Below are questions to ask yourself to identify the extent to which you maintain various balances. This is a suggestion you can use as a starting point when writing in a diary or journal as an exercise.
Heroic citizenship.
How willing are you to take risks and make sacrifices for others, with your time, resources, and energy? For relatives and family, taking risks for the local community, starting businesses, founding organizations, participating in public debate?
How curious are you about science? How curious are you about philosophy? Nonfiction? Newspapers? Philosophy? Fiction? Podcasts?
How systematic is your civic engagement? Do you make sure you don’t become a hooligan? Is it a sustained commitment that actually leads to change?
Outward inward lookingness/caring curiosity
How do you view the needs of others? Is it something that feels overwhelming and burdensome, or something that gives you a sense of purpose?
How much do you think about social issues compared to personal issues? How much time do you spend on your personal struggles versus your civic struggles? What takes the most energy from you?
What do you talk about with your friends and family? Do you talk about your personal life or civic engagement?
How much of your thinking is caring and compassionate? Or is it cynical, misanthropic, or filled with resentment?
Is that concern limited to a specific group, or is it more universal?
How much time do you spend thinking about and acting against the system?
Is some form of specialization part of a greater good?
Discourse
To what extent is there awareness of the power and power techniques that exist and to which one is subjected?
Who are the enemies? Have you made yourself an enemy? Do you really have the right enemies? Do you make sure to avoid becoming a monster in the fight against monsters? Are enemies more often bad ideas, processes, structures, discourses, and organizations than people?
Are you practicing to become better at collaborating with other people? How do you collaborate with other people? Do collaborations come easily?
If you use power techniques, are they justified? Are they used sparingly and in response to others’ illegitimate exercise of power?
Are the most productive battles chosen?
The degree of awareness of what can be influenced and what cannot be influenced, and acting accordingly?
Adventure, risk, security,
How often do you try new things?
Does your life feel like an adventure? Are you a tourist or a flâneur?
To what extent do routines lay the groundwork for discovery and new thoughts/actions?
Are you too cautious? Are you too spontaneous?
Do you feel secure? What determines your level of security?
Do you take calculated risks with your time, energy, resources, and pride?
Are you open to the future?
Do you share responsibility for your life? Or have you placed all the responsibility on your own shoulders, or have you shifted it all away and see yourself as a victim?
Playful Lightheartedness
Is there room for playfulness in your life? Does that playfulness support an ethically good life, or is it escapist hedonism?
Do you bring humor into your life?
Have you gamified your life in the right way? Have you consciously chosen which points you’re trying to collect, or are you collecting points in a status race that’s actually meaningless?
Do you participate in creative communities that aren’t purely hedonistic and aren’t sucked into industrial productivity?
Eudaimonic Hedonism
Where do pain and pleasure come from? Do they result from hedonistic or eudaimonic activities?
Is there room for simple, restful hedonism, such as spending time in nature?
Is pleasure created through strenuous activities several times a day, for example through flow?
Do you incorporate physical activity, which gives you energy, into your routine every hour?
Embedded Autonomy
Do you have a say in your own life across different areas? Or do others make all the decisions all the time?
Do you have power over others that you misuse?
Are you part of communities to which you contribute, or do you expect someone else to invite you in and manage your social life for you?
Do you maintain a balance between closeness and distance with others?
Do you have a private life?
Are you immersed in responsibilities and duties, rather than just taking what others can give you?
Rationalized Enchantment
Do you seek the truth without preconceived conclusions based on dogmatism?
Do you seek to enchant and sanctify your life in rational ways?
In what ways are you bound by enchantments that aren’t good for you or society?
Are you curious about science and philosophical reflections on values?
Do you feel a resonance, that is, are you moved by the world, or does it feel mute, silent, alienating, boring, or even repulsive?
Experiences of wonder and being moved. Experiences that bring about change.
Is there openness regarding the meaning and meaninglessness of life?
Do you feel that the practices and contexts in which you participate feel meaningful?
Flourishing, Rest, Pain
Where do “feelings of happiness” come from when you reflect on your life, is it from seeing yourself as a moral person, or from the experiences you have as a private individual?
Time for rest and exertion. How focused are you on rest and exertion? Are you half, focused when you’re exerting yourself? Are you half, exerted when you’re resting? How much procrastination occurs?
How many activities provide emotional energy?
Historical Awareness and Rhythm
Does the future inform a present, focused approach in which one strives for the good life?
Does knowledge of history support the pursuit of the good life?
Is your consciousness primarily in the present, deeply focused?
Does the future give you a sense of purpose in the present, and do you approach the future with openness and a positive willingness to take risks?
How much control do you have over your time? Are you a temporal citizen, a follower, or an entrepreneur? Do you consciously use ways to slow down and speed up, or are you bound by the rhythm of others?
Are you rich in time or poor in time? Are the activities you engage in immersive, allowing you to experience each moment fully, or are you fragmented in the present by multitasking?
How much of your time feels like a waste, where you’re stuck in trivialities and nonsense?
Efficiency and speed in performing various tasks central to good citizenship, reading, writing, acting, organizing, and learning new things?
Reflective Action
Is life approached through an experimental, iterative process of trial and error?
Do you act on what you learn, or does that knowledge stay inside you? Do you act as if you hadn’t learned what you’ve learned?
How often do you align your reflections on what you want or should do with what you actually do? What’s holding you back?
Is there time for action and learning/thinking? Or is your life filled with being busy with things that don’t matter?
Reflexive Emotionality
Are emotions used as a source of energy and as signals for what is good and bad in life? Is this done in a non, naive way?
Do you have goals beyond your emotions?
Do you get caught in emotional spirals where your reflection beyond emotions has little effect on how you react?
Genuine pretending
Do you maintain a certain distance from various identity technologies: authenticity, roles, profiles? In other words, are you not an identity fundamentalist who tries to build your identity day in and day out so that it becomes absolutely perfect? Does your identity become an over, goal?
Simplexity
Where does the complexity in your life come from?
How is life structured to handle complexity?
Do you avoid complexity, leaving others to take responsibility instead? Have you unnecessarily complicated your life too much? What can be removed to make your life better, by subtraction?
What practices can you add to improve your life and the lives of others?
Realistic Idealism
Do you act and think like an adult or like a child? Do you go along with the infantile tendencies in society?
Do you have a critical awareness of the challenges ahead, yet at the same time an optimism that you can overcome them? Do you think that if you don’t do it, who will, or do you think that someone else will do it, and if it goes badly, that’s to be expected?
The Body
Are you in sync with your body’s biology? Do you take care not to become culturally disconnected, engaging in practices that create stress for your body?
Are you careful not to overemphasize the biological aspect and overestimate the plasticity of your body and brain? Do you use nature and your body as the resource and tool they are, with their inherent limitations?