Arthur Schopenhauer is considered to be one of the greatest philosophers of all time.

He lived from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 19th century and while he is often

described as a genius philosopher, he has also been given less flattering monikers such

as The Sad Prince of pessimism and The Messenger of Misery, due to his particularly unique

philosophical views . He influenced the work of many great thinkers after him, from philosophers

to psychologists to physicists, including Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Ludwig

Wittgenstein, Albert Einstein and so many others.

Arthur Schopenhauer’s work is part of the philosophy of pessimism

and Schopenhauer is mostly known for his famous book “The World as Will and Representation”,

in which he describes the physical world as the manifestation of an invisible force, a

metaphysical will.

Schopenhauer's philosophy is based on the idea that the world we perceive is not the

real world, we see reality through our own personal filters, which Indian philosophy

calls "the veils of Maya" that prevent us from seeing “actual reality”.

Schopenhauer is one of the philosophers who pondered the most on subjects such as loneliness,

solitude, boredom and what true happiness means.

Although his views on life are known for being extremely pessimistic, his work reveals a

deep wisdom which can teach us how to deal with the most unpleasant episodes in our lives,

which is why in this video we bring you 7 life lessons inspired by the philosophy of

Arthur Schopenhauer: 1.

Find yourself in solitude Arthur Schopenhauer says: “We can only be

entirely ourselves as long as we are alone; therefore, whoever does not love solitude,

also does not love freedom; for only when we are alone, are we free.”

According to Schopenhauer, the capacity to be alone is one of the most distinctive marks

of a high intellectual being.

Sociability has an inverse relationship with the intellectual capacity of someone.

The more sociable we are, the less we can invest in developing our intellectual capacity.

The less sociable we are, the more time we have to reflect on the meaning of our existence,

on who we really are.

That is why Schopenhauer encourages us to learn to be in solitude, to find that quiet

place in our minds where we can retreat and find ourselves.

Our freedom exists only in our solitude, when all the outside noise is shut down.

However, there is a danger associated with being lonely and a distinction must be made

between solitude and loneliness.

If loneliness means to be desperately in need to be with other people and to not be able

to be, solitude means that you made a conscious choice to be by yourself and enjoy your own

company.

Schopenhauer doesn’t encourage us to withdraw from this world completely, he just emphasizes

that you need to learn to be by yourself, at least from time to time, in order to connect

with your greatest aspirations and inner nature.

To apply this lesson in our own lives, we need to put aside more time to spend alone,

reading books, meditating, taking long walks outside, and contemplating the world and our

existence.

Nowadays, with so many distracting forces like social media, deadlines at work, we can

easily forget about our long-term goals.

Thus, we become prisoners of circumstance, we lose control of our own lives.

The best thing to do to avoid this is to prioritize the time we allocate to ourselves.

We need to write “me-time” into our agenda , dedicated time in which we can retreat from

the outside world.

We could schedule a meditation walk to a nearby park, or block a few hours to spend time writing

in a journal and to think on our goals in life, or perhaps spending some time reading

a philosophy book which could give us new insights into the world around us.

2.

Remove suffering to be happy Schopenhauer tells us: “What is generally

called happiness is actually and essentially only ever negative and absolutely never positive.”

Oftentimes Schopenhauer is described as a philosopher who didn’t believe in the concept

of happiness.

This is far from the truth.

Schopenhauer didn’t link happiness with feelings of joy, pleasure and ecstasy, which

he saw merely as ways to escape from boredom and negativity, but rather he saw in happiness

the absence of suffering in the first place.

For example, we are not aware of how healthy we are.

It is only when we start to feel some sort of pain, such as a headache or a stomach upset,

that we notice our bodies not operating as normal.

In the same way, only when we experience a certain degree of emotional suffering, we

realize that we were happy before, but not anymore.

Given this simple fact, in order to be happy, what we need to do is to remember the happy

times we had in life, to evaluate where we are now, what kind of suffering we’re experiencing

at that moment and make the effort to remove that suffering.

To do that, we need to track our happy moments and try to relive them as much as possible.

Also, when we experience something unpleasant, we should try to find methods to remove these

unpleasant experiences from our lives.

It can be a painful process to make all those changes, but it is incredibly worthwhile.

If we just focus on getting pleasure from life, it means we ignore the problems instead

of facing them until eventually they catch up with us once they have become significant

enough issues to be unavoidable.

But if we face our problems directly, instead of ignoring them, we will be able to remove

the roots of suffering and we can increase the amount of happiness we experience in our

lives.

For example, consider that you are working in a miserable job that you hate, but you

can’t leave it because you need to pay the rent and cover your bills.

One evening, after a long day at work, you stop in front of your favourite shop and you

see a stunning outfit in the window that you desperately want to add to your collection

and you’re sure will make you feel better.

Instead of buying that outfit with your credit card to please yourself for a brief moment,

you should try to reflect on the cause of your unhappiness.

In our example, you realise that you make too many sacrifices for a job that gives you

so little satisfaction so instead of the short-lived dopamine hit of an impulse shopping spree,

you could spend that money on further education to open access to better jobs that will make

you happier in the long run or to start a side business like an eBay shop or YouTube

channel to shift focus away from your day job and begin to build a platform to help

you escape it permanently.

3.

Understand your subconscious mind To quote Schopenhauer: “Man can do what

he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”

“Will” is the basis on which Schopenhauer's philosophy as a whole was built.

In his main book entitled "The World as Will and Representation", we understand from the

concept of will that it is a psychological force that controls our actions.

We often find ourselves doing things automatically, like an invisible force controlling us.

This is what Schopenhauer calls “the will” - a blind and irrational force, which takes

over our minds in many life situations.

We often think we are in control of our actions, but actually there is something bigger than

ourselves which drives us.

We are like the rider on a big elephant - our subconscious.

We, the conscious mind can only guide this elephant, but we cannot fully control it.

The best thing to do is to become friends with him, trying to understand him better,

what drives him, what scares him and guides him on safe land.

We need to keep in mind we cannot force him to do anything, but we can help him achieve

his goals faster.

As a real life example, consider that you want to lose weight.

You can try to force yourself to keep a rigid diet, sweat for 2 hours every day in the gym,

but there is a great danger you will make your “elephant” angry and he will protest

in the most brutal way, deciding all of a sudden to eat an entire chocolate cake at

the end of a difficult day at work.

Your elephant will get his revenge if you do not treat him with kindness.

To avoid making your elephant angry, you should try to introduce a new tiny habit each day,

for example today you can start eating only one slice of bread at each meal, tomorrow

you can walk for 10 minutes, the day after tomorrow you can walk for 20 minutes and so

on.

Make the changes carefully and systematically if you want to see the long-term effects.

4.

Limit your expectations Schopenhauer teaches us: “The safest way

of not being very miserable is to not expect to be very happy.”

Schopenhauer argues that a life with less suffering is much better than a life with

the greatest joys.

When we are young, we pursue our goals with energy and anxiety, with the far stretched

ideals of happiness, chasing professional ambitions to be somebody in society, fighting

to be somebody we are not.

In other words, we put a lot of stress on ourselves and our expectations are very high.

Nowadays, especially, the lifestyles of the rich and famous are presented as a model to

follow, but, behind the scenes, they often fight with severe issues of drug abuse, depression

and anxiety.

We should stop chasing these kinds of ideals.

Instead of fighting to acquire or experience things to make us happy, we should focus on

minimizing the pain.

As we get older, a lot of us realize this pattern and start giving up the frantic pursuit

of happiness that kept us miserable in our younger years.

We start to focus on minimizing pain, rather than pursuing pleasures in life.

That invisible “will” which pushes us towards an endless torture and letting the

desires run our lives, has less effect when we are older.

But, certainly, it is much better if we try to practice limiting our expectations from

a younger age, to live more of those happier years, without so much suffering.

To do this, we need to work on how we see the world and how we see ourselves.

The way we see ourselves and the world is oftentimes the root of our unhappiness.

We need to be more realistic about our qualities and skills, we need to put our professional

goals on a more realistic scale.

Also, we need to be more compassionate towards other people, have fewer expectations from

our partner, and stop demanding other people be perfect.

It is far better to work on our real qualities and skills and develop them step by step,

than pretend we are something we are not in order to achieve a higher position in our

job.

Also, it is far better to enjoy the company of an imperfect partner than to change your

partner often in the pursuit of finding a perfect one.

To be happy, peaceful, and healthy is much more important than to be famous, adored or

having a partner as a trophy to show off.

Therefore, we need to limit our expectations and learn to enjoy life as it is.

5.

Be compassionate Schopenhauer posits that: “Compassion is

the basis of morality.”

Schopenhauer believed that there are many ways to free a person from suffering, at the

same time saving him from the crisis of existence: one is the path of art, the path of austerity

and non-desire, and another one is the path of morals.

If art is a temporary remedy, the path of morals is a permanent remedy: consequently,

one must realize that happiness is not the goal of life.

This is because life has no goal, and perhaps sleep is the only moment when a person achieves

a natural state of happiness.

Our environment would be unbearable if we didn’t have any moral guidance to navigate

through it.

We need to find meaning in this world and one of the most effective ways to find this

meaning is to learn to be compassionate towards other human beings.

We should not pursue our happiness at the cost of other people.

In the end, we are all manifestations of the Will, we are all in this life together, and,

according to Schopenhauer, all moral actions can be reduced to “injure no one; on the

contrary, help everyone as much as you can”.

In our daily lives, to show compassion and good morals, we need to think of the people

around us every time we speak and act, we have to make sure we do not injure anyone,

that our actions are fair and considerate to others.

Also, we have to do our best to help the people who need help.

For sure, we can think of family members and friends who are now in trouble, maybe they

do not have a job, maybe are struggling with a physical disease or condition, perhaps they

are having problems in their relationship.

It is not that difficult to put in a good word with the company you are currently working

in for a friend applying for a job there.

It is not difficult to call them to ask how they are doing, how they are coping with their

medical issues or with marital problems and offer advice and comfort.

No matter how small, it might just make all the difference.

6.

Avoid boredom According to Schopenhauer: “The most general

survey shows us that the two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.”

Boredom is the second enemy of living a happy life.

And it is one of the centrepieces of Schopenhauer’s philosophy.

As soon as we get rid of pain, we are susceptible to enter a state of boredom, which prevents

us from having a fulfilled life.

Arthur Schopenhauer is a pessimistic philosopher, he didn’t see happiness as a common state

for a human being, but rather as an extraordinary and temporary moment.

His work focused not on happiness, but on pain and boredom.

As soon as you remove pain from your life, you will usually have boredom taking its place

and not pleasure.

We are perpetually in the pursuit of trying to capture what we desire, need, or lack;

once we succeed in obtaining our goal, we realize it does not give the satisfaction

or happiness we had anticipated.

And off we go again, pursuing something else to make us happy only to find ourselves back

to the very boredom we were trying to avoid.

Boredom is the state when you have everything you need and oftentimes leads to nihilism

and depression, because the force which pushed us to chase the desired material things - “the

will” can never be satisfied with what it gets.

That is why we often see famous people who have absolutely everything in this life, but

they don’t really know how to maintain their happiness, they soon fall into boredom which

leads to nihilism and depression, they succumb to drugs, they divorce more often, they spend

their money in a careless way, or even commit suicide.

In order to avoid this from happening, Schopenhauer recommends us to concentrate less on the outside

world and more on the inside.

Less on possessions, less on how many cars you have, how many houses, and basing your

worth on your wealth.

Only by ignoring the shiny objects of the external world, can you really escape from

oscillating around the pain-boredom axis.

To do that, you need to concentrate more on the connection between your body and mind,

to have a more holistic approach to life, to be aware of each moment.

Meditation can help a lot in this, it helps in becoming more conscious of the small things

that are essential in life, starting simply with your breath.

Also, writing a gratitude journal each morning, counting all the blessings you have in life

can help you avoid taking things for granted.

A gratitude journal is a great shortcut for maintaining a fulfilled life, free from boredom,

with the only caveat being that you need to count your inner blessings more, you need

to focus on your inner world, on your close relationships, and not on the external world,

on possessions, success or fame.

7.

Make room for art In our final quote from Schopenhauer for this

video, he tells us: “The true work of art leads us from that which exists only once

and never again, i.e. the individual, to that which exists perpetually and time and time

again in innumerable manifestations, the pure form or Idea.”

Schopenhauer was very much influenced by Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher.

Plato considered that we are like cavemen, we can see only the shadows of the real truths,

their manifestation in this world, and not their real essence.

Schopenhauer, by analogy, considered that we live in a world where the truth is distorted,

what we see is not the essence of reality, we can see only the shadows.

The Will to live is what keeps us prisoners in the cave, manipulating our lives like we're

some kind of puppet, keeping us in the cycle of pain and boredom.

There is one great way to temporarily escape from this cave, from our ordinary life, this

is through art.

For example, we can contemplate the beauty of a painting, listen to high quality music,

sculpting, photographing beautiful landscapes and people, doing anything which elevates

our souls and it is creative by nature.

Schopenhauer considered that music is the best way to see the true essence of the world.

Scientists from Stanford did a lot of studies on the baroque music of the 18th century and

it was proven that by listening to baroque music the brain changes, baroque music of

the 18th century increases the level of awareness and intelligence.

Even if you might not be a fan of 18th century baroque music, you can still follow Schopenhauer’s

advice to include as much real art as possible in your life, because through art you can

liberate yourself from the ordinary desires and needs, which keep you in pain or boredom.

Art has the quality to transcend reality and to connect us with the real spiritual essence

of this world.

If you enjoyed this video, please do make sure to check out the full Philosophies for

Life channel, and for more videos to help you find success and happiness using ancient

philosophical wisdom, don’t forget to subscribe.

Thanks so much for watching.