Recently I have come aware that my aims in life do not correlate to achievements thus far in life and put this down to me ‘doing things in the wrong way’, getting the process wrong.
I want to be constantly asking questions and observing life all through the day - thinking about the news, books I am reading, studies and anything which I see. I want to be interested in everything that I see, hear and read.
I have many objectives including learning several languages, reading history, philosophy, politics, economics and anything else. I enjoy the process of learning as well as the sense of achievement which I feel when I’ve achieved something. Above all, I’m happiest when I’m thinking and finding it very rewarding and fulfilling.
So many of my objectives are tied up in my own ability to concentrate, which sometimes I lack. For example, when I read a book (for example a Dickens’ novel, I was recently reading), I found my mind straying to thinking about the news, about whether I was reading the book in the right way, whether I should be reading this book and not another…and so many other doubts and queries. It is as if all these doubts and queries overpower my interest in what I am reading. I find that this repeatedly happens whenever I try to read and recognise that it is an internal problem which I can only overcome through tackling it head on. I see the problem as directly linked to my concentration (and perhaps my interest). I would like to be able to 100% concentrate on what I am reading so that what I read is what I consider - thus hopefully improving my comprehension, reading speed and retention rate.
I know that there are so many self-help books out there but read somewhere that philosophy is the better to improve ourselves. If anybody could suggest books that I could read to help me out with my problem then this would be much appreciated. I’d like to find an argument/idea so compelling that it changes my state of mind so that I’m able to put 100% into whatever I do.
There is a hidden little book, written 1619, that is even now waiting patiently to be noticed and interned by you. Titled: “Rules for the Direction of the Mind”, it is an unfinished treatise by France’s famous René Descartes, author of the “Discourse on the Method”. Quite unlike the later “Discourse”, this youthful book, a book of the experiment and search, may please you greatly if you do not neglect to inquire into it no later than a fortnight from now.
Jim…lock your money up in a fund for a year, become homeless, travel the earth and
Seek out suffering and despair, comfort them.
Seek out the free and the happy, enjoy them.
Seek out charity to survive; rejoice purely in it.
Seek out discrimination against you; hurt in it.
Stand nakedly open to the eyes of of the physiognomist citizens of the world.
Then come back, retrieve your money and set out on your course that you will have found.