John Vespasian

We like to believe we are rational beings.
We tell ourselves that we analyse, choose, and control our lives through conscious decisions.
But what if this belief is one of our greatest illusions?
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer challenged this comfortable idea centuries ago.
Schopenhauer argued that beneath our thoughts and explanations exists a deeper force—a hidden Will that influences our desires, actions, and choices before we even become aware of them.
We often believe we are the authors of our decisions.
But how many times do we act on an impulse and only afterward create a logical explanation for why we did it?
We call it “intuition.” We call it “following our feelings.” We call it “being ourselves.”
But sometimes these are simply unconscious forces controlling us while we convince ourselves we are in charge.
We reach for distractions without thinking.
We chase approval from people we barely know.
We buy things we do not need.
We defend opinions we never truly examined.
And then we proudly claim that we are acting freely.
Schopenhauer’s uncomfortable message is that much of what we do may be the result of impulses pushing us from behind the scenes.
If we want to massively improve our decisions, we must stop blindly trusting every thought and every feeling that appears in our minds.
Our first impulse is not always wisdom.
Before we act, we need to ask a more powerful question: “Why do we want this?”
Are we choosing from strength or from fear?
Are we pursuing something meaningful or trying to escape discomfort?
Are we following our values or are we influenced by someone else’s?
That small moment of awareness creates a gap between impulse and action.
And inside that gap, we discover the possibility of massive improvement.
Schopenhauer did not teach us that we are powerless.
He showed us that self-knowledge is the beginning of self-development.
We cannot improve what we refuse to acknowledge.
The biggest obstacle to better decisions is not a lack of intelligence.
It is our belief that we already understand ourselves completely.
When we become aware of the hidden forces influencing us, we stop being passengers in our own lives.
We begin making better decisions.
Schopenhauer’s greatest lesson is this: before we try to control the world around us, we must first understand the invisible forces controlling us from within.
To put this into practice, we can follow three simple steps:
Step one: Make a pause before important decisions.
Instead of reacting immediately, let us give ourselves time to observe our emotions, impulses, and hidden motivations.
A few seconds of reflection can prevent years of regret.
Step two: Question the desire behind the decision.
Before asking, “How can we get what we want?” we should ask, “Why do we want it?”
Understanding the source of our desires allows us to separate rational goals from worthless cravings.
Step three: Make decisions based on principles, not impulses.
We should decide by answering the question: What type of person do we want to become?
We should think long term, not according to the emotion of the moment.
By practising these three steps, we can make far better decisions and move forward decisively in our own lives.
If you are interested in applying rational ideas in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “The 10 Principles of Rational Living.”
https://johnvespasian.com/schopenhauer-how-to-massively-improve-our-decisions/

Everyone tells us, ‘Follow your heart.’ But what if our heart is actually leading us in the wrong direction?
The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer believed that blindly following our desires was one of the biggest mistakes we could make.
He said that there is a hidden force inside all of us—a constant drive he called the ‘will.’
The will pushes us to chase desirable things: success, love, status, comfort, and recognition.
But here’s the problem: the will doesn’t care about the truth. It only cares about short-term pleasure.
And because of that, we can start bending reality to match our desires.
When we really want something, we look for signs that prove we’re right.
We ignore all sorts of warnings.
We convince ourselves that our dream is realistic—even when the facts tell us otherwise.
Schopenhauer’s warning was simple: what feels right isn’t always what is true.
Sometimes we have to admit that the goal we’re chasing is detrimental for us at that point.
Sometimes we have to walk away from a situation that is draining us.
Sometimes the hardest truth is the one that helps us grow.
Schopenhauer’s solution was not to stop dreaming or become negative. It was to become more aware of ourselves.
We need to slow down, question our impulses, look at the evidence, and ask: ‘Do we want this because it’s meaningful—or because we’re being controlled by unreasonable desires?’
For Schopenhauer, the key to thriving in life comes from making rational decisions.
Because the person who follows every impulse isn’t free.
Automatic reactions are being controlled by every feeling, craving, and temporary desire that appears.
A better life doesn’t come from chasing everything we want.
It comes from learning which desires deserve our attention—and which ones we should better let go for the moment.
If you are interested in applying rational ideas in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “The 10 Principles of Rational Living.”
https://johnvespasian.com/schopenhauer-do-not-follow-your-heart/

Aristotle’s theory of the four causes seems at first sight very easy to understand, but if you dig into the details, you will see its epochal consequences. It changed human mentality, and in doing so, it changed the course of history. The four causes, and in particular the final cause, can dramatically change your life for the better.
Aristotle adopted a systematic approach to studying the world. His theory of the four causes entails that, if you want to fully understand something, you should consider four distinct causes.
First, a material cause that pertains to the material substance that makes up an item or creature. For example, the material cause of a woolen suit is wool.
Second, a formal cause that relates to the object’s shape or structure. In the case of the woolen suit, the formal cause consists of a vest and a pair of pants. Their shape constitutes a suit, not a scarf, a raincoat, a shirt, or an overall.
Third, an efficient cause that is concerned with the agent or force responsible for making the object. It replies to the question “What brought the object into existence?” In the context of the suit, the efficient cause is the tailor who made it.
https://johnvespasian.com/aristotles-theory-of-the-four-causes/
Fourth, a final cause that deals with the purpose. It answers the question, “Why does the object exist?” In the case of the suit, the final cause is to allow me to wear the suit for work, formal dinners, and other such occasions.
The theory of the four causes seems simple enough as a tool for analyzing reality, but as we’ll see now, it gets exceedingly complicated when it is coupled to social and political events. It is not exaggerated to affirm that Aristotle’s theory of causation has driven the intellectual discourse for twenty-five centuries.
https://johnvespasian.com/aristotles-theory-of-the-four-causes/

Everyone wants better performance.
That’s why people buy new apps.Read productivity books.Or consume energy drinks.
But the biggest performance upgrade we’ll ever get is completely free.
Almost nobody uses it.
Seneca figured it out 2,000 years ago.
Here’s the upgrade.
Let us stop believing every thought we have.
Just because our mind says we are failing…doesn’t make it true.
Just because we are upset…doesn’t mean that we should be emotionally paralysed.
Just because we are afraid…doesn’t mean that the danger is real.
We are seldom limited by unassailable obstacles.
We are mostly limited by our exaggerated emotions.
That’s the real obstacle to better performance.
Here’s what Seneca did differently.
Whenever something happened, he asked one question:
What do I have to do exactly to improve my situation?
The obstacle is not the economy as a whole.
Nor our personal history.
Not other people’s opinions.
The real obstacle to better performance is our own beliefs.
But the moment we stop our exaggerated emotions,
…we get all our energy back.
That’s a performance upgrade no supplement can give us.
And here’s the controversial part.
We are probably avoiding the very things that would make us better.
Reaching out and making new friends.
Starting new projects.
Going through the learning curve and experiencing temporary failure.
These aren’t real obstacles.
They’re the necessary steps to improve our performance.
The people who achieve a high performance are persistent.
They have trained themselves to cool down their emotions and stay rational.
That’s why Seneca’s advice beats most modern self-help.
Seneca wasn’t trying to make life easier.
He was trying to make us stronger.
And stronger people perform better—in business, in relationships, and under pressure.
This is the recipe for a free performance upgrade
The only price to pay is giving up our exaggerated emotions and our excuses.
If you are interested in applying rational ideas in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “The 10 Principles of Rational Living.”
https://johnvespasian.com/seneca-how-to-get-a-free-performance-upgrade/

What if I told you the biggest obstacle to personal growth… is pushing too hard for personal growth?
Sounds backwards, right?
But that’s exactly what the 16th-century philosopher Michel de Montaigne figured out.
Most people think that personal growth means endless introspection. Journaling for hours. Analysing every emotion. Constantly asking, “Who am I?”
Montaigne thought that approach misses the point.
His idea was surprisingly simple: we don’t discover ourselves by staring inward. We discover ourselves by expressing ourselves.
When we write down our thoughts. When we have real conversations. When we travel, read books, or create something.
The moment we put our ideas into the world, we start seeing who we really are.
Even our friendships become mirrors of our souls.
The right people don’t just support us—they reveal our values and parts of our souls that we cannot see on our own.
But Montaigne also warned about something that feels incredibly modern.
If we are constantly surrounded by noise, opinions and random socialising, we will struggle to hear our own thoughts.
That’s why he believed that regular periods of solitude are a necessity, not a luxury.
Montaigne did not mean disappearing from the world forever.
He meant creating enough silence to figure out which ideas are actually ours… and which we have borrowed from everyone else.
Later thinkers like Emerson explained that regular periods of solitude can help us find our inner voice.
But solitude is not enough for personal growth.
So what’s the missing piece?
According to Montaigne, personal growth does not come from solitude and reflection alone.
It comes from building real skills.
Learning. Practising. Testing our ideas against reality.
Because we don’t become wiser only by thinking.
We become wiser by thinking… and then doing.
The real path to personal growth requires regular periods of solitude and then plenty of real-world practice.
Personal growth comes from expressing ourselves, learning relentlessly, and letting reality teach us we you are.
If you are interested in applying rational ideas in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “The 10 Principles of Rational Living.”
https://johnvespasian.com/montaigne-the-shortest-path-to-personal-growth/

We have all been told that Arthur Schopenhauer was the most pessimistic philosopher in history.
But I think that’s wrong.
In fact, I think most people who call him a pessimist have not understood what he was saying.
Here’s the real question.
If a glass is only 20% full, is saying “it’s almost empty” pessimistic?
Or is it simply true?
We have reached a point where stating uncomfortable facts is often dismissed as “being negative.”
But reality doesn’t become more pleasant just because we refuse to acknowledge it.
That was Schopenhauer’s point.
He wasn’t trying to convince us to give up our dreams.
He was just arguing that exaggerated optimism is one of the biggest causes of human suffering.
Think about it.
If we expect life to always be fair, we will be outraged when it isn’t.
If we expect constant happiness, we will think something is wrong every time we struggle.
If we expect success to come naturally, failure will feel like a massive injustice.
But if we understand from the beginning that setbacks, disappointment, and suffering are normal parts of life, they lose their power over us.
That’s not pessimism.
That’s preparation.
Ironically, modern culture encourages the exact opposite.
We are constantly told to stay positive, manifest success, and believe that everything will work out.
Then we are confronted with reality.
And instead of questioning our exaggerated expectations, we blame reality itself.
Schopenhauer would have said that reality is not the problem.
The problem is the fantasy we were sold.
And here’s the part that almost nobody mentions.
After explaining why suffering exists, Schopenhauer devoted years to writing about how to live a good life despite it.
He recommended self-discipline, meaningful work, empathy, compassion, and artistic contemplation.
Does that sound like the philosophy of someone who has given up?
Or does it sound like someone who wanted us to stop lying to ourselves, so that we can build a better life?
Maybe Schopenhauer wasn’t history’s greatest pessimist.
Maybe he was one of history’s greatest realists.
And maybe a sober, realistic attitude is the greatest gift that we can give ourselves.
If you are interested in applying rational ideas in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “The 10 principles of rational living.”
https://johnvespasian.com/schopenhauer-do-not-confuse-realism-with-pessimism/

How do we stop making the same mistakes twice?
I used to think that the answer was simple, that all it takes is to have more discipline and try harder.
But that didn’t work.
Then I came across Schopenhauer, and he said something that changed how I see things.
He said that human beings cannot be fully rational.
To a great extent, we are driven by an intangible force pushing us toward short-term pleasure and comfort.
Schopenhauer called this force “the Will” and Sigmund Freud called it “instincts.”
And when I look at my own life, it’s obvious that they are at play.
Schopenhauer discovered that we don’t repeat mistakes because we forget that they are mistakes.
We repeat them because the same drive shows up at the critical moment… and we follow it.
That’s why we know that some things are bad for us, such as procrastination, but we still do them anyway.
According to Schopenhauer, it’s not a knowledge problem.
It’s a pattern problem.
Schopenhauer’s point was not that we are powerless.
It’s that we are influenced far more than we like to admit.
The Will or the instincts do not ask for permission—they just push.
And most of the time, we confuse that push with our conscious decisions.
But here’s where it gets interesting.
According to Schopenhauer, the solution is not to fight harder against ourselves.
The solution is to recognize the pattern before it fully takes over.
Once we notice that “this is that same impulse again,” something shifts.
The urge doesn’t disappear, but it weakens.
Because now we are feeling it and observing it.
In that moment of awareness, that’s where we actually get a choice.
That moment creates enough space to avoid repeating the same mistakes.
Thus, our goal should not be “we are never going to fail again.”
But to recognize the pattern early enough so that we can interrupt it.
https://johnvespasian.com/how-we-stop-making-the-same-mistakes-twice/

Problems make us wiser even if most people actually hate them. That’s why the first sign of trouble sends them into panic. They see problems as interruptions to life, while in reality, problems are just the price we pay to be alive.
The French philosopher Michel de Montaigne gained this insight more than 400 years ago. He lived through civil wars, political chaos, and religious violence. Entire cities were consumed by blind hatred, hysteria, and fear. Yet, instead of becoming bitter, Montaigne reached a powerful conclusion: problems are our greatest teachers.
Think about it. Nobody becomes courageous when everything is easy. Nobody develops patience, resilience and wisdom when life gives them exactly what they want. We only gain wisdom when we are forced to deal with setbacks, uncertainty, and pain.
In fact, some of the qualities we admire most in people (strength, self-confidence, self-reliance, good judgement, and critical thinking) are usually the result of facing unwanted problems.
Montaigne noted that adversity forces us to reexamine ourselves, develop new skills and increase our self-reliance. It exposes our vulnerabilities, challenges our assumptions, and pushes us to think independently.
Every difficulty becomes an opportunity to perceive the world more accurately, and make better decisions in the future.
This is why trying to avoid every problem is actually dangerous. A life without challenges doesn’t make us safe. It makes us fragile. A person who has never struggled might collapse at the first sign of real obstacles.
The uncomfortable truth is that our current problems may be doing something beneficial for us, something that comfort and good luck could never do. Problems are teaching us patience, forcing us to adapt and build strengths that we don’t even realize we’re developing.
Problems are painful. Nobody wants them. But they often become the very experiences that make us wiser, stronger, and more effective than we were before.
If you want to apply rational ideas in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “On becoming unbreakable: How normal people become extraordinarily self-confident.”
https://johnvespasian.com/problems-make-us-wiser/

The most dangerous idea in modern culture would sound completely insane to Aristotle.
I am talking about the idea that you can be anything you want.
Aristotle regarded the idea of random potential as nonsense.
Over 2,300 years ago, Aristotle asked a question that still divides people today:
Does everything have a true nature?
He believed the answer was yes.
An acorn becomes an oak, not an apple tree.
A lion acts like a lion, not like a rabbit.
And what about humans?
According to Aristotle, we are not made of malleable clay.
We all have built-in potentials and strengths, but those are different for each person.
That’s why Aristotle rejected the idea that each person can become literally anything.
To him, the key to thriving in life means becoming what you’re best suited to become.
It is not about pursuing random improvements.
But about discovering your highest potential.
And here’s the uncomfortable part:
If Aristotle is right, then most people are failing to reach their potential.
They’re failing because, instead of cultivating their strengths, they’re trying to become someone they’re not.
The question Aristotle leaves us with is the following:
Are you trying to imitate someone else?
Or are you creating the best version of yourself?
If you are interested in applying rational ideas in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “The 10 principles of rational living.”
https://johnvespasian.com/the-most-dangerous-idea-in-modern-culture/

The biggest lie you tell yourself every day is that you’re thinking rationally, but in reality, you are not as logical as you think.
Arthur Schopenhauer, one of history’s most crucial thinkers, argued that most of our decisions are not driven by logic.
They are driven by something that he called “the ‘Will”, an irrational force pushing our desires, emotions, and impulses.
Think about it.
Did you ever buy something you didn’t need?
Have you ever stayed in a bad relationship?
Or have you ever ignored obvious red flags and allowed problems to grow?
According to Schopenhauer, your mind wasn’t leading you. Your desires were. And then your brain created a story to justify your bad decisions afterward.
Schopenhauer believed that truth is uncomfortable because it forces us to see reality as it is, not as we would like it to be.
Sometimes, people do not want to see the truth because reality clashes with their wishes.
What is Schopenhauer’s solution?
Stop chasing every desire.
Question your motives.
And when something feels true, ask yourself:
Do I believe this because it’s reality, or because I just want it to be true?
Schopenhauer said that finding the truth is not about feeling good.
It is about pushing ourselves to see clearly.
Truth sometimes hurts, but delusion will cost us much more.
If you are interested in applying rational ideas in all sorts of situations, I recommend my book “The 10 Principles of Rational Living”
https://johnvespasian.com/the-biggest-lie-you-tell-yourself-every-day/