Is this the life you meant to live?
What are your goals serving? Which stories have you accepted as true? Where is your attention going? Explore three ideas from Akhil Gupta’s Love, Learn, Play in your own life.
When the pursuit of more crowds out what we wanted it for.
Sound familiar?
Think back over a recent day. Check the moments you recognize. Each opens a question; choose one you want to stay with.
Stay with one question that matters to you. What could you choose next time that makes more room for love, learning, or play?
Prompts adapted from Akhil Gupta’s Love, Learn, Play.
The book behind the questions.
Three ideas from Akhil Gupta’s Love, Learn, Play.
Overcoming False Narratives
After visiting a friend’s larger apartment, Akhil returned to a home that had once exceeded his dreams. The comparison had changed what counted as enough.
When I came back home, I was very unhappy, as I did not like my place anymore. It felt so small—so inferior compared to my friend’s new apartment. I was possessed by my wants.
But then I had a dialogue with myself, reflecting on how foolish this reaction was. After all, most people would probably be thrilled to be in my place. Why was I trapping myself in an apartment I now saw as insufficient compared to my desires? Why did I allow myself to compare what I had to what my friend had? After all, my apartment satisfied all my needs for an abundant life. I realized that my bout of envy offered me little personal fulfillment. Now, more than two decades later, I still enjoy living in that same apartment, despite a multifold increase in my wealth.
Chapter 2 · Overcoming False Narratives, p. 68
The apartment had not changed. The story about it had. A belief can be so familiar that we stop seeing it as a belief: success has one shape, someone else’s gain is our loss, more will finally be enough. Examining a narrative means asking what supports it, what challenges it, and how it shapes our choices.
An inherited belief is not necessarily false. It deserves examination, including evidence that might change our minds.
Love. Learn. Play.
Cultivating an LLP mindset is not adding chores or stopping what you enjoy doing; it’s about rediscovering and engaging with your three innate longings. It’s like putting on new glasses that change how we experience the world. In the words of Proust, “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.” Great painters have looked at the same trees, grass, clouds, and flowers you pass by without notice and turned them into beautiful visions. Nothing is so mundane that it cannot be a source of wonder, creativity, love, and the deep satisfaction of being alive, here and now.
Chapter 8 · Cultivating a Love, Learning, and Play Mindset, pp. 187–188
UEF explores human flourishing through the world’s wisdom traditions and modern science. Gupta proposes love, learning, and play as ends worth experiencing in themselves, within the lives we already lead.
Excerpts © Akhil Gupta. The reflection prompts apply ideas from chapters 1–3 and 8 to everyday life.