and embody this dynamical mindset, you unlock something incredibly powerful for your life:
Failure Immunity
As Burnett and Evans put it, you can “become immune to the large majority of negative feelings of failure that burden your life needlessly.”
You can do this by remembering, whenever you fail, that you are always figuring out better and better ways to constantly becoming more and more of your (better) self. You’re always designing how to better express your own unique awesomeness to the world, so you can’t really fail.
What might seem to someone with less perspective a failure is, in fact, feedback of what works and what doesn’t for you. So, next time you feel like you’ve failed, remember Thomas Edison’s words:
“If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work. I haven’t failed. I am not discouraged because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”
Applying Good Life Designer Mindsets to Your Own Life
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Armed with these mindsets, you can now take on problems and life as a whole with a more fruitful, philosophical and experimental approach.
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If there’s a problem that you’ve been cracking your head against, first take a deep breath. Take a step back. And then try looking at the problem with fresh eyes, beginner’s eyes, curious eyes. Ask yourself,
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“Are there any biases that I’ve been bringing to my understanding of this problem that I can revise to see things in a new light?”
“Is there an unexpected solution lurking in an under-explored region of the space of possibilities?”
“Could something I’m already aware of actually have a different significance, meaning, or use?”
Then, once you find a possible solution you want to try out, don’t evaluate it forever, comparing its costs and benefits with other possible ones.
Take action instead!
Try out a solution. See how things play out.
Try starting that hard conversation with your friend or partner in that open and loving way, maybe at that spot that you both love.
Then evaluate how it went. Did it help? Did it lead to a greater understanding?
Try a new way of approaching your morning routine for a week.
Then see whether it gave you more energy and/or efficiency during the morning and the rest of the day.
And if things don’t go well, remember to reframe! This is not the end. This is just the next step.
This is not failure! It is only feedback!
Feedback of what works and what doesn’t that you can use to guide and empower your way to a solution that does work.
If the conversation leads to resentment and misunderstanding, that’s okay! Be loving and sincerely apologize for whatever part you may have played in having things go badly. And try to understand where things went off track. Maybe it was a certain phrase you used in the middle. Maybe it was the impatient state you were in when you began the conversation. Figure out what doesn’t work for you and keep track of it.
If your new morning routine left you exhausted early in the evening or left you feeling lacking in energy and focus, then go back to what works better for you and/or try something else entirely. Just because a particular solution works for others and not for you, doesn’t mean that there’s no solution you can build. Figure out what led to your feeling drained and distracted. Use it as a guidepost as you come to know yourself better and better.
Whenever you feel you’ve failed, consciously stop and tell remind yourself:
It’s not about the outcome. It’s about the process
This may seem like a failure, but in fact, it is simply the next step in my growth toward success!
And if you’re feeling stuck or simply want an even better way forward, then ask for help! Know that the project of designing and building a better life works best when we work on it together.
Ask friends you trust about ways they might or do approach difficult topics in their own relationships. Ask them what different aspects of their own morning routines work for them and why they do
By coming together, by pulling our knowledge and capability, we can come up with and implement solutions that are better and wiser than anything we could come up with individually!
Conclusion
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In this post, I have discussed Five Core Life Design Mindsets that one can adopt to give a more scientific and experimental approach to the question of how to live and the project of building a good life that works for you!
A particularly powerful part of living in accordance with these mindsets consists of being aware that life is a process, reframing any failures or negative outcomes you might face as experiences that provide feedback that can guide and fuel your growth.
Of course, it is one thing to say the insight. It is quite another to really keep that insight in daily consciousness and have it shape your life. In order to do that, you have to actively resist life’s hypnotic rhythm! And you have to do it daily and often!
To help you in this noble endeavor and cultivate failure immunity in your own life, I have created a list of Reframing Reflections to Cultivate Failure Immunity. To get it, just click and subscribe!
Get it now, and I’ll include a set of Core Philosophical Mindsets that can complement these Good Life Designer Mindsets to make sure your quest for a better life is not only scientific and experimental but also philosophical and reflective. In this way, we can move through the world and build a better life with higher wisdom.
And. I’ll throw in some Powerful Inner Game Techniques to Help You Keep these Core Mindsets In Daily Consciousness and Shaping Your Life for the Better!
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To keep building a truly good life using philosophical life design tools, build your Good Life Compass, use it to Good Life Journal and then apply these tools to replace bad habits with better ones.