What does it mean to be a philosophical person? Well, philosophy is the study and examination of the fundamental questions of life, ethics, reason, and knowledge. A philosophical person is someone who uses this as a basis to understand, plan, and execute their own life. That way, they can try to get the most out of life where they can.
A person needs to understand themselves well to make the most of that knowledge. And one way to ensure you know yourself well is to regularly ask philosophical questions that help you better understand yourself and your life trajectory. These deep questions will help you along the path.
1. What am I creating and optimizing my life for?
You need to understand what you want out of life before you can actually attain it. Without a target destination, you’re just left blowing in the wind. You may be living life, but you may not be fully experiencing it without a plan and a course of action set down.
What is it that you want out of life? What is most important to you? Safety? Security? Adventure? Love? Growth? And most importantly of all, is it what you want, or is it what other people want? You have to live the kind of life that makes sense for you, not the kind of life that other people want for you.
Everyone has opinions on what you should or shouldn’t do, but ultimately, you are the one who will have to live with the joy or regrets of your actions. Make sure what you’re doing will lead you to a destination you want to arrive at.
2. What parts of this situation are within my control?
It’s a core principle in many philosophies to not be anxious about the future or anything else that is outside of your control. It is true that we can affect an outcome with our own work and action. However, nothing is promised, and even the best laid plans can be smashed to pieces by circumstances you never could have envisioned.
As things unfold, the philosophical person will pause and think about what they can actually control, then focus on that. By discarding the things outside of your control, you can leave yourself more functional and able to handle stress, anxiety, and the weight of the world. Feeling bad and worrying won’t do anything for you.
You just have to have the confidence to know that you can handle whatever life sends your way. Sometimes, that doesn’t look like knowing all of the answers. Sometimes, “handling life” is knowing when you need help and embracing the humility to ask. After all, why should you fear other people’s judgment? That’s entirely outside of your control.
3. What would I do if I wasn’t afraid?
Everything you want out of life is on the other side of fear. As Psychology Today shares, we fear the unknown because the brain wants to keep us safe. Uncertainty means that there is a chance that you’ll experience harm. However, it’s also true that you may not. In fact, your willingness to take a risk and face your fears can be the difference between a life well-lived and looking back on a life of wasted time.
Time is the most valuable commodity in life. Far more valuable than money. You can always earn more money, but you can’t buy more time. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. We waste so much of our time for any number of reasons and then complain about the lack of hours in the day. In truth, we just waste a lot of time on hesitation derived from fear.
That includes avoidance. Binge-watching a show to avoid dealing with our life and thoughts is a lot of wasted hours in a day. However, that doesn’t mean you need to be a machine. Rest and relaxation are necessary to recharge, but one must keep in mind that fear can lead to avoidance under the guise of rest. You want to be certain that you’re not just avoiding uncertainty because of fear.
4. Am I reacting or responding to a situation?
There’s a pretty big, important difference between reacting and responding to a situation. Reaction comes from emotion, whereas response comes from rationality. This is a core tenet of the philosophy of Stoicism: to not shackle your actions to your emotions because emotions are not rational. We just feel how we feel, and sometimes those feelings don’t accurately reflect reality.
That’s why we need rationality. Personally, I have bipolar disorder, and when I was unstable, I would have emotional reactions to things all the time that didn’t make sense. They made sense in the context that I had an undiagnosed and severe mental illness. But they did not make sense for whatever I was experiencing.
I’ll give you an example. A long time ago, a cab driver gave me a free ride and a drop off at a corner store to pick up some money coming in via wire transfer. Instead of appreciating this act of kindness, I was enraged because I didn’t understand that it was just a drop off. And then the money never arrived, so I didn’t have any way to get home.
Was it a bad situation? Yeah, it was. But I reacted badly because I was unstable, and rage was often bubbling beneath the surface. Had I been of clear mind and rationality, I could have responded rather than reacted and accepted the situation for what it is. Instead, I acted like a jerk to a random guy who went out of his way to help me out.
5. Where did a particular belief come from?
We are trained and conditioned with beliefs from culture, society, and the people around us, even while in the womb. In my case, I am a straight man from a working-class background. As a young man, I was surrounded by other men who settled down into straight, monogamous relationships with the goal of having kids and the white picket fence. So I absorbed those beliefs for myself without stopping to question whether those were actually my ideals.
It wasn’t until one of my relationships was ending that I stopped to evaluate those views, because one of the reasons my ex cited for the relationship ending was that she wanted to explore her sexuality. After thinking about it, I realized that I wouldn’t have cared if she had explored her sexuality while we were still together.
Sex doesn’t have the same intimate connotation in my brain that it does for a lot of people. Nowadays, I feel similarly about love. Love is abundant when you don’t try to force people into boxes they don’t belong in. After that, I realized a lot of what I believed about love and intimacy just wasn’t my actual feelings about the matter. It was just what I grew up around and thought was standard.
This is just one example. We hold beliefs about every aspect of life that have far-reaching consequences. That’s why it’s so important to really consider where those beliefs come from.
6. What can you do today that future you would be thankful for?
I mentioned not living in fear of the future or uncertainty, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think about it at all. Instead, we need to periodically evaluate whether or not we are making the most out of today to build our foundation for tomorrow. That can be big or little things.
What big goals do you have? What steps have you taken today to reach those goals? Do you want to lose weight? Then you need to eat better. Do you want to be healthier? Then you need to exercise and get good sleep. Do you want to advance your career? Then you need to study.
There’s always something small you can be doing today that will lead to big results tomorrow. However, don’t forget your rest and relaxation. You can’t just go nonstop. Taking time to pause and regroup is important, too.
7. Is my action aligned with who I claim to be?
A difficult lesson I had to learn the hard way in life is that no one really cares all that much about your intentions. What people care about is what you actually do. Your actions speak louder than your words, and if those two things don’t match up, you’re going to have problems.
You need to make sure that your actions align with who you claim to be. If you don’t, then other people will view you as dishonest and a hypocrite. Now, let me pose a hypothetical. Let’s say that you don’t particularly care how other people view you, for good or ill. It’s still worth living in alignment with who you claim to be because a lot of people will base their ability to trust you on your actions.
Other than the blatant issues, misalignment can disrupt your personal peace so much because it just generates conflict. You have to try to track lies, manage contradictions, and deal with the conflicts that arise from all of that. It’s far better to just be who you say you are, even if people don’t particularly like you. People will at least respect the honesty.
But beyond what other people think, there’s also the internal question: can you respect yourself if your actions don’t match your values? Living in that contradiction creates a cognitive dissonance that eats away at you over time. Being authentic isn’t just about managing your reputation. It’s about maintaining your own integrity and peace of mind.
In closing…
Life is constantly shaping us, like a rock in a tumbler being smoothed and polished by the regular friction and movement. Sometimes it’s for the best, sometimes it’s not. However, you can take greater control over your own life and destiny by taking the time to examine whether or not you are living the life that you want.
Make sure that you’re not living the life that other people want for you, nor the life that you think society wants you to have. It’s your life, and if you’re not happy with it, you have the power to change it – far more power than you probably realize.
