How to live well? Let’s ask a great philosopher: Seneca. A man who spent his life pondering the meaning of life. That’s why I’m sharing with you Seneca’s 7 top tips to help you in your quest for happiness.

1 – Living well: giving value to our time

All too often, we forget the value of our time. We neglect it and waste it. Yet it is our greatest asset. Every day, we receive 24 hours of free time. Unfortunately, these 24 hours can be taken away from us at any time, without notice.

“What man will you quote to me who puts a price on time, who estimates the value of the day, who understands that he dies every day?”

That’s why Seneca invites us to reclaim our time, because it belongs to us.

“All things belong to others; time alone belongs to us: it is the only possession, fleeting and slippery, that nature has entrusted us with.”

Every day, let’s be grateful for the time we’ve been given, and take care to use it wisely.

“Embrace all the hours; in this way you’ll depend less on tomorrow when you’ve got hold of today. While you’re deferring it, life flows by.”

But how? By focusing on living in the present moment, free from worries about the future or regrets about the past. Happiness is to be found in the present moment, and only in the present moment.

2 – Escaping the hustle and bustle

These days, our daily lives take us on an ever-increasing number of activities and journeys, so much so that we get dizzy and end up exhausted.

“Travel and change of scenery are pointless, because you take your ailments with you”.

“Such restlessness is the work of a sick soul: the first proof of an ordered intelligence is, in my opinion, to be able to stop and linger with oneself.”

Seneca urges us to choose our activities carefully and to be content with them. He explains that too many different things only stir up thirst and hunger, without ever satisfying them.

That’s why let’s choose a small number of activities, books, places… and stop running around.

What’s more, when we feel bad, when we’re dissatisfied with an area of our life, let’s not “run away” to another place or activity. Instead, let’s change something in the here and now to feel better and better.

3 – To live well: have real friends

“After friendship, we must trust; before friendship, we must judge. For their part, they reverse the order of duties, those who judge once they’ve loved, not love once they’ve judged. Think long and hard about whether you should befriend someone. Once you’ve made up your mind, welcome them with all your heart; speak to them as boldly as to yourself.”

To be happy, we need to be connected to others. And of course, to have good relationships. Unfortunately, we sometimes think that “hell is other people”.

How can we live well with others? By giving our friendship to the right people and then accepting them as they are.

What’s more, choosing the right friends and accepting them as they are helps us avoid “wasting” our time and our serenity.

4 – Don’t try to catch other people’s eyes

Acting for your own good, persevering in your quest for self-improvement is one of the best ways to live a life worth living.

The danger comes when we no longer act to progress, but to attract the gaze of others.

To live well, we need to live according to nature, so we need to strike a balance between self-care and self-worship.

“Let life be a dosage of good morals.”

Indeed, the taste for luxury brings with it worry. You’re afraid of losing what you’ve got. What’s more, there’s nothing sadder than when our furniture, our car or our clothes are more appreciated by others than our company.

“Great is he who uses earthenware as if it were silverware, but no lesser is he who uses silverware as if it were earthenware.”

5 – To live well: be content with what we have

“He who does not believe he is happy is not happy”.

Our sense of happiness depends not on what we have, but on how we feel. And not what we feel once in a while, but what we feel all the time.

However, many of us make our happiness dependent on external conditions. But these conditions are changeable. And that’s perfectly normal. Everything disappears in this world. Only the way we look and feel can endure.

“If you don’t feel fulfilled by what you have, even if you’re the master of the whole world, you’re unhappy.

So let’s take the time to feel joy and satisfaction in our daily lives. These feelings will follow us everywhere. Let’s stop putting conditions on our happiness: I’ll be happy when I have this job, this house…

Let’s take the time to feel happiness, right here, right now, with what we have and what we do.

6 – Preparing for suffering and death

“It is foolish, without a doubt, under the pretext that one day or another you will be unhappy, to be already unhappy.”

Suffering and death are the price of life. They’re part of life. No one can escape them.

The most terrible thing for us human beings is the fear they inspire. Seneca explains that we are big children who, like little children, are frightened by the adults they know when they wear a mask. Let’s take the mask off suffering and death. Let’s face them squarely.

Seneca invites us to say to ourselves: “I have a poor mortal and fragile body”, “I will become poor”, “I will be exiled”, “I will be chained”…

And when he invites us to say: “I will die”. He writes:

“I will die: you mean, I will cease to be able to be sick, I will cease to be able to be chained, I will cease to be able to die.”

“Every day we die; every day, in fact, a part of life is taken away, and as our age increases, life decreases. We have lost childhood, then adolescence, then youth. Until yesterday, all the time that has passed has perished: this very day that we live, we share with death.”

7 – To live well: live lightly

Seneca urges us to live lightly. Indeed, he explains that most of our desires lead to the loss of our health.

He explains that our only desires should be those that nature can satisfy.

“It is for superfluous goods that we sweat; it is they that wear out the toga, that force us to grow old in tents, that throw us on foreign shores: within reach is what is sufficient. He who adapts well to poverty is rich.”

That’s why he invites us, every month, for a few days, to live with little: to eat bread and water, to dress in inexpensive clothes…

This helps us to free ourselves from the fear of poverty, to better channel our desires afterwards and, above all, to realize that happiness is not to be found in the food we eat or the clothes we wear, but in how we feel every day.

Find out more:

I invite you to read these 2 complementary articles:

Discover Zen to Done approach: 5 steps to greater productivity
Discover How to stay zen all day long? 9 morning habits to try out!

I recommend this inspiring book:

Joyful by Ingrid Fetell Lee

In this book, Ingrid Fetell Lee explores the link between our environment and our sense of well-being. She looks at the elements of joy present in our environment and offers ideas on how to design a life that promotes happiness. By identifying and incorporating simple yet powerful sources of joy, the book provides a guide to living well and finding happiness on a daily basis.

I’m really glad I read this book and would recommend it without hesitation, especially to those who enjoy reading non-fiction. Although everyone’s reaction to the concepts presented here by Ingrid Fettell Lee will undoubtedly vary (especially depending on whether or not you’ve read other books on the same subject in the past), I preferred this one to some of the other “personal development” books I’ve read.
All in all, a worthwhile read!

Thank you very much for reading this article.

If you liked it, let me know in the comments.

Take care of yourself