Stage 1: Self-Discovery | Life Philosophy

Somewhere beneath your habits, preferences, and daily routines sits a set of beliefs about how life works. These beliefs are deeper than your values. Your life philosophy tells you what seems to be true about the nature of effort, the reliability of people, the fairness of the world, the meaning of suffering, what happens when you try your hardest and still fail, etc.

Most people never articulate their philosophy, but we all live by one. Some of it was handed down by parents, or came from religion or culture, but some of it formed in response to our early experiences that made us realise something. And some of it we may have even built ourselves, one hard lesson at a time.

The interesting thing is that when we leave our life philosophy unexamined, we allow it to make decisions for us. For example, if deep down you believe that the world is fundamentally unfair, you'll make different choices than someone who believes effort is reliably rewarded. Neither is right nor wrong; both of them are just another part of the story that you may hold true and use to shape your reality (very similar to limiting beliefs).

As Socrates has said: "The unexamined life is not worth living."

This section asks you to bring your internal life philosophy into the light so you can examine it. This will help you decide which parts you want to keep and which parts to get rid of. Then you can build a set of operating principles for yourself, which you can use when things get a little messy in your life.

The philosophy: how you see the world

What philosophy means here

We're not talking about academic philosophy (although it draws from some of the same questions). We are talking about your personal theory of how life works. Everyone has one, and it's made up of your answers to questions like:

• Is the world mostly fair, or mostly random?

• Does hard work reliably lead to success, or is luck the bigger factor?

• Are people fundamentally good, fundamentally selfish, or something else?

• Does suffering have purpose, or is it just suffering?

• Is change something to seek or something to survive?

• Is there a meaning in life, or is the universe indifferent?

Your answers to these questions are not right or wrong. They simply are, and they influence the risks you take, the people you trust, the losses you grieve, and the opportunities you pursue in your life.

Three lenses from research

Locus of control

Julian Rotter's concept of locus of control describes whether you believe outcomes in your life are primarily determined by your own actions (internal locus) or by external forces like luck, fate, or other people (external locus).

People with a strong internal locus of control tend to take more initiative, persist longer in the face of difficulty, and take greater responsibility for outcomes. People with a strong external locus, on the other hand, tend to feel more helpless in the face of adversity and more dependent on circumstances.

Neither extreme is accurate. Life involves both agency and luck. But knowing where you naturally sit on this spectrum helps you understand your default relationship with effort and outcome. If you lean heavily on external, you might be underestimating your own power. If you lean heavily on internal, you might be carrying guilt for things that were never in your control.

Explanatory style

Martin Seligman's research on explanatory style (the way you explain why things happen to you) expanded on Rotter's work by identifying three dimensions of how people explain negative events:

• Permanence. Is this temporary or permanent? ("I failed" vs "I'm a failure.")

• Pervasiveness. Is this specific or universal? ("I'm bad at this particular thing" vs "I'm bad at everything.")

• Personalisation. Is this about me or about the situation? ("I made a mistake" versus "This happened because of bad luck.")

People who explain bad events as permanent, pervasive, and personal are more vulnerable to depression and helplessness, whereas people who explain them as temporary, specific, and situational recover faster and try again sooner. Your explanatory style is a core component of your life philosophy, and it's learnable.

Meaning-making

Viktor Frankl wrote in "Man's Search for Meaning" that humans can endure almost anything if they can find meaning in it. Frankl's logotherapy proposes that the primary human drive is not pleasure or power but meaning.

Your relationship with meaning shapes how you handle suffering. If you believe suffering is random and pointless, you'll endure it very differently than when you believe that it carries a lesson or a purpose. Neither belief is objectively provable, but the one you hold affects your resilience, your recovery, and your capacity to move forward.

Research done by Steger, Frazier, Oishi, and Kaler on the "Meaning in Life Questionnaire" has confirmed that people who report higher levels of meaning in life show higher well-being, greater life satisfaction, and lower rates of depression and anxiety. The search for meaning is as important as the presence of it.

The principles: your playbook for unclear moments

What operating principles are

If your life philosophy is your theory of how the world works, your operating principles are the rules you follow when theory meets practice. They are the things you say to yourself when you're confused and overwhelmed.

Good operating principles are personal, specific, and tested. They come from experience, not some motivational poster. For example, things like "work hard" are way too generic to be useful, but things like "when I'm overwhelmed, I pick the smallest possible next step and do that" act as your operating principle. It has to be specific enough to act on.

How principles form

Operating principles usually emerge from one of three sources:

• Lessons from experience. Things you learned the hard way. "I don't commit to anything until I've slept on it" might come from a history of impulsive decisions you regretted.

• Inherited wisdom. Advice from people you respect that has proved true over time. A mentor who said "always tell the client what they need to hear, not what they want to hear" might shape your approach to honest communication.

• Deliberate design. Principles you chose on purpose because they align with your values. "I protect my mornings for deep work" might come from knowing your energy patterns and choosing to honour them.

Ray Dalio, in his book "Principles" (2017), argues that having a clear set of operating principles is the single most important thing you can do to make better decisions. too. He describes principles as "a way of dealing with reality that has been tested by time and found to be reliable." The point is to stop reinventing your decision-making process every time a new situation arises and instead have a small set of tested rules you return to.

The exercises

Access your Notion workbook here.

Part 1: Map your life philosophy

For each question, write your honest answer:

• What do you believe about effort? Does hard work pay off, or is the world more random than that?

• What do you believe about people? Are they mostly trustworthy, mostly self-interested, or something else?

• What do you believe about fairness? Is life fair? Should it be?

• What do you believe about suffering? Does it have meaning, or is it just pain?

• What do you believe about change? Is it something to chase or something to endure?

• What do you believe about control? How much of your life can you actually shape?

• What do you believe about success? What does it look like, and who gets to have it?

• What do you believe about uncertainty? Is it threatening or exciting?

• What do you believe about time? Are you running out, or do you have enough?

Part 2: Explanatory style check

Think of a recent setback or disappointment you had not a book that he's made SS- anything from a rejection email to a failed project to a difficult conversation. Write it down and then answer:

• Is this permanent or temporary? (Will this always be true, or is this a moment?)

• Is this pervasive or specific? (Does this affect everything, or just this area?)

• Is this personal or situational? (Did you cause this, or did circumstances contribute?)

Now look at your answers. Do you default to the permanent/pervasive/personal side? Or the temporary/specific/situational side? This is your explanatory style, and it runs through everything.

Part 3: Build your operating principles

Based on everything you've learned about yourself so far (personality, values, strengths, energy, shadow, and beliefs), write 5 to 10 operating principles and rules you return to when things are unclear.

A good operating principle is specific enough to act on, tested by experience, and aligned with your values. It should sound like you.

Part 4: Reflect

• Look at each principle and think where it came from. Did you choose this belief or were you handed it by a parent, a culture, a wound? Mark each one: chosen or inherited. Notice which category has more.

• Pick your most important principles. For each one, finish this sentence honestly: "I would abandon this principle if..." If you can't finish the sentence, the principle isn't specific enough yet. Go back and make it sharper.

• Pick two principles that might contradict each other under pressure. Describe a situation where you could only honour one. Which wins? Why? What does that tell you about what you actually value most?

• Read all your principles together. What word or idea keeps appearing? That repetition is probably your core value - the thing everything else is protecting.

• If you could pass only three principles to someone you love, which three would you choose? What does that selection tell you about what you actually believe matters most ina life?

AI companion (optional)

When to use it: After you've drafted your operating principles, but before you treat them as your final "rules for living." You can run this alongside or instead of the reflection questions above.

What it does: Acts as a devil’s advocate to help you figure out if your principles are truly resilient or if they crumble the moment two of them collide in a difficult situation.

Copy and paste the prompt below into Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI assistant alongside your identified operating principles:

You are a rigorous philosophical coach. I am going to share my draft operating principles with you. Your job is to stress-test them through the following steps:
(1) Create a "Pressure Scenario" for each principle. Present me with a realistic, difficult situation where following this principle would be inconvenient, costly, or socially awkward. Ask me: "In this specific moment, would you actually stick to this principle? Why or why not?"
(2) Identify "Principle Collisions." Pick two of my principles that might contradict each other in the real world (e.g., 'Radical Honesty' vs. 'Kindness First'). Present a scenario where I can only honour one. Ask me to choose and justify which one takes precedence.
(3) Audit for "Aspirational Fluff." If a principle sounds like a generic platitude (e.g., "Always be my best self"), call me out. Ask me to rewrite it into a "Contrarian Principle"—something that someone else might reasonably disagree with.
(4) Ask about the "Price of Admission." For my top principle, ask: "What is the most recent thing you had to give up (money, time, an opportunity) to stay true to this?" If I can’t answer, help me refine the principle until it has real stakes.
(5) At the end, help me refine my list into a "Resilient Operating System." Give me a final version of each principle that includes a "Counter-Statement" (e.g., "I value X, even when it leads to Y").
One scenario at a time. Be provocative and sceptical. Your goal isn't to validate me, but to make sure these principles can survive a crisis.

My identified operating principles: [INSERT HERE]

Part 5: Write your philosophy snapshot

Write a paragraph that captures your life philosophy as you understand it right now. How do you see the world? What do you believe about effort, people, fairness, and meaning?

This is the seventh page of your self-portrait.