The Reflective Life

How should you live? Should you devote yourself to perfecting a single talent or try to live a balanced life? Should you lighten up and have more fun or buckle down and try to achieve greatness? Should you try to be a better friend? Should you be self-critical or self-accepting? And how should you decide among the possibilities open to you? Should you consult experts listen to your parents do lots of research? Make lists of pros and cons or go with your gut? These are not questions that can be answered in general or in the abstract. Rather these questions are addressed to the first person point of view to the perspective each of us occupies when we reflect on how to live without knowing exactly what we''re aiming for. To answer them The Reflective Life focuses on the process of living one''s life from the inside rather than on defining goals from the outside. Drawing on traditional philosophical sources as well as literature and recent work in social psychology Tiberius argues that to live well we need to develop reflective wisdom: to care about things that will sustain us and give us good experiences to have perspective on our successes and failures and to be moderately self-aware and cautiously optimistic about human nature. Further we need to know when to think about our values character and choices and when not to. A crucial part of wisdom Tiberius maintains is being able to shift perspectives: to be self-critical when we are prepared for it but not when it will undermine our success; to be realistic but not to the extent that we are immobilized by the harsh facts of life; to examine life when reflection is appropriate but not when we should lose ourselves in experience.