Arthur Schopenhauer was one of the greatest philosophers of all time.

He lived from the end of the 18th to the beginning of the 19th century in Germany.

His most important work was “The World As Will and Representation”.

He was one of the most prominent figures of the philosophy of pessimism and the first

great Western philosopher who was interested in Buddhism.

The best way to understand his teachings is to analyze them through the eyes of the enlightened

pessimism prevalent in Buddhist philosophy.

Arthur Schopenhauer is known as the ultimate pessimist because he articulates a pessimistic

worldview that questions life’s meaning.

He believed that the universe was fundamentally irrational and human beings are driven by

a force called the Will, a basic force in the Universe, never satisfied, and we, the

human beings, don’t have much self-control to fight it.

Schopenhauer argues that the best way to be happy is by ceasing to look for happiness

and instead try to remove the unhappiness from our life.

This idea reflects philosophical pessimism, which is not a psychological disposition,

but rather a worldview.

Philosophical pessimism suggests that it is always better to expect the worst in order

to receive the best.

By using the principles of philosophical pessimism, we can eliminate the irrational hopes and

expectations we have in life and thus we can live more peacefully and happily.

So with that in mind here are 7 ideas you can follow in order to become a pessimist

according to the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer: 1.

Accept your limits Arthur Schopenhauer says: “Man can do what

he wills but he cannot will what he wills.”

In Arthur Schopenhauer’s view, we are free to act on our motives, but we cannot decide

what our motives should be.

Free will means autonomy, but not independence.

This is a compatibilist view.

The compatibilist theory says that free will can be absent from human actions or present

to some degree, depending on the circumstances and on the subject.

Western culture teaches us that nothing is impossible, but this is completely false according

to Schopenhauer.

Our life is confined by severe limits.

We are limited by the place where we were born, by the family who raised us, the availability

of job opportunities in our countries, by the way we look, or how we were educated,

or even our genetics, to name just a few.

The quote from Schopenhauer does not state the impossibility of a free will, but rather

its limits.

We cannot change who we are, and therefore we cannot change our fundamental personality,

the way we think and feel, the things we wish for ourselves in life, our wants.

We can learn to adapt to some situations, change the way we present ourselves, but we

cannot change the essence of who we are as a person.

The only thing we can do is to acknowledge our desires and try to adapt our lives accordingly.

It is still our decision to act according to our desires.

Sometimes, our desires push us towards a life full of suffering and stress, but we still

have the power to stop, reflect and exert more control over our desires.

It is important to be open-minded and skeptical about anything that you want; you need to

question your desires, your feelings and emotions, and assess whether they are constructive or

destructive to your life.

Thus, you can learn to have more control over them and live a more peaceful life.

For example, if you have the desire to be a rock star and you follow the top artists

with great interest, studied all their tracks and even thought of forming your own rock

band, you need to stop and reflect on questions like - do you really have the necessary skills

to reach success in this line of work?

Do you really know what it takes to become a rock star, how many hundreds of hours of

practice, how to negotiate decent contracts, how to to constantly be present and stand

out on social media, and how much you need to work on your persona and public image?

And, ultimately, do you feel capable of sustaining that kind of lifestyle?

The answers to these questions should point you in the right direction for you.

2.

Accept that everything changes and decays Schopenhauer tells us: “Life is a constant

process of dying.”

Every fulfilment a man achieves sows the seeds of a new desire so that each person’s desires

can never run out.

The Will is like the engine of the world, driving the actions of all its subjects, who

can never completely escape its power, they are trapped in chasing their desires, but

even when the desires are satisfied, it doesn't bring them happiness.

When people are fulfilled, having a desire satisfied, all they get is a state of painlessness,

with nothing left to them but boredom.

Even sensual pleasure is nothing more than a struggle and aspiration that ends when the

goal is achieved.

Instead of building metaphorical castles in the air, Schopenhauer advises us to recognize

the pointlessness of everything life can offer, to recognize that there is nothing eternal

here on Earth, to try to detach from chasing material things and clinging to relationships

which are all temporary, and to engage more in spiritual practices, meditating more on

the meaning of life and on death.

Death is inevitable and, according to Schopenhauer, after Death we will become whatever we were

before being born.

We have to come to peace with the idea of Death, that everything dies and decays.

The only thing we can do is to appreciate the momentary beauty of the things and people

we love, but never cling onto their presence.

The more we acknowledge their temporary existence, the more we can appreciate them.

We should remember every day that the people we love will die someday and this reminder

will make us love them even more and treat them that much better while they are still

alive.

Also, reminding ourselves that even this Earth on which we live will die someday will make

us appreciate the uniqueness of our forests, our oceans, of the animals who live here with

us.

Thinking about Death is a great opportunity to enjoy life even more.

3.

Learn to see suffering as the best teacher in life

In the words of Schopenhauer: “Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of

things.”

In Schopenhauer’s view, the way we define happiness is usually wrong, happiness is mostly

the absence of pain and suffering.

Negative experiences are more prevalent in life according to Schopenhauer, especially

if we try to find happiness not within ourselves, but in other people or in material things.

What can redirect us to the right track and help us find real happiness is by having lived

a severe suffering such as the loss of a loved one or the loss of our career, our business

and so on.

Such tragic events can shake us and help us see how ephemeral and worthless all the things

we have been chasing in life truly are, and through this we can better understand what

really matters.

If we lost a loved one, we can meditate on how temporary this life is, how every second

counts, how to invest more time in the relationships that really matter, how to appreciate our

family and friends more.

If we lost a career or business, we can realize that although we put vast amounts of our time

and energy into that work, what really matters in the end is the person we become after that

journey, what lessons and skills we’ve learned.

In Schopenhauer’s view, loss is the best teacher, because it can direct us to find

the real value of all things in our life.

The bigger the tragedy, the more we can change ourselves, and the better we can understand

reality, that everything is just temporary.

For example, if we know our relationship with our loved ones is temporary, we are that much

less likely to take them for granted.

Also, in the case of our career or business, instead of concentrating all of our efforts

into getting extra money and in getting a better reputation and popularity, it is better

to focus on gaining new skills, on self development, on who we can become as a person by advancing

in that career or business.

4.

Don’t be blinded by love Schopenhauer teaches us that: “Every kind

of love, however ethereal it may seem to be, springs entirely from the instinct of sex.”

Schopenhauer believed that no one can claim their romantic love is stronger than their

sexual instincts.

Romantic love is rooted in sexual instinct, according to the theory of Sigmund Freud,

the founder of psychoanalysis.

Sexual attraction creates a powerful bond which connects two people for an initially

short, but potentially very long time.

The deeper the attraction, the higher the chances to build a life together and possibly

procreate.

According to Schopenhauer, love is the most powerful force in life, but, in his pessimistic

analysis, love is a servant of the will to live, it is a subconscious force pushing us

towards procreation.

The more chances there are to be compatible with someone in procreating, the stronger

the love you can feel towards that person.

That is why the way people look, the status they have in society, what kind of lifestyle

they lead, all play a crucial role in attraction.

We can compose beautiful poems about love, romantic novels and movies, chase high-profile

jobs, try to become popular in our personal and professional circles, invest fortunes

in our clothes and hairstyles, but, in the end, at the base of everything, it all comes

down to the base desire to procreate.

Therefore, instead of becoming infatuated and blinded by love, we should rather acknowledge

the basic instincts that are playing us, acknowledge their importance.

By recognizing them, we can control them better, and make better decisions.

This acknowledgment and choosing easier ways to impress the opposite sex can make our lives

that much easier.

Once we know what is at the root of many of our actions – our sexual instincts – we

can start controlling them and we can avoid being blinded by love.

For example, once you know who the person is that you want to be with, you need to start

seeing love for what it is, an expression of sexual desires.

According to Schopenhauer, the more easily you succumb to the power of love, the more

easily you are manipulated by the Will to live.

His philosophy was about trying to become aware of the Will that is driving your instincts.

However, to get out from the trap of one’s Will, using your mental faculties is not enough

as our Will is often manipulating us subconsciously.

Schopenhauer does not provide a manual to escape the power of Will, but he gives hope

that we can domesticate its power by refraining from following our initial impulse and by

trying to minimize our natural desires.

Therefore, before you follow your heart, you might be better off not following your initial

instinct at all, but instead to attempt to diminish your desire to be with that person.

For example, you might be in the situation when you have to decide if you should pursue

a life with a person you are attracted to but you know the person is incompatible with

you on many other levels.

In that situation, you may well be happier in the long run by ignoring your base desires

and spending your energy finding someone more broadly compatible with you.

5.

Sacrifice pleasure to avoid pain Schopenhauer posits that: “It is a clear

gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.”

According to Schopenhauer, we’re like lambs in a field, grazing under the watchful eye

of the butcher, who selects one after the other for his prey.

So it is that on our good days, we are all blissfully unaware of the horrors that fate

may have in store for us like illness, starvation, mutilation, blindness and so on.

In Schopenhauer’s pessimistic way of seeing life, every life’s happiness is measured,

not by its pleasures and joys, but by how free of pain it is.

For instance, imagine happiness after buying your first home.

At first, you might think you are happy because of the house itself, of how beautiful and

spacious it is, because you are now an owner, but what gives you happiness in reality is

the feeling of relief that you own a house now, you do not need to stress anymore about

paying rent and you feel secure that you always have a shelter from now on and all of these

are the consequences of removing the pain of not having a shelter.

However, Schopenhauer points out that this happiness is temporary and you will soon be

worried about issues like mortgages, maintenance, the security of your job with which you have

to pay the mortgage and so on.

And here is where Schopenhauer gives an important lesson: don’t spend every penny you can

earn or borrow on the most beautiful house you can find, it is better to buy a house

you can comfortably afford, which does not put additional stress on your finances long-term.

Doing so, you will avoid being a puppet that is completely manipulated by Will - not to

mention the bank - and instead, you make a reasonable decision which limits the pain

in your life, even if that means sacrificing the pleasure of owning the most beautiful

house out there.

6.

Limit your expectations In the words of Schopenhauer: “There is

no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.”

With astute psychological insights, Schopenhauer confirms his position on the negative essence

of happiness.

The Will can fool us into thinking that it is all about finding satisfaction and pleasure

in life, making us chase expensive cars, houses, high paid jobs, holidays in luxury resorts,

expensive clothes and the like, but in fact what we really want are the essential things

we need: a shelter, enough food, a partner, a secure community to live in.

Often, to get this minimum amount of things is a real struggle.

Therefore, life is not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome, which means we need to overcome

the Will that tricks us into wanting more than we need.

We should follow the Will only to an extent to satisfy our basic needs in life in order

to survive – like food, shelter, and family, but we should try to limit the power of Will

when it is pushing us to obtain things that we don't really need.

To make sure we really understand this teaching, we need to investigate our wants in life.

Instead of writing a big list of impossible dreams and plans for some exotic trip , we

might rather ponder on the troubles we have in life and find real solutions to overcome

them.

The to-do lists, according to this teaching of Schopenhauer, should not include to-do

items which push us toward achieving more than we need, but should include to-do items

that help us secure our basic needs and help us solve the life problems we already have.

For example, if you are an employee working many hours per week, neglecting your family

and trying just to pay the rent of your expensive apartment, try making a list of what you need

to do to remove the pain of working so many hours, of staying away from your family or

of putting all the money into your apartment while sacrificing other aspects of your life.

You could try to change your 12 hour-a-day job for one that requires a more reasonable

8 hours, perhaps move to a cheaper apartment, allowing you the opportunity to make more

time for your family or even just give yourself more personal space.

Therefore, you need to sacrifice the pleasure of living in a beautiful house by removing

the pain that comes with it: long hours at work, less time with your family and friends.

7.

Find Happiness within yourself In our final quote from Schopenhauer for this

video, he tells us that: “It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is

impossible to find it anywhere else.”

Solitude was always one of the favorite subjects of great thinkers, including Schopenhauer.

By his pessimistic teaching, Schopenhauer points out how difficult it is to find happiness

in general and how impossible it is to derive happiness from relationships with other people,

through fame or through acquiring possessions.

Real happiness can only be found inside.

One of the most important pieces of advice Schopenhauer had for young people was for

them to start learning to find solitude as early as possible.

In Schopenhauer’s view, solitude is an inevitable reality and the sooner you acknowledge this

and the fact of being alone, the sooner you will free yourself from the fear of being

alone and this is the only way in which you can reach a lasting happiness and peace.

We all have a subconscious fear of being left alone, misunderstood and deprived of human

connections and this is the reason why we tend to cling to other people, demanding them

to make us happy.

Emotional dependency doesn’t provide happiness and Schopenhauer argues that only by being

free from dependencies, can you reach happiness.

To do so, you need to start building your inner world, to focus more on your hobbies,

on exploring your skills and talents, on meditating on life’s meaning, on what gives you peace

and real joy.

Make a list of everything you can do in solitude which brings you joy like a walk in the park,

reading a great book, listening to certain music, crafting, painting and so on and start

engaging in those activities more often.

Once you build your system of activities which bring you joy no matter the circumstances,

your emotional stability will never be shaken regardless of whatever happens in your relationships,

in your career, or in society in general.

So if you enjoyed this video, please do make sure to check out our full Philosophies for

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

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Thanks so much for watching.