Tips for a better life

Focus on the process, not the outcome. Get the process right and surrender the rest. You cannot control outcomes; however, you do have agency in processes. 

We can all tend toward delusions about our own supposed power and control. We too often believe that we can somehow ensure things will go the way we want them to and, in so doing, make our universe ideal. We can act as if we have power and control that we simply do not have. Or, conversely, we may collapse under the weight of perceived helplessness or failure. However, to have peace, we must come to terms with both our agency and relative impotence. We must grapple with our responsibilities and choices, against the infinite horizon of things outside our control. 

If we lean into delusions of power and control, we merely bolster our fears of suffering, loss, and death. Increasingly, the delusions and the fears will symbiotically support each other. 

Do not merely follow your heart—i.e., use your emotions as a compass for life. While it is helpful to listen to our emotions for any useful information—i.e., to be curious, notice them, consider their particular etiology and any helpful disclosures within them—emotions, nevertheless, tend to be fickle, ephemeral, and excessively impacted by past experiences. Instead of following your heart, seek what is true, wise, and good; let these be your compass for action.   

A person’s worth and value will fundamentally be at stake for them. We will all, on some level, be concerned with whether we are doing OK, are loveable, have value, etc. The most typical strategies for assessing this are: 1) comparing ourselves with others; 2) seeking affirmation and praise from others; and 3) tethering our value to our performance and use-value. In each of these strategies, our sense of value and worth becomes unstable, contingent, and recurrently threatened. However, if a person can move toward the conclusion that the value of every human being is not contingent, but unconditional, they will have increased peace.