In ancient times, philosophy was not a mere academic subject but rather a personal design for living well. Early philosophers sought to improve their perspectives and create rules to live by.1
Just following someone else’s rules for living well never really resonated with me.
As inspiration, sure, but in college I felt that philosophy as a subject meant I had to adhere to pure Stoicism, Taoism, or some other -ism… Which I did not want to lose myself to.
So, I set out to be inspired and design my own way of living.
Guiding Principles
Below are a set of principles that I count among my most important. This is my effort to describe these principles, what I see when I use them, and how I aim to use them in action.
BUT before we get into that (in future articles), let’s summarize my principles:
Don’t Judge a Fish By its Inability to Climb a Tree
Have high expectations of others so that you may lift them up and low entitlement so that you may remove yourself from their results.2
Include others in the process of defining the expectations that we have for them. Expectations should not be made in a vacuum.
I think most people have confused the definitions of expectation and entitlement.
To expect the goldfish to effectively swim in the pond is a righteous thing to do. The goldfish is where he belongs. If he's not performing well, then we should see about helping him.
But to feel entitled to what that goldfish does, and/or to expect the goldfish to do what it can’t, that’s where you will never be satisfied.
Expectation pushes humanity forward. We use expectations in our work life, in our romances, in our friendships, and in every other facet of our life. We should strive to be reasonable with them, to be persistent, and to provide support/encouragement to those that we thrust our expectations upon.
Intent Matters Most, Then Comes Aptitude
Hanlan’s Razor states that we should “never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by negligence or ignorance.” When a mistake is made or pain is inflicted, the person who caused it is more likely to just be simply clumsy, careless, inarticulate, or distracted than purely malicious.
Malicious intent, on the other hand, implies the person willfully or intentionally wanted to inflict harm.
Isolate singular events from repeated patterns as a way to further differentiate between intent and aptitude. Focus on repeated events.
A mistake made once or a couple of times is normal (a part of the learning process), but the same mistake repeated often is likely to reveal underlying issues worth addressing. You can always train on technique, implement alternative strategies or tools, and redirect energy. Positive intent is something to be cherished more so than pure aptitude.
Forgive the Survivor, Challenge the Thriver
There is a quote that “The true character of a person is revealed when they face great peril” and I entirely disagree.
In my opinion, what a person does when they’re thriving instead of just surviving speaks volumes more about the quality of their character.
A person’s true character is revealed when they face great contentment.
We can expect the individual who is backed into a corner to do something rash. To act out of emotion, or to result in utilizing their baser fight or flight instincts.3
We should instead be more critical of those who live in the castles on the hills. Those that have the most and do the least. It is for this reason that I absolutely cannot stand doomsday preppers.
Do NOT Be Seduced by the Doomsday Prepper
The prepper philosophies of those that think the world is going to end should be concerning to us all.
On the surface, they believe that they can protect themselves if they hunker in their little bunkers stocked up full of food & water, weapons, ammo, fuel, etc… when the end times come. Store away for someday (but will likely just become waste), what could be used by many today…
However, there is a more despicable core to this surface belief. Implied with all their preparation is this idea that they can do something when the whole world ends. Then, that’s when they can make their mark. They seem to want it to all burn. As long as they are unaffected.
If the world is going to end, hiding in your basement is the opposite of what you should be doing.
Be out in the world, actively connecting with others, know them and their struggles. Preppers should be out there, solving the problems they think are leading to our downfall. Hopefully, along the way, they’ll realize as we all do that the problems we invent are much more dangerous than the ones that actually come to pass.
Become an Experience that Changes the Results of Others (ideally for the better)
Our experiences inform our beliefs. Our beliefs guide our actions. These actions end with results. We know this subconsciously, but there is a lot that can be overlooked. The middle two sections of the pyramid are especially important.
When experiencing something new, be an impartial observer. Ask: What beliefs of mine (and what beliefs of others) were just created or tested through that experience? Did these beliefs change? Should they change? How did they influence that experience & my perspective of it?
The Results Pyramid is a powerful model that can help see through a person’s inherent biases.
The natural evolution of this model is for us to become an experience that positively changes the results of other people’s lives.
For me, this practice usually leads to a revelation about my communication style. Many of my beliefs are holdovers from an era where I was overly sensitive, depressed, and alone. A common realization is that I could’ve been a better advocate if only I was more willing to connect with others.
I am still a bit shy by nature, but this helps me be more outgoing in order to create more positive experiences for myself and those that are around me.
Gather Your Own Knights of the Round Table
I learned at a young age that isolation from the world and its people can skew your perspective greatly. The world will feel more hostile, and loneliness will feel like that’s all there is. You’ll soon be looking for a way out.
Developing relationships (of all kinds) with all sorts of people can make you a better human being. These connections can expose you to new ideas and experiences. It can lead to amazing things that you never thought possible.
I am in the Chicagoland area because I literally ran into an amazingly kind dude when I was at a summer conference in middle school and the guy I ran into literally lived on the other side of the state. I never would have crossed paths with him if not for that summer conference. Reality is often stranger than fiction.
Building out your own collection of knights, who have their own quests and can help you with yours, will make you into the modern version of King Arthur and will make your life legendary.
A great way to start connecting with others is to accept them. To recognize who they are and highlight their uniqueness as THE reason why you see such value in having them sit at your table. Express how lucky you would be to share life with them in the good moments and the bad.
Acceptance As a Right
"Go and love someone exactly as they are. And then watch how quickly they transform into the greatest, truest version of themselves. When one feels seen and appreciated in their own essence, one is instantly empowered." - Wes Angelozzi.
What this human experience has taught me is that the vastness of humanity does not lend to its downfall, but rather generates its greatest triumphs. Diversity of thought, perspective, and experience allows for universal truths to be discovered.
We must ensure that our systems embrace those differences that historically have been used to alienate and must now be used to unite. Accepting people is a great first step.4
And as we accept others, then we can trust them.
Give Away Trust for FREE
They say trust must be earned.
I say we should give it away for free.
I trust in you to do the right thing. I believe in you, in your humanity, and in your understanding of mine.
Trust can be lost and almost impossible to earn back. I imagine trust like a water fountain. The water can be seemingly unlimited in those early days, but it doesn’t take much for the fountain to break. It needs to be maintained well.
It also shouldn’t be given away in a vacuum (know how to manage your risk), but people tend to do what’s expected of them. If they’re expected to be great, then they often will be. If they’re expected to be horrible, they often will be.
Unknowingly, we create environments that often drive people to be what we expect of them. When we don’t trust, then they don’t trust. That means they look out only for themselves since they think you’re only looking out for yourself.
Trust is a critical component of how we treat others. Lack trust, then we treat people like garbage. We become defensive and scared. Judgmental and unforgiving. Impatient and unruly.
Give trust away and you will treat others better. When you treat people well, they often reciprocate.5
Start with the Golden Rule, Work Your Way to Platinum
The Golden Rule states that you should treat others the way you want to be treated (you can replace the word “treat” with love, communicate to, support, and many other words).
The Platinum Rule takes it to another level. You should treat others the way they want to be treated. This basically means to connect with them through their voice, their perspective, and their experience. See the world from their eyes. Recognize their needs. Absorb their weaknesses. Amplify their strengths.
Bonus points if you explain which rule you’re following. That way, they either know how to treat you OR they know how to adjust your understanding of them so you can follow the Platinum Rule even better.
And neither rule is perfect. Over the course of time, we change and become further blinded by our biases. These rules do not solve anything, they merely guide one’s effort to address problems and offer solutions.
Problems Can Be Solutions (and vice versa)
Imagine flying an airplane, over dangerous waters, with your fuel running low, and your navigational devices breaking down. While trying to get your bearings, you flip on your map light, and things immediately go from bad to worse for you as all of your other instruments break.
That is what Jim Lovell went through when he was flying a combat mission in the Sea of Japan:
The failsafes didn't work as planned!
Jim’s way home became visible because of the loss of all of those instruments and lights that once clouded his vision, allowing him to see the algae bloom that was being kicked up by the aircraft carrier.
But through that latest problem, a solution presented itself.
Problems and solutions are often not finite. It is often that the problems lead to solutions, then the solutions become future problems.
Humans Suck at Course Correction
If you burn your hand on the stove, you’ll likely avoid it for a long while. This is not the best way to course correct. We need the stove to cook our food. You can’t just avoid it because you handled it the wrong way.
Most problems in our lives are corrected too late, and either not fixed enough or overcorrected way too much. We often come to the wrong conclusions.
Hitting the bullseye is nearly impossible. When we correct our course, we’re bound to land in one of the following camps:
Too little, too late
Too much, too soon
Too late, too much
Many of the challenges we face are carry-overs from previous efforts to correct our course.
A glaring example of this is our dependence on fossil fuels. Arguably one of the most powerful tools of the modern human’s global dominance is now causing significant costs to the one environment we can call home. Fossil fuels created a level of (skewed) prosperity that has allowed us to now realize how impactful we are.
The wherewithal to recognize how far we’ve come and the backs we stepped on to get here is something that only comes from prosperity.
Humans are like pendulums, swinging from extreme to extreme. No wonder why our course correction is imperfect.
It’s the Imperfections that Make Us Perfect
I am an optimist. I do my best to channel a positive attitude in all aspects of my life. That positivity is rooted in my optimism.
I am not naive. I know that everything is broken and will likely continue to break.
I am an optimist because I know that a broken thing does NOT prevent eventual growth and improvement, but rather it is because of broken things, that we seek to fix them. The broken things are what make us better.6
If we had no flaws to overcome, we’d have no reason to be “better”. We need to struggle because the byproduct is progress.
Maintain a Default State of Gratitude
Modern life is misleading. No matter where you turn, there’s always some horrible thing happening. Yesterday always seems so much better. It was simpler back then. People were nicer. Life was more fun. Things were more affordable and lasted longer.
But a lot of those memories are flawed.
We take the good things of today for granted, we put a lot more credence into the current bad things (as if they’re brand new when they often aren’t), and we tend to only consciously remember the great moments from our past (purposefully ignoring our past traumas, biases, and ignorance).
It is difficult to be joyful and grateful in a world that appears to be perpetually burning (while the firefighters are seemingly outmatched, more & more humans appear to be arsonists, and the conditions for fires are increasing exponentially).
But objectively, life is significantly better for the human collective than ever before.
Wake up and go through a daily exercise of gratitude. Name dozens of different things to be grateful for. Starting the day with this mental adjustment will make you more positive when you go out into the wide world. And that way, you will be primed with humanity’s greatest strength: our ability to care.
There is a Profound Misalignment of Our Caring
Humans are built to care. We are emotionally invested beings to our core.
We know more about what is happening on the other side of the world than we do about our own local communities. And these things we know are mostly chaotic. Disasters. Warfare. Collapse… The knowledge of this chaos drives us to justifiable outrage, sadness, despair, and other negative emotions.
But we can’t channel that. We can’t change that. We could donate some money, but that’s pretty disconnected and unemotional.
We want to see the effects of our actions. We want to, selfishly, be recognized as a value add. And that’s better done by political action, volunteering, or item donation (that directly meets a local need) in your local community.
Realigning my caring to focus a bit more on my local community has made my lived experience much better. I feel impactful, even when I do the smallest of acts. I know I can make a difference here over time and the feedback I get keeps me going and makes me more ambitious. I do good things for others and people do good things for me.
Positivity Attracts Positivity (And vice versa)
Sorry for you science folks out there but when it comes to human attitudes, being positive attracts more positivity towards you.
I often walk on a forest preserve right next to the apartments where I live, and I notice these people light up when I smile at them. And they light me up by smiling or waving back.
When you smile at others, they smile back. When you say hi, they say hi. When you share your life with others, other people share their lives with you.
By default, life can be isolating. I think we are all haunted by our own existence. The human condition is tough enough to experience alone, we should try to make it better for others. And in that process, we will be met with others who want to do the same for us.
Build Heaven on Earth (Don’t Wait for Death)
Hell is what we’re walking away from, and Heaven is what we’re supposed to be walking towards.
I will admit, it’s been a long time since I’ve read the Bible. I have many disagreements with the God that is portrayed to me by the supposedly most holy among us.
Personally, I’ve never felt many ties to a Heaven or a Hell that may meet me in my next life. I prefer to subscribe to the idea that this life is what we have. And humans are where our faith is best aimed.
It is our divine mandate to make this life Heaven for others.
What does that mean exactly? I’m still working on it. But kindness, love, acceptance, support, persistence, self-reflection, patience, true selfishness7… These stand out to me as critical components of what the builders of Heaven use already.
In Closing, Some Notes
These principles are intended as a corrective measure for how I personally exist and how I see my place among the rest of humanity.
None of these ideas are purely original. I’ve been heavily influenced by countless people and perspectives. I hope I have been able to effectively synthesize many disparate ideas and create some logical intersections that describe how I see the world and my place in it.
Many of these are sprinkled in my previous writings here (and on LinkedIn). If you had wanted to find them, you’d have to take a piecemeal approach or listen to me ramble on for days. I’ve tried to condense years of ideas into this one article. Sorry if it’s a bit long lol (I cut a LOT out).
This list is not entirely exhaustive. I wanted to provide a series of related principles that are prevalent in my life, guide how I aim to live my life well, and inform how I view the rest of the world.
I am not a perfect practitioner of any of these. Although I might obsess over them, I am extremely incompetent when it comes to putting them into practice. I apologize here and now for the hurt I undoubtedly cause.
I plan to further edit and add to these Opus articles over time. This first article is the summary of what will be a series of deep dives exploring each of the principles noted above with more detail and nuance. Do not think these summaries are perfect distillations of my most important beliefs.
Magnum Opus posts will be “live”, and keeping the original email might be worth something one day… (haha).
The privilege of the ancients we now admire mustn't be forgotten. We're not reading the stories of the slaves or the serfs.
A mistake I make with expectations is that I tend to see the idealized version of someone. I see them as they will become. In that process, my expectations may feel a lot more like entitlement because I am failing to account for the person’s current state and therefore apply undo burdens upon their shoulders.
Forgiveness doesn't mean just letting transgressions go. Your feelings are valid and worth addressing. Keep trying to move forward and remember that there’s power in being quick to forgive.
Acceptance doesn’t mean approval. There are NO-NOs that should never be accepted, but that’s an exception to the general rule that people ought to be loved for who they are. We should not want to change others for our own sake.
I specifically say trust, not respect, because trust is a thing we grant to others. Respect is a thing earned from others (people often confuse the two). As a recovering extreme owner, I think the thing we can give away is trust and the impact of that could be so uplifting that people will become their best selves because of it.
Morgan Housel has an amazing article about optimism and positivity. The takeaway for me was that I am a real optimist. Someone who recognizes things break all the time and realizes that those breaks are what drive progress.
True selfishness is purposeful interaction within our communities. A truly selfish person wants to be appreciated. Receive acknowledgment for work well done. Be remembered fondly. All of these wants of the truly selfish require behavior that is recognized as kind and beneficial. True selfishness is saintly. Most people we call “selfish” are just stupid, living short-term lives.