What Are Your Odds of Having a Good Life?
How to think like a gambler to steer your life
Imagine you know where you want to go. That you no longer stress about what job to go for next. Where you want to live or how to find your dream partner. Imagine you have all that sorted.
You know yourself.
You know your way.
This is what life is about. Finding yourself and finding your way. It is difficult but you can do it. All you need to do is have the right approach to finding your way.
Contrary to many popular articles, you do not have to start setting a lot of goals for yourself or to develop a huge plan for the next 3, 5, or 10 years of your life.
You need to set a direction for your life and then iterate and experiment your way forward. You need to find your guiding stars.
In the coming paragraphs, You will get two different stars you can choose to use, as the first basis of your direction.
One from philosophy and one from gambling.
What is a guiding star?
Guiding stars represent the aim of your life’s journey. They are not something to be reached unless you are an astronaut (then you may be too cool for this article).
Guiding stars are decisions you can make today that will set a direction for you and drive you in a general direction that you want to go. They are the answers to some of the difficult questions that will help you make all the choices every day, that will take you towards your destination.
The choices that are right for you and the choices that are just right in and of themselves.
Today is a world of choices or at least we are told that we have almost infinite opportunities, possibilities, and thus choices to shape and reshape our lives.
Like everyone else, I experience this as well and that caused me to do some serious reflection on my choices and the motivation to choose as I have done. I have not always been very consistent and not always in line with the values I want to live by.
Why is that?
One reason is, that I have not been very clear about what my values truly are, what principles I wanted to live by. And secondly, my choices have often been done considering what I would get, rather than why I would do it.
How often is a choice made simply based on money? How much money will I get? Or how much money will I save?
With traditions and religion being on the decline, in western societies, to steer and guide our actions we are often left with very little guidance. And our up-bringing focusing on developing us to be what they want to be.
It is becoming increasingly hard to just be and to make the small choices that form up what you end up being.
That’s why you need to find your own stars to help you navigate.
Digging deep the philosophical star
One of the big topics in philosophy, all the way back to ancient Greece, where our civilization was founded, is the topic of Ethics.
You may think. “Oh, that sounds so boring, not that old tune again”. But hang on, relax, and let’s just briefly explore why ethics can be one of the simplest and easiest guiding stars you will ever have!
The whole purpose of ethics is making it easy to make choices, not because you will be punished if you don’t but because it is the only thing to do.
As one of the great Danish pastor author-poet-philosopher-historian-teacher-politician, Grundvig put it (in my words)
“Why bother God with the question of what is good. Is something good because God says so? Or does God just like what is good?”
It may sound simple but choosing to do good because it is good, makes it much easier to make that choice. And doing good will make you happier by the way.
The first thing you should practice is to ponder the great questions of life:
- How should I live? (The good life)
Think about where you physically want to be in life? Who do you want to be with? What will you do?
2. How should I treat others? (The good person)
Think about who you want to be as a person? What kind of friend? What kind of parent? What is important to you in how you treat others and how you are being treated?
3. How shall we live together? (The good society)
Think about the society you are part of. How do you want to contribute? What will you do for others? How will you make sure you everyone around you have a good life too?
Take a break from reading and look out the window and think about them one at a time.
Or even better, find a friend to discuss these questions with.
Or imagine you are telling a friend and answer them as shortly and concisely as possible.
These questions and the answers you come up with, are fundamental in understanding yourself, how you see the world, and what direction you should take.
“Do your best. And all else will fall into place. That is all anyone can ask of any man” (Unknown)
Action
- Answer each question with a one-liner. Write it down in your favorite notebook or on a post-it where you can easily find it
- Revisit once in a while.
Choosing your Star of Ethics
One of the most foundational studies in Philosophy. There are several schools of Ethics and there has been written long and great books about the topic from authors way better than me, so I will not go into any depth here.
Consider the following two schools of ethics. They are fairly straightforward and can function well as guiding stars.
- Ethics of Duty (Deontological Ethics) The theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules, rather than based on the consequences of the action (Wikipedia)
- Utilitarianism: The theory that the best action is the one that maximizes utility. One definition of “Utility” is the sum of all pleasure that results from an action, minus the suffering of anyone involved in the action. (Wikipedia)
The difference between them is whether it is most important to do the right thing? Or to do the thing that will cause the most good?
What do you think? What resonates with you?
Consider this thought experiment: Killing another human being is wrong, that is a prerequisite. The question is then: What if you could save a hundred people by killing one? Would that make it ok to kill that one person? Or should you avoid killing that one person knowing a hundred others would die?
You can choose one of the two schools above as a guiding star for now, or dig a little more into philosophy and learn about the rest of the schools.
These two will both serve as great guiding stars for a lot of your decision making. In short, consider this your principle:
- “Only act in ways that you would like all other persons to act — as if it was law.” (Kant’s Categorical Imperative rephrased by me)
- “Only act in ways that do more good than harm to everyone.” (Bentham rephrased by me)
When evaluating against the two Guiding stars above, then it is not merely the act itself that you need to consider but also the intention of the act.
If the intention is good, but the act turns out poorly, then you should not necessarily blame yourself but just learn from your mistakes and do differently next time.
Action
- Choose one of the above Ethical principles as a guiding star
- Or read more on the schools of ethics to find the one suiting you best
Those were some big guiding stars! Now on to the gambling one
The Gambling star
If ethics is your first star, the way you approach the difficult and important decisions in life, then the Gambling star is your day-to-day easygoing choice barometer.
I came across this fantastic way of thinking in the book “Eat Move Sleep: How Small Choices Lead to Big Changes” by Tom Rath. Simply put, when standing in front of a choice, you can ask yourself
“Will this increase my odds of a good life?”
The pre-requisite, of course, is that you know what you believe to be a good life. Do you want to live a long life of health and vitality or maybe enjoy life to its fullest with the risk of a shorter one?
Are you a “Live hard and die young” type of person?
Or what do you believe to be a good life?
If you don’t know, then return to the first exercise on the big questions. And find someone to discuss it with.
Since it is often impossible to control the outcome of your choices in the long run. In the book, it is about choosing what to eat. Imagine you are standing in front of your favorite cake. It looks even more tempting than ever before and you have not had lunch today so you are also a little bit hungry, maybe a little tired as well and the cake really seem extremely tempting.
You also know that eating that huge cake will not be good for your health. There is tons of sugar in it, so you may get diabetes and you may also gain weight and all those other considerations. The point is, this one piece of cake will likely not do any of those things in itself and even if you never eat cake again you may get diabetes anyway, so the question is:
“Will eating this cake increase or decrease your odds of a good life?”
That entirely depends on your definition of the good life. But thinking in odds gives you a different perspective on how to make those choices.
Summary
What is most important when finding your guiding stars is to understand that it is only guiding you in a direction. It is helping you make choices. You should not expect that you will be able to live in a whole new way or change everything in your life with a magic wand.
With guiding stars you will choose HOW you make choices — choices that will lead to being a good person and leading a good life.
Three guiding stars:
- “Only act in ways that you would like all other persons to act — as if it was law.” (Kant’s Categorical Imperative rephrased by me)
- “Only act in ways that do more good than harm to everyone.” (Bentham, rephrased by me)
- “Will this action improve my odds of a good life?” (Tom Roth, possibly rephrased by me)
“Choose a direction and strive towards being a better person, that is a good life” Quote of the Dane
