All things can be broken down into their main components – life to cells, matter to quarks and electrons, lights to photons…What do we discover when we zoom in deeper than the surface? An already complex organism becomes more intricate. More moving parts are found. There’s more confusion, but also more to be curious about. With additional understanding of the structure or building blocks of something, you gain more depth and clarity of the overall system.
The ideas in this blog arise from my desire for simplicity, both for myself and for the reader.
I fear we’ve overcomplicated our lives and distracted ourselves with unnecessary pursuits. It has become more difficult to build habits, form routines, and focus our attention on what’s important. My belief comes from seeing countless videos of people offering advice. I’ve read many articles, research papers, and blogs claiming the benefits of one habit versus another; but then coming across something that argues the opposite.
There’s an inner knowing I’ve felt on many occasions. Knowing I needed to make a change to my health, knowing I could benefit immensely from Stoicism if I dove into it, and knowing I needed to reboot my life when I was at my lowest point. All these were clear to me, but I had no idea of where to start. Everyone on the internet told me their opinions, their suggestions, and advice. My family and friends did the same. So many options were placed before me, but I didn’t know which to choose.
December of 2024 became the lowest point in my emotional and physical health. As I write this, the opposite is true. This is the healthiest I’ve ever felt physically. My depth of understanding of Stoicism and embodiment of it has improved significantly. For the first time, I can say with sincerity that I am at peace more often than not and have a clear set of pursuits.
The journey I’ve been on over the past two years is to thank for my belief that your life can change drastically for the better if you focus on the right things.
What are the right things?
In this blog, I’ll share my initial thoughts on the main components of my improvement. Though I’d never dream of changing a single event that’s happened, these would be the fundamentals, the non-negotiables, and the focal points I’d offer my past self if I wanted to work on my health, philosophy, and life.
As always, I don’t have all the answers, but I hope my expedition to try finding them in my life inspires you to start the search in yours.
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The Fundamentals of Life
This week, I tasked myself with coming up with a set of fundamentals for life, the few aspects that are non-negotiable i.e. experiences each of us is required to encounter. To live a full life, I believe all of us are required to feel emotions, socialize, survive (Health), and die.
An additional consideration I had was wealth or earning a living. While the majority of us find ways to make money to afford the cost of living, I don’t believe it’s a fundamental human activity. There are people who do not work for pay, either through choice – Monks – or because of circumstance – between jobs, homelessness, disability related. Simply knowing people are living regardless of wealth is enough for me to deem it outside of the main components of life.
Happiness is another thing I was asked about recently. Seeking happiness seems to be a point of focus for a lot of people online, but my own experiences show me it’s not necessary. It is however, an accessory to life. A life does not need to encounter happiness in order to be lived and feeling joy should not be the motive behind an action. While unfortunate to consider the possibility, an entire life could be lived without happiness.
Joy does fall under the category of Emotions within the base of Life, but it’s not a separate component that requires active attention to feel and understand. Joy and happiness are a symptom of intentional focus on Fear, Pleasure, Desire, and Distress. When I discuss Emotions within Life’s base, these four are what I mean. My claim is that we all experience these feelings, we do not all experience their opposites.
I’ll touch on these more in the following section.
What about love? Similar to joy and happiness being an accessory to life and focusing on Emotions, love is not necessary.It is likely to experience love if proper attention is given to the Socialization component.
Finally, I considered the pursuit of a greater purpose. Again, it’s not necessary and we don’t all take the leap. This one is fascinating to me though because the pursuit of more than myself, surprisingly branches off from Death. The way in which I come to grips with dying is through larger aims. It is not a required part of life, but with consideration of what my death would mean, I’m compelled to act. If nothing comes of this pursuit, my life is still lived.
Thus creates my core four, my tenants of life, the fundamental experiences we all must endure. The formation of this base removes distractions and allows me to invest my time and energy into the few things necessary for living my life. The past two years have shown me how much peace and fulfillment I can feel by paying attention to these few components. The question is, how did I pursue each of these individually?
First, I break each down even further.
The Fundamentals of Health
The health and fitness genre is one of the most frustrating for me to witness online. My frustration arises because there’s too much contention over the “best” ways to be healthy. There are enumerable diets, workout plans, forms of cardio, rep ranges, calorie intake suggestions, and noise. So, let’s simplify what it takes to be healthy.
My definition of health is based on energy levels, lack of physical fatigue and tension, positive progression of mobility. In simple terms, it feels good to be healthy. To be healthy does not necessarily mean having a six-pack, superhuman strength, insane speed, or jaw-dropping flexibility. Health is the ability to live your life without limitations like shortness of breath, heart burn, stomach pains, and joints that ache with every movement.
To achieve my present standard for health, I only had to focus on four things – diet, exercise, water, and rest.
“But there are so many possibilities for diets, exercise routines, water intake amounts, and sleep schedules! Where do I start?”
There are a lot of options, but worrying about picking the right one only postpones progress. This is why my posts stray away from offering direct advice, because I base my decisions off intuition and there’s no way for me to tell you how you feel. I’d like to believe everyone has this ability, but for some it’s quieted by external opinions. Just try this thought experiment quick:
I’m going to ask you three simple questions and all I want you to do is observe the first answer that pops into your mind.
What’s something I need to change about my diet?
Am I getting enough proper sleep?
What form of exercise could I easily do every single day?
When I ask myself these questions, my mind will immediately answer, and that answer is what I aim to change or try first. If I ask myself these questions now, my answers are: more vegetables, most nights but could be more consistent, and walking. Wherever I am in my journey, I start with these goals. I’ve developed a lot of faith in my intuition when it comes to what my body and mind need and I believe other people can too.
There are also times when I switch my diet overnight. A few years ago, I watched a lecture on animal cruelty and the next day and for about a year after I was vegan (minus a few mistakes and cheat meals). At the start of this year, I cut out pasta, rice, and bread to try paleo for a few months. The biologist in me loves using the scientific method to collect data on how diets and routines affect my life, so I go all in all at once.
I’m not suggesting you do this, unless your intuition is telling you it’d like to try. We all know the difference between what’s healthy and what’s not, but we often choose the unhealthy because the opposite seems too complicated. I’ve also felt reluctant to start habits because they felt pointless. For instance, when I wasn’t exercising at all but knew I should be, walking felt too insignificant. Slowly I learned that if it’s a choice between doing nothing and going for a walk, go for the walk.
Cold plunges, saunas, training for a marathon, supplements, blood tests, and step goals are all superfluous. If I was starting over, I’d disregard everyone saying running is better cardio than walking, functional strength is healthier than weight lifting, keto is the best diet, and any other claim that they know what’s right for you. If you’re doing absolutely no physical movement all week, but your brain says “I could definitely walk every day”, go for a walk. It makes no difference if John Doe says walking doesn’t burn calories. Is it healthier than what you’re doing now?
“Do something different today than you did yesterday. All the bullshit about macros, calories, progressive overload, and bedtime routines for perfect sleep are not important right now. If you’re just starting, just be better. The additional knowledge comes naturally with time when you’re ready for it.”
The Fundamentals of Emotions
In the spirit of simplicity, an emotion is the meaning placed upon a chemical reaction. An event triggers a response in the body, that signal’s sent to the brain, and the brain interprets it as good or bad. With the capacity for thought comes the experience of emotions. If every emotion was joy, peace, or contentment there’d be no reason to include this section in the blog. Since you cannot experience the good without the bad, I’ve found it beneficial to explore the bad.
My basis for emotions comes from an article that I unfortunately cannot locate. I share my thoughts on Stoic Acts of Passion HERE. This brings me to an important part of the process of rebuilding my life: once you know the main components and where your focus should go, you can use any resource that promotes your progress. So when I say Stoicism gave me the tools I needed to categorize, manage, and control my emotions, I’m not saying it’ll work for you or that you have to even try. Find your own teachers.
Every negative emotion falls into one of four categories. Fear, Pleasure, Desire, or Distress. These are the main focal points of the Emotion portion of the Life base. If I went back to my lowest point, I’d tell myself to focus on understanding these four emotions and the false impressions associated with each. Of course I’d have no clue what I meant, but I’d have a starting point instead of assuming I’d never feel better.
After reading that article, I remember feeling a lot of hope and a lot of excitement. It was one of those moments when I knew this was going to be life changing knowledge. The same feeling arose when I read Non-Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg. My path was right in front of me and I barreled straight into it, trying to gather as much information as I could as quickly as possible. My brain ached as I tried to wrap my head around all these new concepts and incorporate them into my life.
It isn’t feasible for me to recount the journey I went on from that point, but I share bits and pieces throughout all my other content. If you’re interested in reading more, links are placed throughout this post.
What are some distractions when it comes to understanding your emotions?
In my experience with emotions, it wasn’t externals that were distracting me, it was my own choices. With my health I was distracted by people telling me what I should do, but with my emotions, I was distracting myself from feeling them.
Alcohol, nicotine, weed, social media, porn, and parties all became the buffer between me and my emotions. They were only temporary of course, the thoughts and feelings always came back. I didn’t want to face them because I didn’t know how to. Therapy helped start the process and I’ll always recommend it to everyone, but the real work had to be done when I was alone with the chemical reactions.
“Focus not on how you want to feel, but on how you feel now. Look more deeply into your present state of emotions with compassion and curiosity. To know the opposite, you must first understand your fear, pleasure, desire, and distress.”
The Fundamentals of Socialization
This section is going to be short because to be completely honest, I don’t believe I’ve reached any level of success in my social life yet. At least, I’m not at a point where I’m proud of my progress like I am with my health and emotions.
Compiling my thoughts for this blog showed me how little effort I’ve put into my social life. This is not something I’m upset about though, because I made the choice to focus on my health and understanding my emotions first. I felt those fundamentals were more easily accessible, more within my control. With that comes the consequences that I had to accept before making the choices I did.
A lot of my nights are spent alone. Most weekends are quiet. I slowly fall out of touch with people. I’m not lonely though. I’ve grown to cherish my time alone, my Rationality Routine, my content creation, and my exploration of wounds that still linger from the past.
For most of my life, I felt fear when thinking about being alone my entire life, but now I can accept that potential with peace. Do I want to be surrounded by a close group of friends and find someone to live the rest of my life with? Yeah, that would be wonderful. If that never happens? I know I’ll be just fine.
So no, I don’t yet know the fundamentals of Socialization. Let’s give my intuition the opportunity to brainstorm ideas.
What should I focus on if I want to meet new people?
Put myself in places where I can be myself. Do the things I love doing, but in more public areas (write, read, and reflect in coffee shops). Talk to people. Make plans.
All I can do now is readjust my focus to this area of my life. I look forward to the day when I write a blog on the components of Socialization.
The Fundamentals of Death
The purpose of breaking Life down into components is to ensure we’re focusing on the right things. The successive breaking down of those components aims to simplify even further to better understand what we’re working on. To be successful in anything, this simplification and proper focus is necessary.
The process is the same for Death. Life cannot be lived well if you do not come to grips with your fate. When Death is ignored, it comes too soon. When Death is feared, it lurks behind every action. If Death is understood and accepted, Life can be lived.
Death was written into my DNA and presented itself as a diagnosis. I was told I’d live a short life, but now I realize that’s true for all of us. My disease offered me a sense of urgency before I knew what Death even meant. Now that I’ve seen Death for what it is, or at least conceptualized and felt its weight, my path is clearer.
A Doctor’s diagnosis isn’t required for understanding Death. Any of us could leave this life at any moment. How do you feel when you think about that? What do those feelings tell you to do? Some may try to run, others seek experience, and some try to taunt Death, to feel its pain before the real thing happens, but the true pain of Death can’t be replicated.
I took some time to ponder Death, to break it down and understand it, or at least try to. What would it mean to die? This person I am, everything I think and feel and do, it all just ends. A well organized form of subjectivity turns off. The world is never experienced in the same way again. All that remains is the objective form of me, the perception other people have of me.
The understanding I have of life encourages me to act. These blogs, my notes, and my videos all aim to release my subjectivity into the world. Marcus Aurelius wrote to himself and never intended to be published, and while I’m content with the possibility of no one reading my ideas, I make it possible. I don’t want my thoughts, experiences, and progress to be reserved to me alone. If my journey has the potential to start someone else’s, I’ll do everything I can to share it.
Considering Death also encourages me to act with Virtue. Knowing the objective version of me will be all that exists after I’m gone fuels my intention of being a good person. I want to be remembered as a kind, caring, Stoic, and easy going individual, so every day, I try my best to be that person. All of this could end at any moment and that would be the last chance I had to be the person I want to be. That’s why I strive to gain control of my emotions and impulses because I don’t want to risk someone holding a poor perspective of me. I know their opinions are out of my control, but I believe I have a responsibility to choose how I act in every moment and one way puts my character up to question while another doesn’t.
The simplification of Death allows me to act accordingly in every moment. If we’re all bound to the same fate, why not prepare for it?
“No matter how you choose to live your life, you will one day meet its end. How would you like to be remembered? Should you choose to expand your subjectivity, know your objectivity follows close behind. Your choices affect more than you alone, so strive to be ready for death no matter when it arrives.”
The Fundamentals of Final Thoughts
Writing the proper final section of this blog requires a few key components.
An acknowledgement of thoughts left unsaid. This is one of those topics that I feel requires much more exploration to understand fully. To only give myself one week to ponder the entire structure of my life is an absurd scenario. While I am content with the thoughts I’ve written thus far, I know there is a lot more to unpack. When I first sat down to write the first section, I felt the weight of this concept and knew a blog would never be enough space to say everything. It is quite possibly the beginning of a much larger project.
Acceptance of thoughts left unthought. My friend and I chatted about this topic last night after I had written the majority of it. He played the devil’s advocate and attempted to poke holes in my claims. It was an informative conversation that helped me realize there are many considerations I didn’t make and likely many more. I felt a great sense of appreciation for his thoughts and questions and for his ability to have a dialog and not a debate. There are probably a few mistakes in my claims and I’ll gladly accept rebuttals. The best way to grow and change beliefs is to constantly test, see results, and retest. So if my argument is flawed, let me know.
A final ask of the reader. While this was meant to be a note to my past self, I do hope it promotes your own simplification. The world is full of distraction and I know how overwhelming it can be. To know you can experience better, but have no clue where to start is enough to make anyone hesitate. All I ask is that you start somewhere, however you can. Focus in on one of your fundamentals and do everything you can to find success in it. Success is determined individually and results are not guaranteed. Try what calls you and see what happens.
A thank you. Words are never enough to express my gratitude, but if you’ve taken the time to read my thoughts, thank you.
Until next time.
October 5, 2026
