Why I’ve decided to make my own philosophy of life and why you should too

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man” — Heraclitus

I’ve decided to start with this quote for a reason. A couple days ago, I’ve started going through my Facebook feed, and I was frankly shocked of I used to share back then. The ideas that I used to believe in are exactly the opposite of what I do believe in right now. And the ones I’m believing in right now probably won’t be the ones I’ll be believing in a couple more years ahead. I even used to say that people who change their minds over time are just people who weren’t sure of themselves, who weren’t convinced of what they think or say. And I remember I was pretty convinced that the ideas I used to believe in are the exact same I would believe in for the rest of my life. But they weren’t.

This is just an example I took of myself on a very small scale (a two years duration). Now imagine how much our ideas, our convictions and our beliefs change over 10 years or even 20 years… We are never constant, and we will never be, and that’s totally normal. As a coach I know used to say, “I get happy when people tell me that I’ve changed. And I get mad when I don’t hear that, cause if we don’t change that means we stay the same, and if we do, then we’re not improving ourselves, we’re not experiencing enough.” 
Wouldn’t you be happy to hear your friends, and your family tell you how much you’ve developed yourself and your personality or even your professional status? I’m sure I would. That’s why I keep trying to improve myself, to improve the way I think, to improve my personality…

Being someone who used to be addicted to TEDx talks, I’ve learned a lot about how people change, and why do people change. How to improve yourself, how to live a more successful life and the list goes on and on. But the more I’ve watched these talks, the more I got interested in something I thought I’d never get interested in. — Again, every idea we have, probably is going to change in a few years, months, days or even hours.- the subject I got interested in was philosophy. After hating it as a student (pretty much like every other student) I really started loving it. Maybe it was the way it was taught, or the themes it used to cover, or just my interests back then, but I don’t at all remember philosophy being as fun as it is to me right now.
I started reading about philosophy, and I got interested especially in a specific part of philosophy, the philosophy of life. And like everyone new to something, I wanted to discover what it is about. And back I went to TEDx talks. I was hooked. The way everyone talked about his vision of life, of details of everything we experience, of the way we should act and react, was so tempting to know more and understand better.

But I had one problem. These speakers were all great in their own way, but comparing them to each other made me come to a conclusion that changed the way I handled life. Sometimes they are contradictory. Sometimes, although the speech is absolutely great, I find that some parts are totally wrong, and can’t be applied in real life, or at least in the society I’m living in. 
Plus the fact that –as I said before- we keep changing every single moment. So how could something made by an outsider of ourselves, be a reference to our (continuously changing) lives? It didn’t make sense to me. The reference, the guide the holy rules, shouldn’t be something else than our own selves. We should be the source.

So here I had a thought, a thought that helped my personal growth: why should I follow exactly what they’re saying? I mean it’s great yes, it’s the result of several years of research and life experience, no one is denying that. But the way I looked at it is like I had those experiences myself, and I should make my own conclusions out of them. And there I started having my own principles of life, my own whats, hows and whys; it’s inspired of tens, hundreds of talks I’ve watched, hundreds of stories I’ve heard, hundreds of articles and books I’ve read, and hundreds of experiences I’ve lived and that I’m willing to live to grow even more.

So that’s why I keep advising everyone I know to make their own philosophy of life, to stop copying others, cause by wanting to fit in in your group or society, you’ll end up losing yourself. There isn’t something I find more frustrating than asking someone about why he does the something, and the answer is because everyone else is doing it. And as a friend says “Just because the majority of people are doing the same thing or are thinking the same way doesn’t make them right”.

So if someone took the time to read that from the beginning to the end, this is an invitation for you to think about your life, about the choices you’re making, about the ideas you’re having, and the people you’re (blindly) following. Make your own philosophy of life, and I guarantee you’ll live much more happier.

“Thinking : the talking of the soul with itself” -Plato