Finding My Philosophy of Life

For years, I had no answer for what truly matters

Throughout my 20s and 30s, my anxiety could come from any direction.

A new work email. A few unanswered texts to a woman. The lack of weekend plans.

I felt like I was sleepwalking through life not understanding what was important to me or what I should be doing with my life.

I inherited society’s expectations of me as a man, which were to go to college, get a good job, buy a house and car, get married, and have kids.

It often felt like I had no input into what was expected of me. And it was further reinforced all around me. Everyone I knew lived those lives.

I just never got there. I’ve never been married. I don’t have any kids.

And the absence of these things in my life continued to weigh on me because internally, I very much felt like a failure and an outcast.

What I've realized is I never actually figured out how to live. I had no read on what was real, no honest answer for what mattered, and no rule for what to do when two things I cared about were pulling in opposite directions.

I lacked a “philosophy of life.”

What is a Philosophy of Life?

A philosophy of life is your answer to what's real, what matters, and what you do when those two things collide.

It governs what I find important, how I choose to show up, and where I spend my time. Without one, I was just reactionary, chasing everything I'd been told was important.

It’s no wonder I had such existential anxiety.

I had no real concept of the world or my place in it.

I was a good person. I tried to always do the right thing. I had a good job. Master’s degree. Owned a house in a nice neighborhood and a nice car.

I was just checking off boxes from someone else’s checklist and wondering why I still felt empty.

Finding and Testing a Philosophy of Life

It took a lot of lived experience, exposure to new thoughts and ideas, and reflection to piece together my own philosophy.

And to be clear, I’m still piecing it together as I go.

But I’ve noticed that my anxiety levels have gone down the more I define my own beliefs and mental map.

I am comparing myself less to other people in my life, because I’m more focused on the things that truly matter to me.

I’ve read plenty of books on Buddhism, Existentialism, and more recently, Stoicism, and I’ve found that I have really taken to a mixture of lots of Stoicism and a little Buddhism.

As I’ve started making sense of the world and my place in it, I’ve been able to test out these philosophies of life when I’ve needed them most.

Did it help me, or make things worse? Did it comfort me, or make me shut down? That's how I started testing what I actually believed.

From Buddhism, I've really latched onto the idea of non-attachment: that a lot of my suffering came from clinging to how I wanted things to be, instead of letting go of what I couldn't have.

This has been helpful when I’ve found myself in pain, like dealing with a very difficult breakup.

I can reduce my suffering if I can recognize my active role in it and move to take responsibility.

For me, that meant no longer looking for excuses to keep grasping on to a person or a belief.

From my breakup, it looked like finally trying to accept that this person I was deeply in love with did not want to work things out with me.

Instead of wishing and praying that she would change her mind, or that fate would bring us back together, I've really needed to tell myself it was over and she's not coming back.

Thinking wasn't helping me. It was actually hurting me. It was causing me immense pain because I refused to accept the reality of the situation.

From Stoicism, I’ve learned to focus on only the things I can control. This doesn’t mean I have a high success rate doing this. And I still find myself getting anxious about many things far outside my control.

But like anything, living out a philosophy of life takes practice. The more awareness I have, the more I can recognize what is and is not within my control.

I really try to focus on this with golf. I’m competitive with myself and have high expectations. I often find myself mad when my ball takes an unlucky bounce on the course.

I’ve been learning to accept that many things that happen on a golf course, just like in life, are outside of my control.

I’ve hit amazing shots that have hit the pin and bounced off the green. I’ve also hit terrible shots that bounced off a tree and kicked back into the fairway.

Sometimes, I just have to laugh at my good or bad luck.

As I age, my philosophy of life continues to evolve. It’ll evolve until the day I die.

Especially in tough times, it has helped me to keep moving when my natural inclination would be to get stuck.

I still have a lot of room to grow. But I have a strong base now to grow from.