Aristotle once said that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” But for me, the unlived life is not worth examining.

I am going to take a huge leap and say that: most people live their lives unconsciously.

They aren’t really living as much as their existence is a prolonged wait to be buried.

They are dictated by other people’s expectations, cultural norms or the programming they grew up with. They don’t take any time to think about their lives, let alone try to improve themselves.

You know the type. The people who live only for the weekend. Who seem to just move from one phase of life to another without really questioning whether this is the life that they want to live.

But living an examined life requires intention. It requires the daily investigation of your own virtue or morality. Pulling back the curtains of our minds and understanding what makes it work.

When was the last time you’ve asked yourself: ‘why?’. Why am I with this person? Why am I hanging around these people? Why am I working in this job that I don’t like but can only tolerate?

You might not have all the answers. But having questions you can’t answer is better than having answers you can’t question.

The general, non-specific anxiety you feel is a symptom of a lack of purpose. A grating feeling that you’ve established a life for yourself that you never really wanted.

“In order to determine whether we can know anything with certainty, we first have to doubt everything we know,” writes Descartes.

You are pushed by the winds of your parents, swayed by the actions of your peers and influenced by the ‘influencers’ you see on social media. You don’t seem to have any meaningful intention for how you want to live.

I’ve got so many friends living this way.

Every time I ask them: how’s work going? They give a mumbled answer or the generic ‘busy’ or ‘good’. They seem to lack vitality. An enthusiasm for life. If they didn’t have a pulse I might think I was talking to a corpse.

“Most people die at 25 and aren’t buried until they’re 75” — attributed to Benjamin Franklin

I’ve just turned 26 years old. And it seems this is the critical age where most people persist with their goals or give up on them entirely. Beaten by the pressures of life. The uncertainty of success. The anxiety of being left behind.

I get it. Life is hard.

And at some point, the reality of life will attempt to crush your expectations and dreams. But you still have a choice. Every day you’ve got a choice to actions that will lead you towards your goals or away from them.

“You drown not by falling into a river, but by staying submerged in it” — Paulo Coelho.

You can change, or forever remain a victim of your circumstances or programming.

Being intentional with your life isn’t easy either. Now you have no one else to blame and no excuses to make when you fail. It is all on you. Once you’ve taken ownership you can’t try to ask for a refund.

1. Participate in voluntary hardship

Could you give up a comfortable luxury for 30 days?

Something that would present more than just a minor inconvenience to your life? What if you gave up your car, smartphone or bed for a month?

The Japanese have a ritual for this called Misogi.

Misogi is a Shinto practice that loosely translates to ‘water cleansing’ where you would take periodic showers in icy cold waters.

Misogi’s underlying belief is that doing something for 1 day a year can profoundly impact the other 364. You could try a Jiu-Jitsu class, climb a difficult mountain or have a difficult conversation you’ve been ignoring.

“Put one big thing on the calendar that scares you, that you never thought you could do, and go out and do it.” — Jesse Itzler

Doing hard things is revealing. When you are pushed beyond your comfort, you start to understand where your fears come from and where your current boundaries are.

When you endure adversity, adapt and then overcome it, you start to see possibilities for overcoming other challenges in your life. Doing hard things is a reminder that you are stronger than you think.

Because when you look back on your life, you tend to look fondly at the difficult moments in your life. The ones that impacted how you think and changed your perspective on the world.

2. Turn off all non-essential notifications

I am not in the school of thought that vilifies the smartphone. The smartphone, like anything piece of technology, is a tool. It can be used to make your life better or worse.

The great thing about most smartphones is that you can program them to do whatever you like.

Turn off all notifications that aren’t absolutely essential to your life.

The average person receives 64 phone notifications per day. Most of them irrelevant. That’s 64 distractions taking value away from your work, relationships and introspection.

A recent Carnegie Mellon study found that even turning off your notifications for 24 hours leads to a noticeable reduction in stress and an increase in concentration.

Turning off notifications helps to create ‘micro boundaries’ between you and your undesirable smartphone behaviors.

Do you need to know that someone liked your post? The latest breaking news? Probably not. Each ping and ding is hijacking your attention. You have total control over what comes into your already limited headspace.

Take back those time sucks and reinvest back in focus on yourself.

3. Schedule solitude

When was the last time you were truly alone? I mean actually took time out to be by yourself? Traveled to a place to be by yourself without work or other obligations?

The thought of that is enough to scare most people.

Ever since 2019, I’ve invested time in being by myself. I would book AirBnbs somewhere far away and just stay 2–3 nights by myself. I’ll eat all my meals by myself. Go to the movies by myself. Explore by myself.

The first few types were incredibly hard. You don’t know how worthless your mind can make you feel when left alone. But like your body, your mind needs the opportunity to be challenged, stretched and pushed.

I am now incredibly comfortable being by myself. I feel like it is a superpower. A mental reset that helps me stay focused and productive.

I always look forward to scheduled time in solitude.

The insights I get and the realizations I come to give me a perspective that changes the way I work and relate to people.

4. Social media detox

Again, I don’t hate social media. But we use it too much as a society. We never give ourselves a break from it. The ability to detach and not worry about what is happening in the world.

You don’t have to shut down your account, just delete the social application from your phone. That makes an incredible difference. You start to realize how much of your scrolling what just out of habit rather than necessity.

If you really can’t quit, make a deal with yourself that you can only access social media while on a computer. The added friction is surprisingly effective in curbing your use of social media.

Use the additional mental space to reinvest it in yourself.

5. Find your mindfulness practice

Finding your mindfulness practice does not have to involve meditating.

Although helpful, meditation is not the only way you can engage in self-examination. Any activity can be made to be mindful. A walk in nature, art or creativity.

Mindfulness is about understanding that you are allowed to feel emotions, but you have a choice on whether you want to act on them.

Once you have the agency to say this emotion is useful but doesn’t serve me in this situation, you are doing the equivalent of a mental bicep curl for your mind.

Mastering mindfulness is a skill that naturally becomes part of the way you think and interface with the world. You become less reactive, less emotional without losing empathy.

You start to realize that you have choices in every situation, even the difficult ones. Every day brings opportunities for decisions that could shape your life.

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