Michel de Montaigne was a 16th-century French philosopher who lived during the

Renaissance - a time when society was obsessed with greatness. Every intellectual and aristocrat

was trying to act like a flawless hero, a fearless conqueror, or a brilliant genius.

Before he started writing, Montaigne was a wealthy nobleman, a respected legal magistrate,

and a highly connected political figure. But he grew disgusted by the fake,

ego-driven world of French politics and the brutal violence of his era. He realized that

the desperate need to be "great" was actually making everyone miserable.

So, he walked away from public life and retreated to the massive library on his family's estate

where he wrote thousands of pages simply documenting what it was like to be an average,

flawed guy. He wrote about his changing tastes in food, and his weird habits,

his thumbs, and his observations about his cat. He published these unpolished, highly personal

thoughts in massive volumes called Essais. He became the first thinker to make everyday human

life the most important subject of philosophy. Unlike his peers, he didn't think living an

'ordinary life' was a failure. To him, it was the most honest reality of being human.

It meant eating, sleeping, dealing with frustrating neighbors, and having opinions

that change from day to day. He realized that true happiness came from dropping the exhausting

performance of trying to be special and simply accepting this normal, unglamorous reality.

The pressure to be extraordinary is even worse today than it was in the 1500s.

We are constantly told to optimize our routines, build our brands, and chase greatness. But in this

video, we will talk about how to be happy with an ordinary life from the philosophy of Montaigne.

1. Stop Trying to Sound Smart In 16th-century France,

Montaigne noticed that the intellectuals around him wanted to look smart, so they used

heavy academic language and threw around quotes from ancient thinkers like Plato and Aristotle.

But the exact same academics who wrote massive papers on how to be a tough,

resilient Stoic would lose their tempers if their dinner was served cold. They had memorized plenty

of other people's ideas, but their day-to-day lives were a mess. Montaigne pointed out that

teaching a parrot to repeat Cicero doesn't make the bird wise. He realized that real wisdom is all

about how you handle a regular, boring Tuesday. When Montaigne looked at the uneducated farmers

working on his estate, he saw people who were wiser than the top professors in Paris. If a

farmer got sick, he just went to bed and endured it. If a crop failed, he simply figured out what

to do next. These workers didn't need heavy books of Greek philosophy to teach them how to

get through a tough day. They just lived their lives and dealt with problems as they came.

Montaigne applied this to his own work. Even though he was a wealthy nobleman,

he refused to write his essays in scholarly Latin. He chose everyday French so that average

people could understand him. He freely admitted to his readers that his memory was terrible,

his mind was scattered, and he routinely forgot the books he had just finished reading.

Today, we are not living differently than those 16th century French elite scholars.

We use corporate buzzwords in meetings to sound important. We casually bring up the

latest self-help books or complicated podcast theories at dinner parties. We constantly confuse

absorbing information with actual wisdom. So Montaigne’s advice for us would be to

start judging your intelligence by your behavior, not your bookshelf.

If you read a book on philosophy, don't just post a quote about it on

the internet. Focus on actual changes, like not snapping at your partner when

you come home tired. If your flight gets delayed or you catch a cold,

handle it with a sense of humor instead of whining to everyone around you. Real intelligence is the

quiet ability to manage your emotions and get through a normal day without losing your mind.

2. No One Will Remember You In Montaigne’s time, men went to war, conquered

cities, or spent decades writing massive books just to make sure their names survived after they

died. But when Montaigne thought about this, he didn't see it as noble. He wrote an entire essay

on the subject called On Glory, and he thought caring about your legacy was a mental illness.

First, he pointed out the maths. He looked back at history and noted that hundreds of

thousands of men died horrific deaths in ancient wars, yet history only remembers

the names of maybe two or three generals. Statistically, no matter how hard you work,

you are going to be forgotten eventually. But his deeper point was even simpler: you will

be dead. Why on earth should you care what a bunch of strangers think about you in a hundred years?

You are not exactly going to be around to hear it. Are you? Montaigne realized that

by obsessing over your legacy, you are sacrificing your current life just to manage your reputation

in a future that you will never get to see. We do the exact same thing today, just with

different tools. We obsess over curating a flawless, aesthetic life on Instagram,

treating our vacations and family gatherings like photo shoots so people we barely know will envy

us. We desperately want to be seen as the perfect parent, the traveler, or the perfect partner.

The problem with this kind of ambition is that it forces you to treat today like a hurdle you just

have to jump over to get to tomorrow. Think about what happens when you finally hit a major goal.

Maybe you get that big promotion, hit a financial target, or reach a massive subscriber count you

have always dreamt of. The satisfaction lasts for about five minutes. Then, you immediately start

stressing out over the next target. You completely lose the ability to just be satisfied with today.

So instead of making choices based on what actually gives you peace of mind,

you start making choices based on how things look to an audience. You stay at a stressful,

miserable job simply because the title sounds impressive when you tell people what you do.

Montaigne’s advice is blunt: give up on being remembered.

Stop letting ambition control your life. Now, this doesn't mean you should quit your job,

stop caring about your work, or never set goals. After all,

Montaigne himself served two terms as the mayor of his city after he wrote his philosophy.

The difference is why you are doing the work. You can still want to do a good job, earn money,

and create things. But you have to detach those goals from your ego and your public image.

You do the work to support the life you want to live right now, rather than

treating your career as some performance to impress people you will never meet.

If a new project at work sounds interesting and pays well, ya do it. But if you are offered a

stressful promotion that will eat up your weekends just so you can have a better title on LinkedIn,

you can turn it down without feeling like a failure. You can enjoy a quiet evening playing

an instrument or going for a swim without feeling guilty that you aren't monetizing those hobbies

into a side hustle. Your only real job is to enjoy the life you are experiencing right now, instead

of the life you hope people will talk about later. 3. It’s Okay to Be a Mess

We are obsessed with finding our "true self." We think that if we just read the right books or

take the right personality tests, we’ll uncover this rock-solid, unchanging version of who we

are - someone who always knows what they stand for and never loses control of their emotions.

When Montaigne quit his job and locked himself in his library tower, his main goal was to meet

this "true self." He dropped all his public roles - the judge, the politician, the wealthy

landowner - just to see what was left underneath. He expected to find a wise, stable philosopher.

Instead, he found a complete and total mess. When he actually paid attention to his own mind,

he noticed it was all over the place. His thoughts constantly contradicted each other. His mood

swung wildly based on simple things like the weather, his dinner, or just how well he slept.

One minute he was brave and focused; the next, he was paranoid and distracted. He felt less

like a single person and more like a crowd of different people all with wildly different

personalities taking turns driving his brain. He realized that people aren’t set in stone.

We like to think we have one fixed personality, but Montaigne figured out that this is a myth.

Who you are changes entirely depending on the situation. You aren't the same person

on a relaxing Sunday morning as you are on a stressful, hungry Tuesday night. How you act

with your best friend is completely different from how you act when arguing with customer

services or delivering youtube scripts.. The goals you cared about five years ago might mean nothing

to you today. Even your strongest opinions can flip just from learning a new fact or having a

random chat at lunch. Basically, there is no permanent "you." You just adapt and react to

whatever moment you are living in right now. Today, we are told that successful people are

perfectly consistent. You are pressured to act like a predictable, highly optimized robot. The

self-help industry makes this worse by telling you that if you lose motivation or change your mind,

you are broken and need to "fix" your mindset. Because of this pressure, we waste a massive

amount of energy policing our own thoughts. We wear a heavy mask to convince our coworkers,

our friends, and even ourselves that we have it all figured out. And it

is an exhausting, full-time performance. Montaigne’s advice is that you don't have

to treat normal, everyday human inconsistency like a disease anymore. You can look at your

own hypocrisy, your petty jealousies, and your sudden mood swings without feeling ashamed.

If you get a ton of work done on Monday but are completely useless on Tuesday, you aren't broken.

You are normal. If you are furious about something in the morning but find it funny by the afternoon,

that isn't a character flaw. That is just the normal, messy reality of having a human brain.

When you accept your own internal chaos, you stop holding yourself to impossible, robotic

standards. And the best part is, you stop judging everyone else so harshly. You realize that behind

the nice clothes and confident public faces, everyone else is living the exact same messy,

ordinary life that you are. 4. Accept Your Animal Nature

Plato, in his Theory of Forms, taught that the physical world we live in is basically a flawed,

temporary copy of a perfect, invisible reality. Think about a chair. Any physical chair you build

in the real world is going to be imperfect. It might have a wobbly leg, the wood will scratch,

and one day it will break down completely. Because that physical chair is constantly decaying,

Plato argued that it isn't the "real" truth. He believed the absolute truth - the flawless,

unchanging concept of a perfect chair - only exists in a higher, invisible dimension.

He viewed the human body the exact same way. Just like that wooden chair, your physical body

is flawed. It gets sick, it ages, and eventually, it breaks down and dies. Because of this, Plato

saw the human body as a trap holding the pure soul hostage. He believed that physical needs - getting

hungry, feeling tired, or being in pain - were heavy weights dragging your mind down into this

messy reality and away from those perfect truths. Therefore, he argued that a true philosopher

should mentally detach from their physical body as much as possible. For centuries, academics

and religious leaders copied this mindset. They convinced everyone that the only way to achieve

a truly enlightened or extraordinary life was to suppress, ignore, and conquer your physical self.

Montaigne thought this Platonic idea was completely ridiculous. He didn't believe

in some invisible dimension of perfect truths; to him, this physical, messy world is the only

one we actually get to experience. He watched the scholars around him and realized that no

matter how brilliant or spiritually elevated someone claimed to be, they still had to eat,

sleep, and go to the toilet just like everyone else. As he famously and so eloquently wrote,

"Upon the highest throne in the world, we are seated, still, upon our arses."

Montaigne didn’t think we should be embarrassed by our biology. Instead, he leaned into it.

He wrote openly about his daily physical reality - detailing his digestion, his bowel movements,

and exactly how he chewed his food. Later in life, he developed incredibly painful kidney

stones. But instead of cursing his body, or pretending he wasn't in agony just to

maintain the image of a tough philosopher, he simply accepted it. He recognized that pain and

illness are just normal parts of being an animal, and spending your life pretending you aren’t one

is a guaranteed recipe for misery. Today, we are constantly at war with

our own bodies. We treat sleep like it's a character flaw and proudly brag about

pulling all-nighters for work. We buy into extreme diets and intense biohacking trends,

desperately trying to force our bodies to run like perfectly optimized machines that never

break down. We spend fortunes on cosmetic procedures simply because we are terrified

of looking like mammals that naturally age. Montaigne’s advice? Stop fighting your biology.

You are an animal, and that is perfectly fine. Start treating your physical limits with basic

respect instead of viewing them as problems to be solved. When you are exhausted after a long day,

don't feel guilty about sitting on the couch and doing absolutely nothing. When you eat a

good meal, just enjoy the taste without stressing over the exact calorie count. If your joints ache

in the morning or you notice a new gray hair, accept that being human means getting tired,

getting sick, and going grey. The moment you stop trying to transcend your physical body,

you can finally just be happy with the ordinary experience of being alive.

5. Embrace the Ordinary Montaigne spent a lot of time hanging around the

French royal court. While there, he watched grown men backstab their friends, and spend decades

scheming. And for what? Just to get a fancy title, a small promotion, or a quick nod from the king.

Outside the palace, ambitious politicians and generals were dragging France through

a brutal religious civil war between Catholics and Protestants where they were slaughtering each

other just to protect their egos, grab a little more land, and prove that God was on their side.

When Montaigne looked at the most powerful people of his time - and even historical conquerors like

Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great - he realized they were all miserable. All of them.

The people at the very top were paranoid, exhausted, and never actually enjoyed the

lives they fought so hard to build. Society’s whole idea of "greatness" was just a trap.

To Montaigne, the real test of character wasn't found on a chaotic battlefield or in

the halls of power, but in the quiet, unglamorous moments of normal life.

He argued that storming a castle in the middle of a war is way easier than just living peacefully

with your own family. When you think about the psychology behind it, it does make perfect sense.

When you are fighting in a battle, running a major company, or doing something very public,

the situation does most of the heavy lifting for you. Your adrenaline is pumping. The goal is

obvious. Most importantly, you have an audience. The pressure of people watching forces you to

step up, act brave, and play the part of a leader. But what happens on a random Tuesday? What happens

then? When there is no audience cheering for you when you are trying to keep the peace at home,

balancing different personalities, or making sure a bedridden relative is cared for with

dignity. You don't get an adrenaline rush calculating a stressful mortgage,

fighting an overcharged bank fee, or dealing with the endless headaches of household chores.

Montaigne realized that doing the right thing in these quiet, frustrating moments takes far

more discipline than acting heroic in public. It is incredibly hard to be a patient, emotionally

stable person day after day when nobody is watching and nothing exciting is happening.

Today, we often treat family duties and basic routines like annoying roadblocks,

convinced that our "real" lives will finally begin once we hit a certain bank balance or

business milestone. But by viewing a quiet life as just a waiting room for something better,

we rush through conversations, stress over the future, and entirely miss what is right

in front of us. Montaigne’s advice is simple: ordinary moments aren't distractions from a great

life - they are the great life. If you can handle everyday frustrations with dignity and find peace

on a completely normal day, you have figured out something most kings and billionaires never do.

You don't need to conquer the world. Mastering the ordinary is the highest possible achievement.

6. Be Present Montaigne noticed that human beings

have a terrible habit of living anywhere but in the present moment. We sit at the dinner table,

but our minds are fighting an argument that might happen tomorrow. We go out for a walk,

but our brains are stressing out about money we spent yesterday. He realized

that we miss our own lives because our minds are always somewhere else.

He wrote a beautifully simple rule for himself to fix this: "When I dance, I dance; when I sleep,

I sleep." He explained that when he went for a walk alone in his orchard,

his mind would inevitably start drifting toward a stressful political debate or a business problem

and when that happened, he would actively pull his attention back to the physical reality around

him - the dirt on the path, the shade of the trees, and the feeling of his own footsteps.

He refused to let his thoughts hijack his reality. As we mentioned earlier, later in life,

he suffered from excruciating kidney stones, and he used the pain as an opportunity to practice

this exact same presence. Instead of letting the chronic illness ruin his mood or desperately

wishing he was somewhere else, he learned to coexist with it. He realized that even in moments

of deep physical discomfort, you are still experiencing the profound act of being alive.

Montaigne’s advice is that your actual life is happening right now, in the middle of all the

ordinary, daily routines. If you are washing the dishes, don't use that time to plan out your week;

just feel the warm water and the soap. If you’re out clubbing with your mates,

don't spend the whole time mentally rehearsing an argument for work; just feel the rhythm and

the connection. If you are drinking a cup of coffee, turn off the podcast and just taste

the coffee. The ultimate joy of an ordinary life is simply the ability to exist in the

room you are currently in, giving your absolute full attention to the life you already have.

And that’s our video! So what did you think? Which of Montaigne's lessons hit closest to home for you

today? Are you giving yourself permission to live an ordinary, peaceful life? Or are

you all-too-often finding yourself performing for an audience instead of just enjoying the moment?

As always I’ve been Dan, you’ve been awesome and if you enjoyed what you

saw or found it helpful at all, why not check out our full philosophies for life

playlist? And of course or more videos to help you find success and happiness using

beautiful philosophical wisdom, don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much for watching.