An Emersonian Guide to Taking Control of Your Life

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Sometimes, you can feel as though no one wants you to think for yourself. All day, every day, through our devices, news-media diets, and social-media accounts, we are inundated with others’ opinions on all matters. Politicians, corporations, media figures, strangers, and friends tell us what to do and think. To be a good and right-thinking person, you must vote for this, believe in that, buy this, hate that.

Have you ever fantasized about somehow rejecting all of that—blocking out the noise and focusing on your own thoughts and judgments? If so, you are hungering for what Aristotle called , or “self-sufficiency,” which he believed is a requirement for true happiness. By this, he did not mean doing for yourself, such as growing all your own food or removing your own appendix. He meant making your own choices about your life and welfare, based, developing “a reliance on internal resources to provide life with coherence (meaning) and fulfillment.”