5 Empowering Ways to Challenge the New Year

“Self-education is the only kind of education there is.” ~Isaac Asimov

Constantly remind yourself of how little you truly know and of how mysterious the world remains. Then flip the script and self-educate.

Cultivate curiosity like a cat with nine lives. Ask deep questions. Then go even deeper until the abyss is snarling in your face. Then double down. Don’t blink. For there is no end. There are only deeper questions to be asked, and even deeper curiosity with which to light infinitesimal beacons through the darkness.

Practice self-apprenticeship. Create your own momentum. Ninjaneer your own scaffolding. Self-inquire. Self-interrogate. Self-overcome. Self-mastery will keep you focused on what you can control rather than vainly trying to control others.

Above all, do not allow Curiosity to die a horrible death on Dogma’s executioner’s block. Be willing to unlearn what you have learned in order to connect what seems disconnected.

Here then are five empowering ways to challenge the new year…

1.) Express yourself like a philosopher:

“The philosopher is not a person who wears no mask, but one who knows how to play with a number of masks, skillfully shifting from wearing one to wearing another, as circumstances demand. To be a philosopher is precisely not to be a person who never deviates from a single doctrine but to have a history of change. A philosopher is not someone who will ‘get to the bottom of things once and for all’ but someone who will be able to see things in the world from a variety of different points of view or perspectives at the same time without getting confused.” ~Raymond Geuss

Expressing yourself like a philosopher is gazing into the abyss with an arsenal of masks. These “masks” symbolize different ways of looking at, and moving through, the world.

When you express yourself like a philosopher everything is Labyrinth. Everything is metaphor. Everything is meant to be explored. Everything is wisdom disguised as ignorance. Everything is parenthetical, incidental, tangential. Even the self. Even the universe. Even God.

For a good philosopher, nothing is off the hook for being questioned to the nth degree. A good philosopher understands that there are no absolute answers, only astute questions.

As Nietzsche said, “A philosopher who is warlike challenges problems to duels.”

A good philosopher cuts through all red tape. Kneecaps all high horses. Dethrones all gods. Inflicts oneself and the world with good questions. Remains ahead of the curve. Doubles down on curiosity and then uses it to overwhelm and overcome their own certainty.

At the end of the day, Death makes philosophers of us all.

2.) Think like a mad scientist:

“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.” ~Henri Bergson

Mobilize your mind. In a world where people believe more than they think and think they know more than they believe, we need more people who are capable of deep reflection and decisiveness.

Let your thoughts be driven by the necessity of action. Execute with care and consideration. There's an interplay between thinking and doing where each informs and enhances the other. Thoughts should be action-oriented, and actions should be thought through.

Avoid extremes. Guard against being too contemplative without ever acting (paralysis by analysis) or acting without thinking (reckless behavior). Utilize a holistic approach to life. This approach can lead you to more effective decision-making, where you not only plan well but you’re also able to adapt those plans through reflective action.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

Those of us who are able to detach ourselves from the experiment (nonattachment) gain the benefit of learning from it. For we realize that life itself is a grand experiment and we are the experimenters. We are the mad scientist, and our life is our crazy invention.

3.) Love like a poet:

“The only way of loving a person is to love them without hope.” ~Walter Benjamin

Love without expectation, without hope, without an agenda. Allow others to love the way they must love. Let go of your ego’s attachment to love. Practice Agape-love: cosmic, transcendent, and nonattached. Love at the edge of the human condition: fallible, uncertain, hungry, and in a frenzy.

Loving without hope means allowing love to be free. It’s being in love with life as it comes. It’s accepting that everything is connected to everything else and then deciding to be in love with the whole thing—from drama to trauma to manna. It’s loving with curiosity while attempting to understand, to discover, and to co-create rather than to control.

Loving without hope is loving courageously, vulnerably, and honestly. Which is likely to hurt. Therefore, loving without hope is being open-hearted enough to be okay with having your heart broken. In fact, it’s about becoming adept at adapting to heart break. It’s about overcoming the slings and arrows of life and becoming resilient, robust, and antifragile despite pain and loss. It’s fully embracing amor fati: love of fate.

As Atticus said, “Everything we love is well-arranged dust.”

4.)  Create like a God:

“The power of the Void is the power of wombness in us all, the power of true creativity.” ~Peggy Andreas

When you’re creating like a god, everything becomes a piece on a chessboard. Everything is seen through the nonattached lens of the Infinite Game, and you are the gamemaster. The interconnected cosmos is your playground. The universe is your canvas. You manifest meaning despite meaninglessness. You create purpose despite pointlessness. You transform abyss into summit. You rise above the cosmic joke and laugh with a humor of the most high.

You become autonomous, contrarian, trailblazing. You’re able to create worlds between worlds. You free yourself to be reborn; to create, destroy and recreate. You gain the power to pivot. To interrogate rather than gravitate. To meditate rather than deify. You choose risk-taking over script-making. You don’t settle; you meddle. You mix it up. You kick up the dust and knock off the dross. You choose improvisation over tradition. You transcend the comfort zone through sincere nonattachment.

Your true value is in your unique imagination. Everything else is moonshine. Your unique imagination is your potential. It’s your deepest longing to express your own values into the world. This uniqueness is your life’s purpose, your soul’s signature, your unmatched contribution to the human condition. Let it shine with the light of someone who is no longer pretending they’re not God.

5.) Laugh like a trickster god:

“Be always restless, unsatisfied, unconforming. Whenever a habit becomes convenient, smash it! The greatest sin of all is satisfaction.” ~Nikos Kazantzakis

Satisfaction be damned! Cut through all answers with a Question Mark Sword. Slice through all ideals with the Occam’s Razor of the mad scientist. Transcend all worlds through the nonattachment of loving without hope. Smash through all idols with the creative hammer of God.

Do not balk. The world is your oyster, and you have always been its pearl. It will always be the case that you are grit that needs polishing. So, say yes to the worst life can dish out. Pain is a whetstone. You are a blade. Sharpen yourself. This is how mettle has been honed since time immemorial.

Lest the dragon swallow you whole, you must always cultivate the power of integration, of adaptability, of individuation. For you are as much the dragon as you are that which has been swallowed. You are as much the shadow as you are the light. You are as much the grit as you are the pearl. So, take your vainglory and your seriousness and your “holier-than-thous” and toss them out as fodder for the Minotaur. Then subsume the Minotaur in trickster delight!

And don’t forget to laugh. Don’t forget to honor humility and humor. Keep all three ahead of hubris. Remember, the greatest sin is satisfaction. Never settle. Never rest on your laurels. Never place all your eggs in any single basket.

Dance through the lightning strikes of so-called “truth.” Thunder over the status quo junkies. Upset the dogma bums. Un-doctrinate the indoctrinated. Elevate yourself above the battlefield of the culturally conditioned. Trick yourself into staying ahead of the curve.

Image source:

Jump the World by Level 4

About the Author:

Gary Z McGee, a former Navy Intelligence Specialist turned philosopher, is the author of Birthday Suit of God and The Looking Glass Man. His works are inspired by the great philosophers of the ages and his wide-awake view of the modern world.

This article (Five Empowering Ways to Challenge the New Year) was originally created and published by Self-inflicted Philosophy and is printed here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Gary Z McGee and self-inflictedphilosophy.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this statement of copyright.