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Life presents us with countless questions. Where did I come from, and where am I going? What is the meaning of life? What are truth, goodness, and beauty?… Yet no matter how many profound questions exist, we still have to live day by day. Any answer to a grand question must eventually come down to this: How should I live today? What kind of life counts as a good life, and how does one live such a life? I think these are questions everyone cares about — and ones to which everyone has their own answers.

A few days ago, a friend and I talked about this topic. Only then did I realize that, without noticing, I had accumulated many thoughts and experiences related to living well. Although the answer to what constitutes a good life is deeply personal, communication between individuals is still meaningful. Through imitation, we break through our own limitations; through borrowing ideas from others, we discover our own potential. Much of what I’ve gathered comes from the people around me. After several rounds of conversation, these thoughts gradually took shape. I felt it was necessary to write them down — to offer them to you, and to constantly remind myself as well.

What Is a Good Life

In my view, a good life is a kind of structure. Sleep, diet, and exercise form the foundation — they safeguard my health and keep my energy steady. Reading, friendships, and creative hobbies are the decorative layer on top, bringing joy and motivation to my days.

The Foundation of a Good Life: Sleep, Diet, Exercise

Let’s start with the basics. The importance of sleep has been discussed countless times, so here I’ll share a bit of my own experience. I’m someone who tends to overthink, often feeling anxious or troubled by distant, abstract problems. But I’ve noticed a pattern: negative emotions most often appear on days when I haven’t rested enough and my body feels depleted. Many times, nothing about the bad situation has been resolved — but after a good night’s sleep, my mood simply lifts. Of course, you might say, “Everyone knows sleep is important — the real problem is wanting to sleep but not being able to.”

On that point, I think the most common cause is that modern people’s minds are wound too tightly. Work and life bring constant pressure; during rest hours, social media keeps tugging at our emotions. The brain remains in a state of hyperarousal, unable to wind down into sleep. A Buddhist teacher once told me that even if you ignore the supposed supernatural benefits of chanting or copying scriptures, the act itself is a way of gathering the mind, slowing the thoughts, and calming the heart. For me, my own “mind-slowing devices” are reading and handwriting practice. Many books stir emotions, but far less intensely and less frequently than short videos. And when it comes to dense, difficult books, the effect is even better — they slow you down almost automatically.

The second essential pillar is diet. People often say the stomach is also an emotional organ — and as someone with a sensitive digestive system, I deeply agree. A few years ago, when I was emotionally unwell, I often resorted to binge eating. Bloating and diarrhea became routine, and sometimes I would even experience acid reflux late at night. Later, when I started 5:2 intermittent fasting to lose weight, I found that although the fasting days made me slightly hungry, my body felt lighter, my stomach finally settled down, and my mental state improved dramatically. Now I can clearly sense the pattern: when I eat balanced meals with vegetables, fruit, quality carbs, and protein, my stomach behaves. If I eat fatty or heavily spiced food, bloating and discomfort follow. After eating a lot of red meat, I can even sense a change in my body odor, and my skin seems to become oilier. As these self-observations accumulated, my food preferences naturally shifted — I didn’t have to force myself. Emotional overeating still happens occasionally, but most of the time, connecting what I eat with how I feel that day has truly led me to eat more healthily.

Earlier this year, I read a book called The Diet Myth, which gave me many new ideas. The book points out that 15,000 years ago, our ancestors ate about 150 different foods per week, while most modern people eat fewer than 20. Making matters worse, highly processed foods now dominate our diet. The nutrients listed on the label may look healthy, but food processing destroys natural structures, breaks down complex components into simpler ones, and adds many substances that negatively impact health — additives, antibiotics, and more. All these changes harm or reduce the diversity of our gut microbiome, which in turn affects appetite, destabilizes digestion, and leads to nutritional imbalance. The author suggests eating as many varieties of whole foods as possible; rather than focusing only on calories, we should pay attention to how processed a food is. He also recommends consuming fiber-rich foods, fermented foods that are not fully sterilized, and doing periodic light fasting — all of which help cultivate the gut microbiome, enhancing the digestive system’s ability and resilience.

The third foundational element is exercise. And for me, talking about exercise inevitably means talking about nature. I simply do not like going to the gym — a sealed, dull space filled with machines I don’t understand and people who look fitter than I do. I’ve bought gym memberships several times, only to waste them in the end. I first started exercising to lose weight, because my weight had reached a point where it was a real health risk. After considering all the options, I found that the only exercise I could truly stick with was walking. Suzhou is indeed a city made for walking — parks, lakes, and open spaces are everywhere. Day after day, I walked, and saw the sunset again and again. Spring buds and cherry blossoms, summer’s cotton-candy clouds, the scent of osmanthus in autumn, the winter sun tilting south… As someone long removed from farmland, the rhythm of seasons and nature returned to my life through movement.

Walking requires little concentration (other than when crossing streets), so I gave my ears something to do during that time — I listened to audio programs. I’ve always been interested in philosophy and other abstract subjects, but reading original texts is tremendously difficult. Fortunately, more and more university professors now offer accessible explanations for the public. They say walking aids thinking — Aristotle and his students studied philosophy by strolling through gardens as they discussed ideas. I imagine the two truly complement each other. With a beautiful sky overhead and programs I enjoy in my ears, walking several kilometers became easy; the weight gradually came off, and my mood grew lighter.

Exercise is hard to maintain, often because we frame it around long-term goals and forget to appreciate the joy of movement itself. After over a year of walking, I lost fifty jin, but the goal had been far too distant to motivate my daily effort in the beginning. Beyond scenery during walks or the thrill of competitive sports like badminton, exercise can dramatically improve your mental state for the entire day. I soon noticed that during periods when I maintained my exercise routine, my work efficiency improved noticeably, and my focus and output in hobbies after hours also increased significantly.

One evening, I was in a terrible mood due to something that had happened. When I got home, I suddenly realized I had forgotten to clock out after work, so I had to walk back to the office in the cold wind. Unexpectedly, just those few steps outdoors made my bad mood vanish. It was the first time I understood so vividly the emotional power of movement. Many times, even when I intellectually understand why I feel a certain way, bad moods still linger — perhaps the mind alone isn’t enough; sometimes the body needs to send a signal before emotions can truly unwind.

Some readers may have already noticed that when explaining why good living requires these foundational elements, I’m not emphasizing their long-term effects, but rather their impact on the present moment — or at least on the present day. Healthy sleep, diet, and exercise can indeed keep the body fit, help with weight loss, and potentially extend life. These statements are true, but distant goals rarely motivate us to practice good habits in our everyday lives. What is immediate are the physical comfort, improved mental state, and positive emotions that follow. When you can clearly feel these benefits and consciously associate them with your good habits, your motivation to maintain them increases dramatically.

Enhancements to Life: Reading, Friendship, Hobbies

Having covered the foundations, it’s time to talk about the fun, joyful, and enriching parts of life — reading, friendship, and hobbies.

When speaking of reading, we must mention the classic phrase: “Read ten thousand books, travel ten thousand miles.” I used to think the two halves were parallel ideas, but later realized how deeply intertwined they truly are. If one only reads without experiencing life, the content of books remains inert — mere dry wordplay. But if one only experiences life without reading, it becomes difficult to extract deeper meaning from one’s own stories, and nearly impossible to transcend the grip of everyday emotions. I’m fond of a remark by Professor Wang Defeng, who said, in essence, that one must read two books in life: the book without words — life itself — and the book with words — the classics of the humanities. Only by moving back and forth between the two can one truly understand either.

Reading also serves another purpose: it can help us overcome loneliness. As Alain de Botton writes in The Art of Travel:

These books can effectively prevent us from sinking into the melancholy that arises from feeling we do not quite belong to the human family: we feel isolated, misunderstood. Our more hidden sides — our confusion, our anger, our guilt — occasionally leap out at us from a page, and a sense of self-recognition arises. The writer uses precise words to describe situations we thought only we ourselves experienced. For a moment, we’re like two lovers who arrived early for dinner, excitedly discovering how much they have in common. We may close the book for a moment, smiling at the spine with a mischievous tenderness, as if saying, “How lucky I am to have met you.”

It is astonishing — so many subtle emotions that even close friends or family cannot grasp, yet a distant stranger, perhaps even someone from another country and another era, understands completely. I’m deeply grateful they chose to share their feelings and write down those words. Reading is only one form of this; I believe any high-quality, focused intake of information (such as documentaries or films) can have a similar effect.

The second joyful element is friendship. Here, I want to emphasize the importance of breaking out of one’s immediate social circle and seeking “distant” friends based on your own personality and interests. In school or at work, we naturally encounter close friends — those friendships are precious. But staying too long within the same circle easily leads to an information cocoon. Everyone enjoys similar things, worries about similar problems, and life starts to look like it has only one path, only one possible future. Only by stepping outside this circle can you witness the diversity of real lives. Even though the internet exposes us to countless possibilities, witnessing them in person still carries a different kind of power.

The influence of role models is immense. When a real person stands before me living in a way I admire, a new confidence rises in me — a sense that another way of life is genuinely possible. In recent years, many of my new hobbies — cooking, calligraphy, Buddhist studies — and even shifts in my personality can be traced back to certain friends. Without meeting them, I would not be who I am today, nor would this article exist.

In The Four Loves, the author contrasts friendship and romantic love, saying: “Lovers stand face to face, while friends stand side by side.” In his view, true friendship is not built on demands or dependency, but on two people sharing common interests and being able to exchange insights on a particular subject. In Chinese terms, this would be akin to being zhiyin — soul companions. Friends we meet in familiar social circles may accompany and support us, but for me there is still a subtle difference between that and the feeling of encountering a zhiyin. To maintain the latter, what is required is simply my own growth and enrichment.

We don’t necessarily need frequent communication. But every so often, when we have a long conversation or meet up, I share my new observations, feelings, and thoughts, and the other person does the same — and that alone brings immense comfort and joy. I’ve also found that as I enrich myself, I naturally meet more friends. Every time I pick up a new interest, such as calligraphy, I naturally meet people along that path. I used to think that maintaining friendships competed with my time, but now it seems the two things might actually be one and the same.

The final piece is hobbies — or more precisely, creative hobbies. Although films, reading, and exercise all count as hobbies, creative hobbies hold a special place. They represent the impact I have on the world around me, like a stone falling into a pond and sending ripples outward — a quiet, indisputable proof of my existence. It is said that one of the happiest moments in a baby’s life is when they first realize they can affect the world around them. Yet as adults, we gradually forget this joy, perhaps because of the alienation inherent in modern work. As Marx wrote in Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1812:

Thus the worker feels himself only when he is not working, and when he is working he does not feel himself at all. He feels at home only when he is outside his labor, and in his labor he feels outside himself. His labor is therefore not voluntary but forced; it is not the satisfaction of a need but only a means to satisfy needs external to it.

[…]

The result is that man (the worker) feels himself freely active only in his animal functions — eating, drinking, procreating, at most in his dwelling and in dressing-up. But in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human, and what is human becomes animal.

This passage is thought-provoking. Today, if we use our minds or bodies to create something, it seems it must result in some form of benefit. When people consider a hobby like drawing or writing, many ask, “Will I make money from this?” or “Can I do better than AI?” At the very least, we want likes. We forget that as children we played with mud and built things with blocks, happily absorbed for hours with no rewards whatsoever. Requiring a reward for doing something is the logic of work — a logic we’ve been taught from school through adulthood.

Why did early humans leave handprints and paintings on cave walls? Why did hunters and villagers create dances and folk songs? These things had nothing to do with external reward — people simply enjoyed doing them. Today, many feel both the pain of work and the need for work to give their life meaning, trapped in an impossible dilemma. Doing meaningful work is wonderful, but ideal jobs are rare. If the workplace cannot provide meaning for now, perhaps we should look to our hobbies.

A few years ago, my mother retired after decades of working. What seems to younger people like an enviable stage of life can actually be difficult. She called me several times, wondering anxiously whether she was now “useless.” I work away from home and have little vacation time to spend with my family, though I fully understood how she felt. She mentioned that she liked drawing as a child, so I enrolled her in an art class at the senior center. As expected, her skills improved rapidly, and she soon became one of the top students. When I returned home for the New Year, the reason for this quick progress became clear.

My old bedroom had been transformed into a studio, filled with stacks of sketches — on the table, in the cupboards, even under the bed. Our conversations shifted away from old topics. Previously, my parents mainly worried about my life — my health, my relationships. Now, our conversations were full of her creative joy. Whenever she finished a piece she liked or received positive feedback, she would happily share it with me. And I was genuinely happy for her.

At this point, some might ask: “But I’m not retired. Work already exhausts me. After work, all I want is to lie down and scroll on my phone. How could I possibly do all this?” Yet scrolling isn’t truly restful. Apps keep users hooked by constantly tugging at their emotions — joy, anger, envy, anxiety — creating a roller-coaster effect designed to maximize screen time, not wellbeing. Under constant emotional agitation, fatigue and stress only worsen. After hours pass, what remains is an amplifying emptiness. In contrast, hobbies engage the brain differently from work. Though they may appear effortful, once you focus, worries fade, and the “work-brain” finally gets to rest.

More importantly, hobbies help build a second narrative outside of work. We all want to accomplish something, to feel recognized or needed. Some people feel both the pain of their jobs and the belief that their worth depends entirely on their work. In such cases, creative hobbies can become a second pillar. They might not earn money, but they prevent one’s self-esteem and sense of meaning from becoming entirely tied to work. Even in difficult times, one can find comfort and confidence in what one creates.

This is the basic structure of a good life as I understand it: sleep, nourishment, and movement as the foundation; reading, friendship, and hobbies as the sources of joy. This explains only one half of the title. When it comes to good living, we all have our own ideals — the bigger question is how to achieve them. And that is the focus of the next section.

Self-Consistency Gives Me Freedom

Most people wouldn’t be surprised by the list of ingredients for a good life. Sleep, diet, exercise, reading, friendships, hobbies — these are all familiar concepts. The real challenge lies not in knowing what a good life entails, but in actually living it. How do we do the “right” things — many of which seem uncomfortable or inconvenient — amid the pressures of work and life, and the temptations of food delivery, ads, and endless online content? In this part, I’ll go into some concrete methods and approaches.

Self-Consistency, Not Self-Discipline

When talking about how to move toward a better life, there’s a famous slogan that seems to represent the mainstream belief: “Self-discipline gives me freedom.” I don’t deny that some people truly can achieve difficult goals through sheer discipline. But for most of us, the idea of self-discipline is like trying to quench thirst by imagining plums — it sounds good but rarely works. We often make grand resolutions, only to abandon them again and again. Not only do we return to square one, but our willpower and confidence take damage, making the next attempt even harder.

In my view, for the vast majority of people, the better goal is self-consistency, not self-discipline. There’s a famous metaphor called the “octopus of desires.” It suggests that each of us has many different wants and needs — like an octopus’s tentacles — pulling in different or even opposite directions. For example, I might want to lose weight, yet also desperately want the ice cream in front of me. I might want to travel, but I also need to work to earn money. To resolve such conflicts, two approaches naturally emerge: one is to let one desire suppress all the others; the other is to let them negotiate with each other, reaching a kind of balance or harmony. The first method requires little thought but is nearly impossible to sustain. Willpower is an extremely limited resource — it can be used in bursts, but rarely holds over long periods. We see this constantly in dieting. People often take extreme measures: suppressing appetite, eliminating all tasty food, eating only “clean” plants, and forcing themselves into intense workouts. I admit the results can show quickly, but fighting against natural human desires is a losing battle. Even if someone reaches their target weight, it’s easy to rebound afterward. The path of self-consistency works differently. It demands careful thought and observation — truly analyzing each of your desires. Which ones align with your goals? Which ones can be compromised or redirected? Which ones are illusions — implanted by external expectations and irrelevant to your real life? Once you observe clearly, it becomes possible to get back on track in a gentler, more comfortable way. Returning to the example of weight loss: there are many foods that are both healthy and delicious, and exercise can be done in ways that are fun rather than torturous. Good lifestyle habits require good psychological foundations as well. Moving toward self-consistency still takes effort — but the effort required is wisdom, awareness, and self-understanding, rather than brute-force suppression of your natural wants.

Self-Love and Awareness

Now let’s talk about the concrete steps toward self-consistency. People often say that love is an innate human ability, yet in real life, love frequently mutates into resentment, or good intentions end in disappointment. Genuine love requires subtle balance, but in practice our attempts often swing to extremes. When it comes to self-love, it tends to become either narcissistic indulgence — leading to self-centeredness and lack of restraint — or harsh self-punishment in the pursuit of excellence, where any shortfall triggers worthlessness and despair. Between these two, the latter is more insidious and harder to break free from, because it masquerades as being “for your own good.” I have been trapped in this myself. Later, while reading, I discovered that these self-attacking thoughts persist for their own reasons:

When we judge and attack ourselves, we occupy both roles — critic and criticized. By identifying with the hand holding the whip and the figure trembling on the ground, we allow ourselves to feel righteous indignation toward our own shortcomings — and indignation feels very good.

…

By setting unrealistically high standards, then feeling crushed when we fail, we subtly reinforce the sense of superiority tied to those high standards. Complaining about size-6 jeans being too large, or reacting to a critical annual review from a boss, we seem to broadcast a message that makes us feel above others. For someone accustomed to excellence, “good” is never good enough.

— from The Power of Self-Compassion

Looking back years later, I realized I didn’t dare to love myself unconditionally because I feared that if I did, I would lose all restraint. But the truth is this self-attacking state was rooted in pride. To protect that pride from being punctured, I avoided trying, avoided making effort, and stayed stuck. That version of “self-love” didn’t improve me — it kept me from growing.

Erich Fromm writes in The Art of Loving that healthy love requires a combination of unconditional and conditional love. Unconditional love alone becomes indulgence; conditional love alone becomes judgment and self-attack. So where is the middle way? I once saw a line in the film The Volcano Love that puzzled me for a long time:

Understanding is another word for love.

This sentence lingered in my mind. Later, through other readings, I finally understood: the secret to genuine love lies here. We’ve all experienced this — elders telling us “it’s for your own good” when we face major choices in work or marriage. Their intentions may be sincere, but without understanding our real circumstances, their love gets distorted. When faced with praise or setbacks, we judge ourselves solely based on immediate outcomes, forgetting why we ended up where we are. And yet the real possibility of change lies in the details of lived experience. For example: during a diet, I once encountered my favorite ice cream on a scorching day, and ended up eating a huge serving. The easiest reaction is self-blame. But a better approach is to understand why I acted that way. That day the heat was intense, my first choice of shop had a long line, I walked a lot searching for alternatives, and I forgot my water bottle and sunhat in my rush to leave the house. Coming across an ice cream shop when I was exhausted and dehydrated — giving in was simply human. Once I saw all these details, self-attack became unnecessary. The solutions emerged naturally: maybe I shouldn’t chase viral shops; maybe on hot days I should schedule indoor activities; maybe I should prepare better before leaving home… This is how awareness works. The original word “understanding” sounds slightly stiff — I prefer “awareness” or “seeing clearly.” Because this observation isn’t about rationalizing your behavior with neat logic, nor about judging from an omniscient perspective. It is about noticing every step that led you here and empathizing with your past and present self.

A close look at the human heart reveals many paradoxes. In reality, it seems far more common for people to love others — or objects — than to love themselves. People pour their feelings into partners, idols, pets, beloved brands, or into organizations and nations. Yet they forget that everything else is just passing through their lives. From beginning to end, the only companion who never leaves is yourself. Love — especially unconditional love — is simplest and most “reasonable” when directed at oneself. “There is no need to seek outward,” the saying goes. Many people toil tirelessly seeking love like a traveler in the desert searching for an oasis, forgetting that the oasis was at the place where they began.

Designing a Life

Self-love and awareness help us identify the real problems and prevent us from falling into the abyss of self-attack. But solving problems requires something more — a bit of creativity. And here, at last, my professional background becomes relevant: design thinking is surprisingly useful in everyday life.

When I talk about design thinking, I’m not referring to making objects pretty or visually appealing. Modern designers care far less about superficial aesthetics and far more about how people interact with things. They study and leverage human cognition to guide users toward specific behaviors — often for commercial goals. This sounds abstract, but in daily life, various apps are built exactly this way. Algorithms analyze your preferences and push content you’ll like; vibrant colors and animations highlight key elements to capture your attention; layers of cleverly designed coupon rules encourage spending and increase user engagement. These designs are not necessarily for the user’s benefit — many drain our time and money — but they share one core principle: They make users “voluntarily” do what the designers want. Douyin (TikTok) doesn’t force us to scroll two hours a day — yet countless people do. But when it comes to building good habits, we often rely on discipline and self-forcing. I believe the same design thinking that created Douyin can absolutely be transferred to habit-building in everyday life. With a bit of observation and thought, we can gradually design ourselves into a better life.

Here are a few examples from my own life. The first one, again, is about weight loss. Losing 50 pounds was mainly thanks to intermittent fasting. When people hear “intermittent fasting,” most think of the 16+8 method, where all food must be consumed within an eight-hour window each day. I believe it works — but I also think it’s extremely difficult for ordinary working people. Life is rarely regular: today you work late, tomorrow you have dinner plans. Eating schedules inevitably shift. If you’re starving after a long day but forbid yourself a late meal… If a friend visits from afar and you “aren’t allowed” to feast together… That’s just cruel. But if you break the rule “just this once,” it easily triggers the broken window effect — one failure leads to another, and soon you abandon the whole plan. To escape this dilemma, I abandoned 16+8 and chose the 5+2 method instead. With 5+2, you simply pick two days a week to moderately reduce food intake and adjust nutrition. If something unexpected happens, you can move the fasting day to another — much more flexible. If I can’t cook on fasting days, I’ll buy buns, eggs, or ready-made protein from convenience stores. Yes, they contain additives and lack vegetables, but at least they provide protein and prevent excessive sugar and fat intake. 5+2 may not yield instant results, but it’s sustainable for life. I gradually found that the light hunger on fasting days actually sharpened my mind, and my daily diet naturally shifted toward a more balanced pattern. I had tried strict dieting and intense workouts many times in the past — each time I rebounded. But with this simple, slow method, I finally succeeded. Sometimes the secret to achieving goals is not hardship, but gentleness.

The second example concerns posture. Modern office workers are plagued by neck and back problems. Countless products exist to address this: balms, supplements, massagers, lumbar supports, ergonomic chairs… And of course, the belief that we should use sheer willpower to sit up straight. But none of these truly solve the root problem. Massagers and medicine treat symptoms, not causes. Willpower is too limited to rely on — who can consciously maintain perfect posture for eight hours a day? So is there a way to solve this once and for all, preventing posture-related pain at the source?

After I started working, I began noticing this problem too, and unexpectedly, the answer had been sitting in my university ergonomics lecture notes all along. We’ve all seen those illustrations of the “standard sitting posture,” and people usually focus on the person sitting up straight in the center. But I gradually realized that the real protagonists are the desk, chair, computer, and footrest arranged around that person. The person isn’t sitting upright through sheer willpower — they are being guided into proper posture by the well-positioned furniture. Take the elbows, for example. Standard posture requires that when someone is sitting upright, their arms hang naturally, forming a 90-degree angle at the elbow. This means the desk and chair must be at just the right height. Yet in real life, people rarely pay attention to this. When the desk is too high, the arms must stretch outward, twisting the joints and pulling the upper body forward, resulting in slouching. When the desk is too low, one must lean downward to rest the arms on it, once again causing a hunched posture. There are other details as well: if a chair is too tall, the feet can’t rest flat on the floor, compressing the underside of the thighs and affecting blood flow; if the keyboard is placed too far back, it pulls the whole body forward; if the monitor is too high or too low, the angle of the head is inevitably affected. If we observe carefully and adjust every piece of furniture accordingly, we’ll find that maintaining proper posture requires no effort at all. As for lumbar pillows or ergonomic chairs mentioned earlier — they may be good designs, but if they’re not placed at the correct height and position, they simply cannot work.

The last example is about clothes hangers. A year or two ago, my clothes often piled up on the sofa. Lack of seating wasn’t the real issue — the bigger problem was that clothes stacked together would wrinkle, and I wouldn’t want to wear them the next day, which meant washing and drying them all over again. Later, I examined the situation more carefully. I always hung freshly washed clothes in the wardrobe. After wearing an outfit for a day, the clothes were still good for a few more days, but since they had picked up dust, I didn’t want to put them back into the wardrobe and “contaminate” the clean clothes. Once I noticed these details, the solution became clear. I needed an additional rack outside the wardrobe, specifically for clothes that had been worn but weren’t yet dirty enough to wash. When I moved to a new room, I immediately set aside a space and bought a clothing rack. With this setup, lightly worn clothes now hang in their designated area instead of piling up on the sofa. This frees up space and prevents wrinkles, reducing how often I need to do laundry. A problem that once felt troublesome simply resolved itself.

By observing daily life closely and designing subtle cues that guide our behaviors, good habits can become effortless. My own experience shows that this approach truly works. We don’t always need to restrain or force ourselves — often, change requires awareness, care, creativity, and a little patience.

Letting Change Happen

On the road toward a good life, understanding the principles and methods is one thing; actually improving your life is another. So I think it’s necessary to talk specifically about how to make change happen.

The first thing we must be clear about is this: plans do not change your life — only action does. This sounds simple, but in daily life we often confuse planning with action, or even mistake planning as part of taking action, which ironically delays and obstructs the behaviors that truly matter. For example, if my spending is too high and I need to save money, most people’s first thought might be, “I should start budgeting.” But budgeting itself doesn’t reduce expenses — only changing spending habits after tracking them does. I’ve done many similar things: I once listed all the weekly chores in a neat checklist, only to discover that the most efficient approach is simply to clean whenever I see something dirty; I also tried to organize a comprehensive knowledge base to aid my writing, only to realize that what I end up writing has very little to do with the information I collected — the time spent organizing would be better used actually creating things. Of course, what doesn’t work for me may still work for someone else, but the key is distinguishing what is essential from what is secondary. In all these examples, it’s the action that matters — the preparation, no matter how perfect, is only a tool or a means, not the action that leads to real change.

Now, suppose we’re ready to take action. Another obstacle appears: goals. This might feel counterintuitive — aren’t goals supposed to motivate us rather than hinder us? If a goal fills you with excitement and longing, then yes, it can be a powerful driver. But in real life, we often treat goals not as a source of inspiration or reward, but as standards — as things we “should” meet. When we compare our imperfect present with an ideal standard that feels obligatory, discouragement naturally follows. It’s like learning calligraphy, music, or any craft: in the beginning, your attempts will inevitably be clumsy, and the results will look terrible. This is a process everyone must go through. Comparing yourself after just a few days of learning with professionals who have practiced for more than a decade is absurd — yet this is exactly the kind of absurd comparison we often use to crush our confidence, causing us to quit halfway.

The absurdity of strict goals lies also in how easily we overestimate our ability to predict the future. Human thinking is linear, but the development of things is not. Take my own life as an example: when I first started cooking, I simply threw random ingredients into a pot every day — just to be healthy and save money. I never thought about doing it well. After a while, I found boiling food too boring. Then I watched the movie Julie & Julia, recommended by a friend, and realized that cooking itself could enrich life. So I began putting effort into improving flavor and presentation. After making meals I felt satisfied with, I posted them on social media, and friends soon asked whether they could come to my place for dinner. Now, inviting friends over for meals has become part of my social life. And through these gatherings, I’ve filled in the ingredients and steps I used to skip out of laziness, and gradually improved my cooking. The results I’ve achieved now are far beyond what I ever imagined when I began. Yet each stage quietly prepared me for the next. Those early, sloppy dishes — though simple — helped me become familiar with the kitchen, reduced waste, and made cooking a habit. My playful attempts eventually earned friends’ recognition, giving me confidence to serve meals as a host. And hosting dinner gatherings helped me organize my prep process, pay more attention to ingredients, and refine my sense of flavor. This October holiday, I finally had the ability to cook a full table of dishes for my family. All of this made my parents proud — they finally acknowledged my ability to live independently. I don’t know what this hobby will bring me in the future; I only know that what it has already given me far exceeds my original goal — and I will keep going.

Aristotle once discussed the hierarchy of “goods.” (Here, “good” means something far more abstract than moral goodness.) He believed the lowest kind of good is something desired only for its utility — such as money, whose value lies in its ability to be exchanged. A higher form of good is something desired both for itself and its utility — such as morality, where doing good brings inner fulfillment but also reputation or practical benefits. Both of these point toward something external. From this, Aristotle inferred the existence of a highest kind of good: something desired purely for itself, without regard for any external utility. I’m not sure what examples Aristotle would choose.

For me, the highest kind of good is simple: to let go of all goals and utilitarian concerns, and devote myself completely to one thing. When I practice calligraphy, I am not aiming for any achievement — I merely focus on writing this one character well, noticing the movement of the ink and the subtle motions of my fingers. Reading is the same: I no longer read for diplomas or qualifications, but simply for the joy of discovering new ideas.

In short, goals should not be tools for judging ourselves or crushing our will; nor should they lock us into rigid paths or predetermined futures. The most appropriate goal is, at most, a direction — like standing at the foot of a mountain and pointing at the distant peak, saying, “I want to go there.” But the route from the base to the summit is never obvious. There are wide paths and narrow ones, winding detours and routes that seem to lead the wrong way. Many stretches are dense with trees, where you can’t even see the peak at all. Perhaps after a long journey, you get lost, wander off course, and end up by a lakeside rather than the mountaintop. What harm is there in that? The peak may be the reason you started, but it is not where the joy of the journey lies. The joy lies on the winding paths, in the dark forests, among the unfamiliar birds and flowers you encounter, in the swaying treetops and drifting mountain fog. The scenery unfolds along the way, like an ancient handscroll painting gradually unrolled. When you think of it this way, which mountaintop you reach doesn’t matter anymore. What matters is taking that first step.

The Art of Living

The idea that a human being is an eternal, unified whole is false — and you know well how much misfortune this belief brings. You also know that a person is composed of many souls, of countless “selves.” To break apart this false unity into its many images is often dismissed as madness; for this purpose, science even invented the term schizophrenia…

Its value lies merely in sparing the teachers and caretakers employed by the state from the trouble of thinking or experimenting — their work becomes simpler. Because of this error, many who should be considered difficult-to-heal madmen are instead regarded as “normal,” even useful to society. And conversely, certain geniuses are labelled insane…

We perform for those who have experienced the dissolution of the self, for they can recombine the broken pieces of themselves at any moment, as they please, to achieve the endless variations of the theatre of life. Just as a writer creates plays with only a handful of characters, we continuously build new combinations from the many images of the fragmented self — combinations that stage new plays again and again, shift into new scenes, and keep the drama ever fresh with tension and allure. Please, watch!

This passage comes from Hermann Hesse’s Steppenwolf. In the book, the author believes that “schizophrenia” — in his metaphorical sense — is the true and normal state of human beings, while a unified psyche is false, unstable, and rare. Of course, in everyday language, schizophrenia refers to a severe mental illness. What Hesse describes is not that, but something closer to what I previously called the “octopus of desires” — the inner life filled with countless forces, longings, and contradictions that create tension and even internal tearing. Much of what I discussed in the latter half — awareness, self-alignment — is precisely an attempt to respond to these tensions. Not to eliminate them, but to help them find a balanced, vital coexistence.

I often experience imbalance myself, sometimes great, sometimes small. Even when the things I do are things I want or need, prolonged focus on any single one inevitably grows dull or leads to practical problems in life. Studying philosophy brings joy, but staying too long in abstract knowledge detaches one from lived experience, even causing one to look down upon simple delights like food or scenery, adding unnecessary trouble to life. Spending time with friends is delightful, but if all time is consumed by socializing and there is no solitude, thoughts cannot settle, hobbies cannot be practiced, creativity cannot flourish — eventually leaving one empty. Life, I think, is like cooking: it requires all five flavors and a balance of meat and vegetables. Helping the different facets of oneself coexist harmoniously does not mean forcing them to sit stiffly in the same room — it means letting them get up from their seats, talk kindly to one another, play, tease, mingle. Only then does life become lively and interesting.

Though I keep emphasizing that a good life requires no self-coercion, the fact that I’ve now written more than ten thousand words already shows how troublesome this matter is. Is life really worth such trouble? Camus said that a person’s fate is like Sisyphus, forced by the gods to push a boulder up a mountain again and again. After hearing this, I often wondered: today, many people have long passed the threshold of hunger and deprivation; some live comfortably, without fear of survival or hardship. If the threat of competition has faded, how does the divine still punish humanity? Now I understand: the divine command is no longer external — it resides in the human heart. People must do something. It need not be a career or anything grand, but one must accomplish, must strive, to feel life is not wasted, to ignite vitality. There seems to be a minimum requirement for human suffering. Either you take the initiative, using wisdom and action to choose your own path, or you passively accept the tests life hands you. Between the two, I would far rather choose the former. That, after all, is the true meaning of freedom: to be the master of one’s own life.

Everyday Miracles

I’m very fond of an anime called Nichijou. Beyond the plot itself, what moved me most was one line: “What we experience as ‘everyday life’ is actually a series of continuous miracles.” The fact that I’m able to write all of this now is thanks to my friends and family. Most of the insights I’ve gathered were learned from them. Of course, the chain of cause and effect didn’t begin here. Why I came to Suzhou, why I encountered this lovely group of people, why I became who I am — the vast and intricate web of conditions has no starting point, and will have no ending. They have become part of my life, and for you who are reading this now, this has already become part of your life as well.

I originally organized these thoughts to share with friends. I must confess: though I can write all this down, I don’t always manage to live up to it. After giving the first version of this talk back in June, I was surprised to find my own life improved quite a bit. The workout routine I had procrastinated for months finally began, and my daily rhythm became much smoother. It felt as if, while organizing and telling these things, I myself had also become a listener. I quit the workouts after two and a half months, but lately I’ve started swimming regularly again and returned to writing — so in the grand scheme of things, life hasn’t really slipped backward. An article can be finished, but when it comes to living well, there is probably no such thing as a once-and-for-all solution.

Aurelius said, “Life is more like wrestling than dancing, for it requires us to stand firm and ready for every unexpected attack.” A bit pessimistic, perhaps, but not wrong. The only constant is change, and the best thing I can do is pour my whole heart into living this one, singular, unrepeatable day.