Chapter 6: When All Else Fails — excerpted from WHAT DO YOU WANT OUT OF LIFE?: A Philosophical Guide To Figuring Out What Matters by Valerie Tiberius

Let’s take stock. It’s good for us to be able to do the things that matter to us. We’re not always clear about what matters, or what matters most, or how it matters, and the experience of conflict pushes us to find clarity. We refine our system of values and goals by seeing clearly what they are, adjusting how we go about achieving them, getting rid of the bad stuff, and reinterpreting what our values mean so that we can pursue them together. What do we do when these strategies fail? What can we do about perpetual conflicts that we can’t reduce using any of these methods? Do these failures mean we aren’t on the right path? [Read more…]