You Don't Need a Plan, You Need a Myth

How Carl Jung's "symbolic life" transforms you when conventional advice fails in 3 parts (+ DOWNLOADABLE SUMMARY 📝)

“Not to have an intellectual conception of things, but to find our way to the inner, and perhaps wordless, irrational experience—that is the great problem”

– C.G. Jung, ‘The Symbolic Life,’ para. 1292

The Oath of Horatii (1784) Jacques-Louis David

The modern world will never make you happy.

Endless entertainment in your pocket, food in excess, every comfort and luxury imaginable – the average person lives better than a historical king – BUT. WHY. ARE. WE. UNHAPPY? The obvious answer is: all the above is meaningless (and often detrimental to health).

What’s overlooked is what we’ve exchanged for this life of pleasure:

Our personal myth.

Our hero’s journey. The reason every popular story follows a hero is because this framework is hardwired into your psyche. The humble origins, the call to adventure, the loss, the hopelessness, the redemption, the homecoming – we’re meant to live this.

When we don’t, life derails and you become a slave to desire.

• Building habits

• Writing SMART goals

• Cultivating a positive-outlook

All a waste of time unless you tap into your divine spark.

Famous 20th century psychologist Carl Jung knew this.

Here’s How Living Symbolically Transforms Your Life When Conventional Wisdom Fails You in 3 Parts…

(See end for downloadable summary 📝)

Part I. The Tragedy of a Rational Life

You’re not a rational person (and I can prove it with science).

Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman studied this topic for decades and found people primarily make decisions on what he calls “System 1”: fast, intuitive, and emotionally charged. The great spiritual lecturer, Alan Watts, echoed this when he said:

“People use logic up to the point of making a decision, then they go with their gut”

Kahneman is putting a negative spin on this (“look at how irrational we are”).

This is dumb. While rationale can and should be cultivated, it is clearly not the full picture of human nature; and notice how when people are suffering long term, separation from nature often pops up.

The symbolic life is about nurturing that neglect.

Watts goes on to say:

“When we decide, we’re always worrying—‘Did I think this over long enough? Did I take enough data into consideration?’ — and if you think it through, you find you never could take enough data”

The rational life is tragic because it’s impossible.

There are many more variables in any given decision than our minds can balance.

Say you’re deciding what course you want to study at university: you can research a hundred topics, journal a hundred hours, and even talk to a hundred alumni – but you’ll never know if you’ve made the right decision until you’ve started the course. Even if you like the subject, you could hate the course.

Maybe the new lecturer is awful.

Maybe your classmates are d*cks.

Within each of these 2 simple variables is a million more. You have to realise that whether or not you like the course is also completely irrational; Kakneman also found our emotionally driven decisions are often intellectualised post-decision (ironically likely done to align with the societal false standard that we’re rational).

Life is utterly unpredictable (plans are meaningless).

You’re better going with intuition and then staying adaptable.

Once you’ve been guided by your genuine feelings on the matter, you should then start using reason to navigate this space. What provides ultimate meaning in life is irrational.

People end up in terrible:

• jobs

• situations

• relationships

because they’ve used their head when their heart is what defines success.

Part II. The Symbolic Life (Your Myth)

Carl Jung is one of the greatest psychologists of all time for 1 reason: