1. Meaning & Memento Mori 2. Willpower and Habit formation

NOTE LOCATION: FOREST PARK SCHOOL 130 FOREST PARK DRIVE

Future dates: March 24, April, 28, May 26, June 23, July & Aug TBA.

This Session: 1) Meaning/Menento Mori 2). Willpower and Habit Formation.

Heavy seeming topics, yet arguably Important and even fun to think and talk about.

1). Part 1 Meaning
Is it important to pursue meaning in life or simply live our life as it comes? If the latter is the answer then the rest of this exercise is a waste of thought.

If we were to think about & pursue meaning at all, how do we determine if (our) life actually has meaning?

Can and must we determine it by consciously seeking particular pursuits? If so, are there pursuits more of value than others?

If these leading questions channel us to choose to live an examined life, how important and difficult is it to be an honest observer of one’s own choices and mind? Or is it impossible not to fool ourselves about our choices?

If work is one of these candidates, consider an A.I. powered economic wonder world, where human work is not needed. Would we find meaning anywhere we choose - gardening competitions, relationships, sports, art... or is it determined by other factors such as religion, cultural expectations?

“For as wood is the material of the carpenter, bronze that of the statuary, just so each man’s own life is the subject-matter of the art of living.” – Epictetus. Are we ultimately responsible for shaping our life?

1). Part 2 Memento Mori

• Literally means "Remember you must die" -

If the pursuit of meaning is of value then, “What makes life worth living?”

Memento mori asks:
“What happens to that question when we remember life is finite**?**”
Across cultures, philosophers and spiritual teachers kept death close — not to dwell on it, but to sharpen life.

Marcus Aurelius wrote:
“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think.”

Seneca echoed this urgency:
“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.”

Indian saints framed impermanence as clarity, not despair.

Sant Ravidas wrote that life is “like a fleeting shadow.”

Pslam 90:12 “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”
Thanks to Gagan for the section above.

2). Willpower and Habit formation

How are your New Years resolutions going or any attempts to change your behaviour?
In surveys, American adults have cited lack of willpower as the top barrier to changing behavior. Around the world, when adults have rated themselves on two dozen positive qualities, self-control has ranked dead last. Research also shows that exercising willpower feels pretty awful, whether you are resisting something fun or forcing yourself to do something un-fun. The logical solution seems obvious: Try harder. Strengthen your willpower muscle. “Just say no,” as Nancy Reagan admonished my generation. “Just do it,” as Nike urges. Angela Duckworth, a psychologist who studies how people achieve their goals, sees the data leading to the opposite conclusion: Willpower is overrated. Research shows that achievement has surprisingly little to do with forcing yourself to choose wisely in the heat of the moment. Successful people rarely rely on inner fortitude to resist temptations. Instead, many exercise situational agency, arranging their lives to minimize the need for willpower in the first place. One example of this is nudges. A "nudge unit" in psychology and public policy uses insights from behavioral science to subtly influence people's choices and behaviors (nudges) to encourage better decisions, without forbidding options or changing economic incentives, by altering the "choice architecture," like making healthy food more visible or setting default options for savings or organ donation. Originating from the UK's Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) inspired by Thaler & Sunstein's book Nudge, these units apply psychology, economics, and sociology to policy, testing interventions through experiments to improve outcomes like tax compliance, health, or energy use.