10 Useful Observations to Get Through Life
As clinical psychologist and professor Jordan Peterson would say, life isn’t a game. It’s a series of games. How we play one series affects the whole.
Hopefully we have ethic and moral frameworks that can be applied across various categories to help us play. Along with these, we need mental models that help influence our perspective and how we make decisions. The models could overlap with ethic and moral frameworks — they could be religious or philosophical — or they could be general maps we’ve begun to craft as we’ve moved through life.
Through my own experiences with either mental models or frameworks, I’ve realized the following 10 useful observations.
1. The adult world isn’t obvious about its criteria for judgement.
At each stage of life, the social order judges us on different metrics. Not all judgement is superficial or wrong.
In the adult economy, things like a nice home, a prestigious job, political affiliation, and personal hygiene are a few metrics. These are generally positive for the people that meet the criteria, but there are other metrics that are more superficial and less useful. (There’s more positive, too, though. Some adults will give you points for being virtuous, healthy, giving back to your community, or raising a good family.)
What’s important to remember is that each metric is subjective and fluctuates with different people and interpretations they have of the world. Points for being morally correct don’t even transcend all metrics.
It isn’t obvious how anyone will judge you. The person who appreciates your effort at the gym likely won’t be same person who appreciates your effort at the office. Choose what you do based on your own scorecard and the metrics you’ve determined.
2. You can learn to be more pleasant.
Just as we can improve our station in life, we can improve how well we integrate with communities and other people. We can improve at being pleasant.
Whoever advised you to ‘be yourself’ hasn’t told you the whole story. Obviously keep what’s in your nature — changing personality traits is for a different psychological discussion, anyway — but why would you want to ‘be yourself’ if much of ‘yourself’ isn’t that pleasant?
Don’t we all have parts of ourselves that complain and want to quit when things get hard? Aren’t we all susceptible to a poor attitude? Can’t we all be rude? These aren’t pleasant traits about ourselves that should be kept at all.
Every time we interact with other people we’re exchanging cues to let each other know how acceptable our behaviors are. Our physical and verbal language let us know if we’re pleased or displeased with each others actions. And unfortunately, unless you have no emotion, we all do care how much others like us. The moral philosopher and political economist Adam Smith said:
“Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love. He naturally dreads, not only to be hated, but to be hateful; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of hatred. He desires, not only praise, but praiseworthiness; or to be that thing which, though it should be praised by nobody, is, however, the natural and proper object of praise. He dreads, not only blame, but blameworthiness; or to be that thing which, though, it should be blamed by nobody, is, however, the natural and proper object of blame.”
So next time someone tells you to be ‘yourself,’ remember that ‘yourself’ might be a huge asshole that no one likes, and you’ll have to get ‘yourself’* in order before the world opens up to you.
*Be stubbornly yourself in character, morals, positive behavior, and action. Otherwise, learn how to play nice with others.
3. You’ll rationalize anything you do.
The good, the bad, the indifferent, and the not so obvious that you do will all be rationalized. Don’t under-think your life, but don’t overthink it either.
Even if you have frameworks or models for how you determine the value of decisions, it’s hard to know if you’ve genuinely made the right decision, or if you’re rationalizing. Some schools of study believe that there is an infinite number of ways to interpret the world. Your rationalizations are just one of those ways.
4. You’re only as happy as you’re least failed area in life.
There’s a saying that parents are only as happy as their least happy child. For those of us who don’t have children, maybe this applies to the least happy area of our lives.
Unless you’re a master at compartmentalizing, if you have 9 out of 10 areas in life going well, it’s possible that the 10th area will be a large enough disaster to throw off your entire disposition. (Hopefully not. Hopefully you have more fortitude than that. But it’s possible.)
What if you’re 5 for 10? In either case, if you have a unique area in life that is greatly trailing behind the rest, it could be the metric for how your overall happiness is determined. (More on trailing from behind in number 10 of this list.)
5. No one interprets the world as you do.
Like number two, no one sees the world through your eyes and experiences. They don’t understand your decisions and rationalizations.
You don’t need to defend or explain yourself. As long as you have healthy, productive, and morally useful frameworks and models in place for how to live, keep moving forward.*
*While listening, learning, fine-tuning, and adding or replacing models along the way.
6. You can’t control the outcome of anything. Focus on your effort.
There’s a story about John Kennedy Toole and his book Confederacy of Dunces. After his book was turned down by a number of publishers, he ended his life. Following Toole’s death, his mom lobbied to have the book published. It went on to win a Pulitzer Prize.
The book wasn’t any different following Toole’s death. But he allowed its reception, based on arbitrary and subjective measures, to determine his worth as a person.
Even if external validation is necessary for your career, remember that you can’t control it. You only control how hard you work.
7. There isn’t anything wrong with taking a traditional and safe route.
I’d argue that being prudent is wiser than chasing dreams. If something’s proven to work, it’s foolish not to do it, or at least be heavily influenced by it. It might sound exhilarating to chase dreams and passions or make up your own route, and we see plenty of stories of those who succeed doing so, but there’s a reason for that. Humans aren’t as likely to share stories about failures. Imagine all the failures — who may outnumber the successes — that we’ve never heard of.
In Cal Newport’s book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, he argues that skills trump passion. According to Newport, people become passionate only after they’re good at something. The ancient Greeks saw passion as a negative emotion, too. And those ancient Greeks were pretty smart people.
8. Someone is always better than you.
No matter what you do or how hard you work, someone is always better. Surely we shouldn’t avoid activities just because we aren’t the best at them?
9. You can say ‘no’ to anything.
Even if it would be a dumb idea to say ‘no,’ you still have the choice. You can so ‘no’ to medical treatment, friendship, $1,000,000,* a meeting, a job, or even God. (If you believe in God, or nature, or the psychological interpretation of a mythical figure exists.)
Free will is a philosophical argument for another day, but outside of metaphysics, and here on earth, you’re allowed to say ‘no’ to whatever you want. Learn how to use the word.
*Life is also negotiable. Bargain!
10. Don’t play from a deficit.
Could you imagine your favorite sports team having to start a game down by twenty points? It wouldn’t be the preferred situation. The same is said of us.
We can put ourselves behind financially because we weren’t good stewards, behind in our careers because we aren’t working hard or learning, or behind in our relationships because we aren’t willing to put forth effort or be vulnerable. Remember that we often create our own deficits.
