Being a Good Example: How Mindset Shifts U Will Help You Through 2025
We "feel pressured to live by, a troublesome set of ideas about how to use our limited time, all of which are pretty much guaranteed to make things worse."
Coming to Mindset Shifts U in December: Seneca’s “On Anger.”
Coming in January: Seneca’s “On the Shortness of Life” and Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks.
Read on for details
We should remember that each day, a part of our life slips away, leaving us with less time. —Marcus Aurelius
Being a casual spectator seems fine up until the very end. —David K. Reynolds
In the hilarious and heartwarming Netflix comedy series Nobody Wants This, Joanne (Kristen Bell) faces a tough decision - whether or not to convert to Judaism to stay with perhaps the love of her life, Rabbi Noah (Adam Brody).
Noah’s former fiancé Rebecca instructs Joanne, as a Rabbi’s wife, “people will look up to you as an example.” Uncertain she is ready, Joanne can only quip, “As a good example?”
At that moment, Joanne knows that to be a good example, she must convert for more reasons than to cement her relationship with Noah.
What does it take for any of us to be a good example? Or, as Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman would say, a decent hero? To be a good example, a decent hero, is our job, no matter how turbulent the word is.
No matter what anyone else does or says, I must be good. It is as if gold or an emerald or purple dye were perpetually telling itself, “No matter what anyone may do or say, I must be an emerald and keep my color.—Marcus Aurelius
Like Joanne, we might be pulled in many directions—not necessarily focused on major life decisions. Often, we are caught up in the mundane. We soothe ourselves with conditioned habits, checking our phones more times than we care to admit. As we are pulled, a part of our life slips away, and we become spectators.
In Season 2 of Nobody Wants This, we will discover what Joanne does. But what matters more is what we do in this season of our own lives. Since Nobody Wants This is a humanistic tale, I expect that no matter Joanne's choice, her decision will lead to greater meaning in her life. After all, for Joanne, the screenwriters will reduce life’s messiness, but television is not real life.
To organize life’s energies around anything less sublime than our true nature is to still be split—separated from Self. No matter how much focus we may bring to any task, if the task is not our real vocation we will still be haunted by the suffering of doubt, and the internal agony of division. —Stephen Cope
How do we get off the sidelines?
It comes as no surprise that I think philosophy has pathways. Early in 2025, Seneca’s essay “On the Shortness of Life” and Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks will help you clear your head and discover what works for you.
The great economist Thomas Sowell wrote in his book A Conflict of Visions: “There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”
We may understand Sowell’s wisdom in the political and economic realm, but what about our own lives? Do we spend too much mental energy on our to-do list, feel scattered, and, at the end of the day, disappointed about what we did not accomplish?
Our fear of missing out may constantly scatter our energy and attention. In 2025, there will likely be distractions we’ve never encountered before.
Are we doing what really matters from our most profound purpose, at the core of our true Self? Given the endless array of choices and distractions, an honest answer will often be no. A no is not shameful. This is not about the impossible—making perfect choices. Yet philosophy and practical tools can help us pivot in the direction of what is uniquely possible and desirable for us.
Purpose focus is really about my purpose in this moment, right now. What am I doing now? What needs to be done? —David K. Reynolds
The angst over neglected relationships and the weight of things undone is not to be papered over with bromides. Instead, as Viktor Frankl encouraged, we are called to examine what life is asking of us.
Our sense of purpose is tied to the systems around us—our families, communities, even the universe—and understanding how we fit into these complex, interconnected webs.—Stephanie Faye
Being more in touch with the convergence of our purpose, our values, and what life is asking of us will pay endless dividends. So that is the direction we will take as we begin 2025 at Mindset Shifts U.
The Stoic philosopher Seneca, like Marcus Aurelius, offers a practical philosophy. He understood how we feel and begins his essay “On the Shortness of Life” with these words:
The greater part of mankind, complains bitterly about the malice of Nature, in that we are born for a brief span of life, and even this allotted time rushes by so swiftly, so speedily, that with very few exceptions all find themselves abandoned by life just when they are preparing themselves to live. And this universal evil, as it is regarded, has not drawn tears of grief only from the common man, the foolish crowd: it has roused the voice of complaint also in men who have won distinction.
Seneca disagrees with this common mindset; he sets it out to be examined. Seneca recognized the many ways we waste time: “One man is held fast by a greed that knows no bounds, another by a tedious devotion to tasks that have no purpose; one man is besotted with wine, another paralyzed by indolence.”
We need a practical philosophy. Oliver Burkeman, right at the start of his book Four Thousand Weeks, sets out a provocative proposition:
The real problem isn’t our limited time. The real problem—or so I hope to convince you—is that we’ve unwittingly inherited, and feel pressured to live by, a troublesome set of ideas about how to use our limited time, all of which are pretty much guaranteed to make things worse.
In January 2025, Burkeman’s practical book will be an actionable multiplier to Seneca’s wisdom.
Neither Burkeman nor Seneca will teach us the ten steps to having it all.
On the contrary, Burkeman teaches what he calls imperfectionism—the art of finding freedom in our limitations, not finding freedom from our limitations. The more we understand this, the more we are free to live according to our highest purpose and values.
Like the Stoics, Burkeman provides a practical philosophy.
Living in a rural area means a medical or dental appointment can be a bit of a drive for us. This has its advantages. My wife and I might make a day of it, enjoying each other’s company, having lunch, and doing needed shopping. As an added bonus, while driving, we may listen to an audiobook that otherwise we might not sit down to hear.
A few weeks ago, driving down to an appointment with an oral surgeon, we listened to Burkeman’s latest book, Meditations for Mortals. I heard Burkeman read this:
A pair of images that help clarify things here are those of the kayak and the superyacht. To be human, according to this analogy, is to occupy a little one-person kayak, borne along on the river of time towards your inevitable yet unpredictable death. It’s a thrilling situation, but also an intensely vulnerable one: you’re at the mercy of the current, and all you can really do is to stay alert, steering as best you can, reacting as wisely and gracefully as possible to whatever arises from moment to moment…
Merely to come into existence is to find oneself thrown into a time and place you didn’t choose, with a personality you didn’t pick, and with your time flowing away beneath you, minute by minute, whether you like it or not.
That’s how life is. But it isn’t how we want it to be. We’d prefer a much greater sense of control. Rather than paddling by kayak, we’d like to feel ourselves the captain of a superyacht, calm and in charge, programming our desired route into the ship’s computers, then sitting back and watching it all unfold from the plush-leather swivel chair on the serene and silent bridge. Systems and schemes for self-improvement, and “long-term projects”, all feed this fantasy: you get to spend your time daydreaming that you’re on the superyacht, master of all you survey, and imagining how great it’ll feel to reach your destination.
By contrast, actually doing one meaningful thing today – just sitting down to meditate, just writing a few paragraphs of the novel, just giving your full attention to one exchange with your child – requires surrendering a sense of control. It means not knowing in advance if you’ll carry it off well (you can be certain you’ll do it imperfectly), or whether you’ll end up becoming the kind of person who does that sort of thing all the time. And so it is an act of faith. It means facing the truth that you’re always in the kayak, never the superyacht.
The challenge, then, is simple, though for many of us also excruciating: What’s one thing you could do today – or tomorrow at the latest, if you’re reading this at night – that would constitute a good-enough use of a chunk of your finite time, and that you’d actually be willing to do? (Don’t get distracted wondering what might be the best thing to do: that’s superyacht thinking, borne of the desire to feel certain you’re on the right path.) Because the irony, of course, is that just doing something once today, just steering your kayak over the next few inches of water, is the only way you’ll ever become the kind of person who does that sort of thing on a regular basis anyway.
Otherwise – and believe me, I’ve been there – you’re merely the kind of person who spends your life drawing up plans for how you’re going to become a different kind of person later on. This will sometimes garner you the admiration of others, since it can look from the outside like you’re busily making improvements. But it isn’t the same at all.
So you just do the thing, once, with absolutely no guarantee you’ll ever manage to do it again. But then perhaps you find that you do do it again, the next day, or a few days later, and maybe again, and again – until before you know it, you’ve developed that most remarkable thing, not a willpower-driven system or routine but an emergent practice of writing, or meditating, or listening to your kids, or building a business.
Burkeman’s words were soothing. “Just steering your kayak over the next few inches of water” instantly took me out of my head. I stopped imagining and rehearsing my encounter with the oral surgeon. I had already prepared by considering alternatives and providers and had made my decisions. Having done so, today, I was not going to be, as Burkeman puts it, the captain of a superyacht.
I won’t say the visit was entirely pleasant or uneventful (the oral surgeon encountered something unexpected), but it was simply life in action. I did what needed to be done, and so did the surgeon and his staff.
While I don’t believe Burkeman’s metaphor of life in a kayak is entirely accurate—we are supported by many people and forces we mostly know little about—it is helpful to remember that we have much less control than we would like to believe.
Burkeman concludes Four Thousand Weeks with these words:
The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly, insultingly short. But that isn’t a reason for unremitting despair, or for living in an anxiety-fueled panic about making the most of your limited time. It’s a cause for relief. You get to give up on something that was always impossible—the quest to become the optimized, infinitely capable, emotionally invincible, fully independent person you’re officially supposed to be. Then you get to roll up your sleeves and start work on what’s gloriously possible instead.
By sharing his conclusion, I have not spoiled Burkeman’s impactful read. Burkeman and Seneca provide much philosophical guidance to live our most imperfect, but glorious, limited life.
As always, the work at Mindset Shifts U is in reading, considering the ideas, and becoming more aware of our mindset—including our imaginary idealized image of ourself—as it exists today. Our little willingness to do so goes a long way in facilitating change. We begin to see ourselves, not the so much the doer, but the one who is willing to experience change.
We will consider the works of Seneca and Burkeman for about eight weeks beginning in January (tentatively January 25th).
Keeping with the theme of being a good example as Spring arrives, we will work with David K. Reynolds's practical philosophy, which he calls Constructive Living. Tentatively, next summer, we will work with selected essays of Ralph Waldo Emerson, America’s greatest philosopher.
Before we get to 2025, after finishing Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, over the weeks of December 7th and 14th, we will work with Seneca’s “On Anger.”
What books do you need?
Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks
For Seneca, there are several excellent modern translations. The Oxford collection of Seneca’s Dialogues and Essays contains “On Anger” and other essays we will work with down the road, including “The Shortness of Life.”
This Oxford collection has one limitation. It only contains Part 3 of “On Anger.” You can fill the gap with a free online version of Parts 1 and 2 accessed at this site.
Alternatively, you could purchase two volumes in the outstanding Univ. of Chicago series of Seneca’s works Hardship and Happiness along with Anger, Mercy, Revenge. Both volumes are often on Kindle sale.
David K. Reynolds offers this invitation to pivot toward a present, purposeful focus of life:
Explanations are different from purpose focus. Explanations are past-directed…
Most people want stories about who they are and how they came to be that way… Perhaps it's easier to explore reasons than to change behavior.
Every year we start fresh. We start every moment fresh. People change moment by moment… Holding to one's present purpose helps bring attention back to the now.
I’m grateful for your support and looking forward to continuing to work with you.
When you become a paid subscriber today, you make this work possible and immediately become part of the Mindset Shifts U community. You obtain complete access to the archives and will be ready for our December work on anger.
Beautiful and beautifully written insights!
Your quote from Burkeman,,
"Otherwise – and believe me, I’ve been there – you’re merely the kind of person who spends your life drawing up plans for how you’re going to become a different kind of person later on. This will sometimes garner you the admiration of others, since it can look from the outside like you’re busily making improvements. But it isn’t the same at all.
So you just do the thing, once, with absolutely no guarantee you’ll ever manage to do it again. But then perhaps you find that you do do it again, the next day, or a few days later, and maybe again, and again..."
describes a trap I easily find myself falling into, wherein I'm always reading the next self-help book on my list or going to the next therapy appointment, always looking for the blinding flash of insight or magic key that will suddenly not only explain why I am the way I am and do the things I do, but cause my behavior to automatically change in response. The constant analysis and the feeling that the crucial piece of knowledge that will change me is always just another book or therapy session away: they're defenses that allow me to convince myself that I'm making an effort to self-improve without having to do the difficult, uncomfortable work of monitoring myself so that I'm aware of it when my default reaction to something is maladaptive and then choosing to react differently.