How To Think Like A Philosopher
When you start to think critically, you start to think like a philosopher.
Philosophers don’t memorize quotes. They build a mental toolkit to dismantle reality and rebuild it.
Think differently. Think critically about everything.
A philosopher isn’t a person who reads ancient texts and quotes dead people. That’s not philosophy. That’s academic.
A philosopher is someone who refuses to accept inherited answers. They question. They ask why. They dig. They want to know the truth, not the comfortable lie.
A philosopher is dangerous. Not with violence. With clarity.
If you value your own reason above all else, no external power can buy you, intimidate you, or control you.
Steve Jobs dropped out of Reed College after one semester. Not because he couldn’t do it. He questioned if it made sense.
Why spend money on something he was unsure about? Why follow the path everyone else is on?
He then spent the next few years auditing classes he actually cared about:
Calligraphy
Zen Buddhism
Philosophy
From time to time, he worked odd jobs, traveled, questioned everything.
Years later, he said: “If I had never dropped out, I would have never discovered typography. Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country... I learned about serif and sans-serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.”
Importantly, he became a philosopher. He questioned what a computer should be. What design meant. Every inherited assumption about technology.
That’s what thinking like a philosopher does. It doesn’t give you immediate answers. It gives you the ability to ask the right questions.
What a Philosopher Is NOT
A philosopher isn’t someone who:
Accepts what they’re told without examination
Follows the inherited path just because it’s familiar
Stops asking “why”
Thinks they’ve arrived at all the answers
A philosopher constantly questions their own assumptions.
The Oracle of Delphi declared Socrates the wisest man in Athens. Socrates was confused. He felt he knew nothing.
So he went around questioning the “experts” politicians, poets, craftsmen, the people everyone assumed were wise.
What he found: these experts thought they knew everything. But when Socrates asked them deep questions, their logic fell apart. They couldn’t hold their answers together.
Socrates realized he was the wisest not because he knew more, but because he was the only one who knew that he knew nothing.
Diogenes: The Radical Philosopher
Diogenes lived in a ceramic tub in the marketplace. He owned nothing but a cloak and a cup, which he threw away after seeing a child drink water from their bare hands.
When Alexander the Great—the most powerful man in the world—came to visit and asked if he could do anything for Diogenes, the philosopher looked up and said:
“Yes. Stand a little out of my sun.”
That’s it. The most powerful man alive was offering anything, and Diogenes wanted him to move.
Philosophy grants you internal freedom that external power cannot touch.
You’re reading this because you questioned something. You looked at your life and asked: Is this actually what I want?
You realized that comfort, routine, and automation had turned your thinking off.
That’s when the shift happened. You started to ask why. You started to question everything. Your whole operating system changed.
When you become a philosopher, you stop accepting the world as it’s given to you.
You start asking:
Why is it this way?
Could it be different?
Am I complicit in keeping it this way?
What truth am I avoiding?
These questions will change your life.
II. CRITICAL THINKING
Critical thinking is becoming a detective of your own brain. It’s manual mode instead of autopilot.
Most of the time, we’re on autopilot. We read a headline. We hear a rumor. We see a video. We believe it because it sounds cool, or we never questioned it.
Critical thinking is hitting pause and asking: “What is that actually? Is it actually true, or does it just feel true?”
Imagine a filter in your head. When something comes at you advice, news, an idea you run it through three questions:
Who said this? Are they an expert, or are they just trying to sell me something?
Where is the proof? Did they show me facts, or just a really cool-looking graph?
What are they not telling me? Is there another side to this story that makes them look bad?
Regular Thinking vs Critical Thinking
Regular thinking: “The best way to become happy is getting a job, going to school, and following the same path as everyone else.”
Critical thinking: “Why is it that everyone follows the same script? Why does school work this way? Are my parents’ advice actually true? Let me actually think about this. What actually creates happiness?”
Regular thinking: “Oh, I love consuming content. It makes me feel great in the moment. It helps me escape my problems.”
Critical thinking: “Why did I spend so many hours consuming TikToks and short-form videos? Is it worth my time? Am I being productive? Is this actually yielding the goals I want to achieve? Or am I just running from something?”
Regular thinking: “This food tastes really good and makes me feel good in the moment.”
Critical thinking: “What actually gives me energy? What makes me feel satiated, not just full? Why am I always fed pizza and chicken sandwiches from fast food? Why does my skin break out? Maybe it’s because of what I eat. Why do other people have more muscle? Maybe because of their protein intake.”
Don’t believe everything you think, hear, or are given. Question it first.
This week, pick one piece of mainstream advice you’ve always accepted. Run it through the three filter questions. What do you actually discover?
III. BECOME A SKEPTIC
Skepticism is testing everything against reality before you believe it. It’s not cynicism it’s intellectual honesty.
Without skepticism, you accept whatever’s convenient. Skepticism is your defense against lies and against inheriting false belief systems.
I’m becoming a skeptic. Things I questioned turned out not to be true.
The school system
The way to become successful
The way to create ideas
The way to go about life
None of it was true.
I’m skeptical about:
The school system: It’s a waste of time if you want to actually become successful
What doctors say: They give you drugs instead of telling you to fix your diet, get sunlight, go for walks
Fluoride in toothpaste: Not the best for your brain
The narrative that you need formal education to succeed. This one’s the biggest lie
I’m very skeptical about inherited operating systems. Become a skeptic. Become a curious person. Be skeptical about the norm you’ve been told all your life.
Skepticism in Action
Example 1: Parents’ Advice
You’re given advice: “Work hard, get a job, follow the path I followed.”
But is what you’re saying actually true? Is the path you’re telling me to go down actually the most prolific, or are you just giving me advice from past beliefs that you’ve inherited from your parents?
Example 2: The Dopamine Trap
You crave quick-hit dopamine foods, endless scrolling, constant stimulation.
But why am I craving these things? Why has nobody guided me toward the right direction? Maybe everyone just wants to give in to mediocrity.
Maybe that’s exactly why I need to dial in my diet and eat healthy whole foods.
Example 3: Everything You’re Told
You consume content online, read advice, hear recommendations.
But I can’t believe everything I’m told, even from credible sources. I have to find research, facts, informed information, data, stories.
See if it’s repeatable. See if it actually works with other people. Then determine whether it’s something worth imitating or not.
You must not believe everything you’re told. You must question it. You must test it against reality first.
Take one piece of mainstream advice you’ve always accepted. Investigate it deeply. Is it actually true, or just convenient?
IV. JOURNALING
Journaling is externalizing what’s in your head so you can think clearly.
Your brain can only process so much. When you have unsolved problems, unprocessed emotions, and inherited thoughts all competing for space, you’re overwhelmed.
You can’t sleep. You can’t focus. You can’t move forward.
Journaling gives you space to think.
When you journal, you have to reflect on your actions. You look at cause and effect. You write it down. You read aloud what you’ve said.
And sometimes, you don’t even agree with yourself.
This is where the magic happens. You realize: these thoughts aren’t necessarily mine. They’re just thoughts passing through. And if I don’t agree with them, I can change them.
Paper is more patient than people.
You dump everything onto the page because you need to think better, do better, create better, live better.
When you can’t process internally, you can’t move forward. So you externalize. You get it out. And suddenly, your mind has room.
Give Yourself Advice
Here’s something that works: give yourself advice like you’d give a friend.
It’s easy to give your friend advice if you’re not overthinking it. Same thing with yourself:
Pretend you’re your friend going through the same thing. Give them advice. That advice you give them is actually advice for you.
Autonomy Requires a Clear Mind
Autonomy means “self-law.”
Autos = self. Nomos = law. You give yourself your own law.
But you can’t do that if your mental headquarters is cluttered with other people’s voices, scripts, and unprocessed loops.
You have to clear it. You have to dump it onto paper.
All Philosophers Do This. All Successful People Do This.
All the Stoics journaled. Marcus Aurelius. Seneca. They wrote constantly not for publication, but for clarity.
All incredibly successful people do journaling. It’s time-tested. It’s a sound practice.
It creates freedom. It allows you to think better, do better, create better, live better, and be a better person overall.
Before you run your mouth or say something negative, take a moment. Process it. Write it down. The Stoics would count their ABCs, or write, or sit with it. By the end, they felt better.
This week, journal for 15 minutes. Don’t aim for perfection. Just dump.
Write what’s in your head. What are the unsolved problems? Get them out.
Then read what you wrote. Do you agree with it? If not, what would you change?
V. FIRST PRINCIPLES
First principles is breaking an idea down to its irreducible parts and rebuilding from there.
When you accept complexity, you accept someone else’s framework. First principles lets you see what’s actually necessary.
I broke down my writing process. I was trying to prompt AI to do all these fantastic things, but I asked myself: “What’s wrong with my process? What are the gaps?”
I realized I had to adopt beginner’s mind. So I went back and asked:
What is a newsletter? It’s a cohesive message of ideas that persuades a reader.
How does that look? Words, paragraphs.
What is a paragraph? Sentences that make sense.
What is a word? The basic unit.
I had to create an outline. Do great research. Answer questions. Organize thoughts. Brain dump. Bring it together coherently.
I’ve been overcomplicating the process way too much.
By questioning my process and going back to fundamentals, it all clicked. You don’t need an amazing AI prompt. You just got to go back to the fundamentals and foundations.
When filmmakers at Pixar come to John Lasseter with a story idea, he doesn’t ask “Is this good?” He stops them and says:
“Go do your research. Go back to first principles.”
Pixar doesn’t reason by analogy. They don’t say “Animation studios make movies, so we should follow that formula.” Instead, they ask:
What is the core emotional truth? What are the fundamental building blocks of a story that actually moves people?
Because of this first-principles approach, they refuse derivative stories.
Even when they could copy a successful formula from another studio, they break everything down to bedrock and rebuild. That’s why Pixar films feel original.
Most people skip the research phase. Most animators would copy the successful template and iterate slightly. Pixar won’t. They dig deeper. They ask harder questions. They go back to the raw materials—character, emotion, truth—and build up from there.
That’s first principles thinking in practice: you break the easy shortcuts, go back to what’s actually true, and rebuild.
That’s the real difference.
From Naval: “Build from ground up, not by analogy or pattern-copying.”
From Cal Newport: “When people in creative fields merely cut up and reassemble what has come before, it gives the illusion of creativity, but it is craft without art.”
Pick one thing you do that feels complicated. Break it down to basics. What are you actually doing here?
VI. THE SOCRATIC METHOD
The Socratic method is asking questions until you find the contradictions in your own thinking.
Most people defend their beliefs. The Socratic method dissolves them. You find what’s actually true.
I question my own beliefs, my thoughts, my negativity, my happiness, my knowledge.
I’ve questioned: What is truth? What makes a person successful?
I asked myself why three times to get to the root of a problem. I question everything in different categories of life:
Wealth
Health and success
Personal development
Self-help advice
My own thoughts
My own beliefs
My journaling process
The way I go about things
You just gotta ask why, why, why, why.
What ended up happening was I found out that how someone became successful is by:
Owning a piece of equity or business
Being highly leveraged
Creating something that solves a problem
I learned so much by questioning.
The Oracle of Delphi declared Socrates the wisest man in Athens. Socrates was confused. He felt he knew nothing.
So he went around questioning the “experts”—politicians, poets, craftsmen—the people everyone assumed were wise.
What he discovered: these experts thought they knew everything about their subject. But when Socrates asked them questions—deep, probing questions—their logic fell apart.
Socrates realized: he was the wisest not because he knew more, but because he was the only one who knew that he knew nothing.
His method was simple:
Ask questions. Keep asking. Don’t accept the first answer. Ask what it means. Ask the implications. Ask if it contradicts something else they said. Keep going until the person either discovers the truth for themselves or realizes their thinking is incomplete.
That’s the Socratic Method: Not a lecture. Not you proving someone wrong. Just questions—relentless, honest questions—that force people to think.
From Leo Gura: “The Socratic method all it is is just asking questions... you can go down this chain of reasoning by asking question after question after question, posing hypothetical scenarios.”
Take one belief you have. Ask yourself “Why?” three times. See where you end up.
VII. THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS
A thought experiment is testing an idea in your head before you do it in real life.
You can fail in your head for free. In real life, failure costs time and money.
Have I ever tested an idea in my head before doing it? Yeah.
Knowing what the right action is and knowing the plan is great, so your action yields great results. You can be productive in the wrong direction. You’ve got to make sure you’re going in the right direction.
It’s like having a destination for your road trip. You’ve got to know where you’re heading and make sure you’re going the right path. That way, when you do, your doing is in the right category and direction.
You can’t always test everything in your head. You always got to do, learn from that, and test and iterate.
It comes back to the law of reps you got to do 100 reps of something, learn from those mistakes, iterate and learn more.
Planning and thinking is just mental masturbation until you actually start doing.
You learn way more by doing because learning is doing.
Imagine a runaway trolley heading toward five people on the track. You’re standing by a lever.
Pull it, and the trolley switches to a different track where only one person will die.
Do you pull the lever?
Most people say yes. Five lives are worth more than one. Simple math.
But Philippa Foot, the philosopher who created this thought experiment in 1967, changed the scenario slightly:
Now you’re on a footbridge above the tracks. You can see the same five people heading toward the trolley. But this time, there’s a large man standing next to you.
If you push him off the bridge, his body will stop the trolley. One dies, five are saved.
Same outcome. Same math. Different answer.
Most people won’t push the man.
Why? The thought experiment forces you to face a contradiction in your own thinking.
It’s not about the numbers. It’s about something deeper, the difference between allowing harm and causing harm. Between action and inaction.
By thinking through these scenarios in your head before they’re real, you discover what you actually believe, not what you think you believe.
Before you do something big this week, think through three possible outcomes. What would happen if it goes well? If it goes bad?
VIII. WRITE ESSAYS TO THINK
Writing essays is externalizing your thinking so you can see it and refine it.
Thinking in your head is fuzzy. Writing makes it precise. You can’t fool yourself on paper.
Writing essays helps organize my thinking, my speaking, my cohesiveness, my flow, my projects. It’s my focus. It’s my deep work.
Writing essays is just a meta-skill. It makes you multi-dimensionally skilled.
By writing essays, I’m learning:
How to outline
How to research
Copywriting
Persuasion
Communication
Sales
Marketing
Content
It’s building trust with my audience. It’s building a content ecosystem because my essays become my YouTube scripts, my short-form content becomes long-form threads.
It’s thinking on paper. Organizing coherently. Making it flow nicely. Editing. All these skills combined into one.
Ryan Holiday has written 10+ books. Not through inspiration. Through discipline.
He wakes up, showers, gets dressed as though he’s going to a job. Then he goes to his desk.
He writes every single morning from about 8am to 11am or 12pm. Every single day. Not when inspiration strikes. As work.
Before he writes a single word of the book, he uses 4x6 notecards. He collects ideas by theme. He fills boxes with these cards—organized, systematized.
When he starts research, he knows exactly what he’s looking for because his structure is already clear.
He calls this his “commonplace book”—a collection of ideas, quotes, observations. As he reads, he writes. The writing itself becomes the thinking.
He’s said: “The first draft of everything is shit.”
His point: don’t wait for perfection. Write badly. Then rewrite. Then rewrite again. The act of writing is how you think.
Most people think first, then write. Ryan writes to think. The two are inseparable.
Craig Perry: “Writing is how I think. Writing is how I learn.”
From Montaigne (via Ryan Holiday): “I write as though I am speaking to another person... the act of his thoughts flowing from his brain, down his arm, through his pen, and onto the page was a process by which much reflection was transcribed.”
Write one essay this week about something you’re confused about. Don’t edit. Just think on paper for 30 minutes.
IX. PHILOSOPHICAL DIALOGUE
Philosophical dialogue is the practice of thinking through dialogue—debating, questioning, arguing, articulating ideas with another person.
You can’t fool a dialogue partner. They expose your gaps. That’s where learning accelerates.
Memorizing information doesn’t actually make you know. You have to understand it.
The University of Oxford does this better. They take students, put them in tutoring groups, and question them. They debate. They argue. They question everything the student knows about the topic.
Students have to defend it. Articulate it. That’s the curriculum.
You don’t learn from re-reading. You learn from:
Articulation — explaining it
Defense — arguing for it
Questioning — challenging it
Debate — testing it against someone else’s thinking
Active recall — remembering without looking
Reading something, then trying to explain what you’ve learned without looking at it, then debating it and questioning it — that forms better connections than anything else.
That’s how learning works. That’s what dialogue is. Having conversations with smart people or with yourself (through writing) sharpens your thinking.
The Oxford Model
The University of Oxford’s tutorial system isn’t about transferring information from professor to student. It’s about dialogue.
A student prepares an essay. Meets with a tutor. The tutor questions it. Challenges it. The student must defend their position, articulate it, and refine it in real-time.
This isn’t learning about philosophy. It’s learning through philosophy—through the practice of thinking with another mind.
Why Dialogue Works
When you explain something to someone, you have to think harder. You can’t fake understanding.
If you don’t truly grasp something, the other person asking questions will expose it immediately. That feedback loop—the immediate awareness of gaps—is what drives learning.
The Roediger & Karpicke (2006) landmark study found:
Students who practiced retrieving information retained 80% of material after one week, compared to only 34% for those who simply re-read.
That’s a 50-80% improvement in retention.
Why? Because retrieval practice doesn’t just strengthen a memory. It reshapes your entire neural representation of that information.
When you explain a concept to someone else, you’re engaging in elaboration connecting new information to what you already know, adding detail, and creating relationships.
This isn’t passive. It’s generative.
Students who explain concepts to others show greater activation in brain networks associated with attention, working memory, and metacognitive processing.
More importantly, the explain-to-others group outperformed the restudy group on transfer tests, meaning they could apply what they learned to new situations.
From Leo: “Think for yourself, not by yourself.”
Have a real conversation this week about something you’re learning. Try to explain it to someone without notes. Notice what gaps appear.
X. ADOPT THE SCIENTIST FRAME
A scientist doesn’t guess. A scientist hypothesizes, runs an experiment, looks at the data, and iterates.
That’s it. That’s the mindset.
Theory + Practice = Engineering Your Life
A philosopher provides logic and reasoning. Theory. Why something should work.
A scientist provides data and evidence. Practice. Does it actually work?
When you combine them, you stop guessing. You stop hoping.
You start to live in a way that you’re engineering your life.
You move from thinking to doing in the correct direction.
Uncertainty Is Your Friend
Most people run from uncertainty. They want to know the answer before they act. They’re paralyzed by the possibility of being wrong.
A scientist is comfortable with uncertainty. They don’t avoid it. They design for it.
They test. They experiment. They hypothesize. They test it again. It could go right. It could go wrong. Either way, they’re learning.
Failures Are Data
Every trial. Every experiment. Every thing you try ends up being an experiment that could be improved.
You’re not failing. You’re collecting data.
When you realize that, everything changes. Failures become positive actions that can be bettered.
Because all of it is just data.
When you test. When you try. When you attempt. It’s just the first step toward the right direction.
You don’t need to be perfect. You don’t need to have it all figured out. You just need to run the experiment and look at what happens.
100 reps. 100 experiments. That’s how you learn. Not from thinking about it. From doing it, failing, and adjusting.
Thought without action is just mental masturbation.
A philosopher asks questions. A scientist answers them through experimentation.
A philosopher says “What if?” A scientist says “Let’s find out.”
When you adopt the scientist frame, you become both. You think deeply. You question everything. And then you test it against reality.
This week, pick one area of your life where you’re uncertain. Create a simple hypothesis: “If I do X, then Y will happen.”
Run the experiment for one week. Look at the data. What actually happened? Adjust. Try again.
XI. THE FOUR CARDINAL VIRTUES
The four cardinal virtues are Courage, Justice, Temperance, and Wisdom. They’re the foundation of living a philosophical life.
Virtues aren’t abstract. They’re practiced. Every day you choose them.
A philosopher cultivates these virtues:
Courage — The ability to face fear and act anyway. Not recklessness. The clear-eyed choice to do what’s right even when it’s uncomfortable.
Justice — Treating others fairly and living by your principles. Not just following rules, but understanding what’s actually right and doing it.
Temperance — Discipline and balance in all things. Not deprivation. The wisdom to know what serves you and what doesn’t.
Wisdom — Knowing what matters and acting on that knowledge. Not intelligence. The ability to see what’s true and live accordingly.
These aren’t learned in a book. They’re learned by practice.
Every single day you choose to be courageous, or you choose to hide. You choose to treat people fairly, or you don’t. You choose discipline, or you don’t. You choose to ask hard questions, or you accept easy answers.
The Stoic philosophers didn’t teach virtue as a concept. They lived it. They modeled it. They got tested by it.
And when they failed—as everyone does—they didn’t hide from it. They examined it. They asked why. They got better.
If you want to understand these virtues at a deeper level, Ryan Holiday wrote an entire book series on each one.
His books on Courage, Temperance, Justice, and Wisdom aren’t academic. They’re practical. He shows you how philosophers lived these virtues, and how you can practice them today.
Read those if you want real depth.
From Marcus Aurelius: “You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
This week, pick one virtue and practice it deliberately. Not perfectly. Just deliberately. Notice what happens when you do.
XII. ACTION > THEORY
Philosophy without action is mental masturbation.
Naval said it: “The true test of intelligence is the ability to get what you want.”
You can think perfectly and starve. You can question everything and have zero freedom. The smartest people are often broke.
Why? Because intelligence without action is just expensive thinking.
A lawyer makes $300k. She thinks on autopilot. Makes great money on paper. She has no time. No control. No freedom.
Someone making $5k/month thinking like a philosopher builds what they love. Controls their time. Has freedom. More rich.
Freedom isn’t income.
Freedom is:
What you want
The ability to get it
Time to enjoy it
Philosophy teaches you to WANT the right things. Action teaches you to GET them.
The Real Test
IQ doesn’t predict success. Grades don’t predict wealth. Thinking doesn’t predict anything.
Doing does.
100 reps beats 1 perfect thought. Every time.
Naval Ravikant didn’t build his philosophy through contemplation. He built it through action, failure, and iteration. Through doing.
He questioned everything, but he also shipped. He failed publicly. He learned obsessively. He’s not the smartest person ever. He’s the person who did the most reps and learned from each one.
This week: Don’t think about what you should do. Do something small. Get feedback. Adjust. Do again.
That’s the real test of intelligence.
XIII. I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING
But won’t questioning everything paralyze me?
Only if you stop at thinking. Question, then act. The scientist experiments. They don’t just theorize. You do the same.
What if I question myself and realize I’m wrong about everything?
Good. That means you’re learning. You’re not trying to be right. You’re trying to find what’s true. Those are different.
Isn’t philosophy a luxury I can’t afford?
No. Philosophy is the cheapest self-education there is. It costs zero dollars. It only costs attention.
What if everyone around me thinks I’m weird for thinking differently?
Some will. Most won’t care. And the ones who do? They’re not your people. A philosopher finds their tribe, not their tribe.
Won’t this make me unhappy?
Maybe, short-term. You’ll see things you can’t unsee. But long-term? You’ll be happier because you’re living YOUR life, not the one someone else wrote for you.
How do I know if I’m thinking like a philosopher or just being arrogant?
Ask others. Are you curious about their perspective? Or are you waiting for them to agree?
Philosophers are curious. Arrogant people are certain.
Can I use AI to think for me?
AI is a thinking partner. Like Socrates with a student. The student has to ask the questions. AI helps clarify. You still have to think.
XIV. EPISTEMOLOGY (WHAT IS TRUTH?)
Epistemology is the study of knowledge itself. How do you know what you know? What counts as true?
A skeptic asks: “Is this true?”
An epistemologist asks: “How would I even know if it’s true? What’s my standard for truth?”
These are different.
You need three standards:
Empirical — Can I test it? Does it work? (Scientist’s standard)
Logical — Is it consistent? Does it contradict itself? (Philosopher’s standard)
Pragmatic — Does it help me get what I want? (Your standard)
You need all three.
A belief can be logically sound but empirically false. It can work for you but be harmful to others.
Question Everything I’m Saying
Read this newsletter and ask: “How does Anthony KNOW this is true?”
Because I said it? That’s not knowledge. That’s faith.
Because Socrates said it? Still not knowledge. That’s authority.
Because it makes sense? Maybe. But sense-making ≠ truth.
The real test:
Does it work when you apply it? Do you get what you want? Do you understand yourself better?
Then it’s true for you. Everything else, keep questioning.
XV. DIOGENES - THE RADICAL PHILOSOPHER
Diogenes the Cynic lived in a ceramic tub in the marketplace.
He owned nothing but a cloak and a cup, which he threw away after seeing a child drink water from their bare hands.
When Alexander the Great, the most powerful man in the world, came to visit and asked if he could do anything for Diogenes, the philosopher looked up and said:
“Yes. Stand a little out of my sun.”
That’s it. The most powerful man in the world offering anything, and Diogenes wanted him to move.
Philosophy grants you internal freedom that external power cannot touch.
If you value your own reason above all else, you cannot be bought or intimidated. You cannot be controlled.
Diogenes didn’t need permission. Didn’t need approval. Didn’t need status. He didn’t need anything from anyone.
He had what you’ve been learning to build: the ability to think for yourself.
When you become a philosopher, you stop accepting the world as it’s given to you. You become dangerous—not with violence, but with clarity.
You start asking:
Why is it this way? Could it be different? Am I complicit in keeping it this way? What truth am I avoiding?
You start building a mental toolkit to dismantle reality. To question inherited beliefs. To test ideas against truth. To dialogue instead of absorb. To act instead of just think.
These questions will change your life. Not because they give you answers. But because they give you the ability to find them yourself.
And that’s the difference between a philosopher and everyone else.
XVI. UNIVERSAL QUESTIONS (USE THIS CHECKLIST)
These questions apply to any area of your life. Use them weekly.
About Your Beliefs:
Did I choose this belief, or did I inherit it?
If I questioned it deeply, would I still believe it?
What would change my mind about this?
About Your Decisions:
Am I deciding this, or am I following a script?
What would a person I respect do here?
If I make the “wrong” choice, can I survive it?
About Your Life:
Am I building freedom or collecting things?
Do I have time to enjoy what I’m working for?
Am I moving toward what I want or away from what I fear?
About This Newsletter:
What’s Anthony saying that’s true for me?
What’s Anthony saying that’s false for me?
What would I do differently if I actually believed this?
If you found this newsletter to be extremely helpful, feel free to share this, give it a like, and comment on what was the most impactful thing from this newsletter. Thanks for tuning in.
Talk soon.
- Anthony
Read up on some of my latest newsletters here:
How to Ruin Your Life in 8 Easy Steps (the antidote to mediocrity)
Mediocre: of only moderate quality; not very good.
33 Lessons That Changed How I Think About Creativity
You have never had an original thought in your life. Neither have I. Neither has anyone.
I need to process this in pieces so I can give each thought space to sit. I especially liked the anecdote about Diogenes. It reminded me of a conversation where my dad shared it for the first time. I also appreciated the reminder to journal. I do find it helps clarify thought.
Hey Anthony, You are spot on with the dopamine trap. mediocrity is ruling the roost. great template to follow to think like a philosopher !