Name: 哈佛教授：你活著到底是為了什麼？► 3個步驟找出人生意義 - Dr. Arthur Brooks 亞瑟．布魯克斯（中英字幕）
Uploaded: 2025-04-04T02:30:07.000Z
Duration: 3 min 20 s
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I don't have anything that I would die for, and I don't really know why I'm alive.

It's incredibly good news because that's the basis of your adventure.

To-infinitive

is to find those things because in point of fact, there are things out there.

Maybe you've been looking for what I like.

There's nothing wrong, but it's not going to be the secret to finding your meaning.

You know, what I enjoy is a different pillar of happiness.

A lot of people will say, if I figure out what I enjoy, then I'll find my meaning.

You're over on that branch of the tree, you're trying to get around this branch of the tree, different questions.

Actually, there's a three-part plan, you want to hear the three-part plan to actually start figuring out the answers to these questions?

You don't have to answer the questions directly.

But number one is start thinking to yourself, what do I think is right and wrong, what are my moral principles, what are my moral non-negotiables?

That's the moral basis of living, it's the foundation of actually figuring out the answers to your questions.

I ask my students to take out a piece of paper and start writing things down that they think.

Here are the things that I actually think are right and wrong, here are the basis of the way that I want to live.

Carl Jung said that the basis of happiness is figuring out what you believe and living according to it.

That the basis of unhappiness is living not in accord with your own morals.

Write down your moral philosophy, I don't care how dumb it is.

Write down your moral philosophy and say, make a plan to start living according to it.

The second part is contemplation, you need more contemplation so that you can experience transcendence.

This is why everybody wants to do mindfulness meditation.

That's all that is, is basically is sitting still without your phone and focusing on being alive.

My colleague, Ellen Langer, she wrote a book called Mindfulness.

She says that mindfulness is best practiced if you're sitting on the train by putting away your phone, putting your hands in your lap and looking out the window.

Start with five minutes of just simple contemplation of life.

You need to stop distracting yourself and systematically stop distracting yourself.

Because in your default mode network, you'll actually start to think about things that actually matter.

Including the things that are in the fundamental moral basis that you've that you've started to formulate.

You'll start being on like, you know, there's certain things I miss about that, maybe there's something in there that I didn't understand before.

So openness to that, I'm not saying for sure, but I'm saying just be open to it.

And that requires reading, the accumulation of knowledge.

Not everybody's a big reader and there's so many different ways to get good information at this point.

But the whole point is reading or acquiring information in the wisdom tradition.

Read the Stoic philosophers, read the Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle.

Read the Bhagavad Gita, read the Quran, read the Bible.

Read, read, read and start with 15 minutes a day of that kind of reading, which you can go years saying I wish I read it and you don't, right?

We'll spend all this time scrolling Instagram when we can spend just 15 minutes a day.

reading the meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

And and the letters of Seneca and they're incredibly enriching, right?

So, do the work, what do I believe, spend some time in contemplation and do the reading, your life's about to change.