Is There an Ideal Lifestyle?

I’ve been living nomadically with Cindy the last 2 years. Is this the ideal lifestyle? A lot of my friends think it is.

For my entire life, I’ve always wanted to have the “best” life possible. I’ve always been curious on how to improve my life; improving my life by buying new digital tools, by changing the structure of my day, etc.

Ever since I was around 16 years old, I’ve been fascinated with philosophy.

For example, I’ve always been curious about productivity, travel, adventure, and the key to “happiness”.

I wanted to find “true happiness”, and in my life journey I’ve explored, experimented, with the following:

Food (what to eat, what not to eat). Eating style; how often (or unoften) to eat food. Whether it was better to eat 6 small meals a day, or just 1 massive meal a day.
The best digital tools of empowerment and productivity: The best laptop, phone, digital cameras, headphones, etc.
How to become wiser: what to study, what not to study. Reading lots of philosophy books to figure out how to live a ‘better’ or more virtuous life.
Conquering my personal fears in life, overcoming feelings of guilt, as well as finding pride in my scars from the past.
Discovering the “ideal” amount of money to be “happy” in life. Figuring out what kind of job I could have to have the maximal amount of personal freedom in my life (not having to work for a boss). Trying to figure out how to make a living from my passion of photography-blogging

In terms of what I’ve discovered; I haven’t discovered any universal truths, however I’ve discovered more accurate personal truths for myself. I’ve discovered more self-wisdom, I’ve gotten to know myself better– in terms of what I truly like in life, and what I don’t really care about (things I am indifferent towards). The saying, “Know yourself” is very true.

So going back to the notion of finding an “ideal lifestyle”, what we really should be searching for is this:

What is the ideal lifestyle for myself? (not for others)

In other words, try to discover what your personal preferences are in life.

This is the funny thing: most people have no idea what their true preferences are. They think they know what their true preferences are, but in reality– their preferences are spoon-fed by others (media, societal pressures, expectations, etc).

So ask yourself:

“Do I know what my true preferences are in life?”

Falsification and wisdom

Karl Popper has a notion of “falsification”; the idea that you can never discover empirical “truth”, but you discover empirical “untruth”. You can “falsify”, or prove wrong false notions.

Applied to trying to determine your true preferences in life, this is the practical idea:

Determine what you hate, dislike, or don’t want to do in life.

For example, this is a list of stuff I hate doing:

Phone calls (pre-arranged phone calls and meetings)
Stressing about paying bills (solution: live a super frugal lifestyle, and keep money in the bank in cash)
Not having control over my daily schedule. I hate feeling like the prisoner of my Google calendar; I prefer to do things “on the fly”
I hated having to go into an office everyday, and having to be stuck in the office from 10-7pm. This is what led me to becoming self-employed.
I hate staying inside the house, thus I prefer to work outside in coffee shops.
I don’t like to get too comfortable, this is why I like living more nomadically.