Stalling isn't necessarily a bad thing. Being unproductive isn't either.

Life is the greatest of all gurus. Your friend is a disciple along with the rest of us.

True. Not necessarily bad. It does wear on a person to hear someone talk to his lengths about plans and never see action though.

I guess I am looking to understand the motive behind pushing his theories on people. I agree with the dream it do it stay positive talk. I just differ in the fact that I don't need to share my goals and theories. I know my goal and I will complete it. Maybe he is looking for some kind of approval he is missing?

Don't know. Most people have some annoying features. Weigh the good against the bad. Good rule of thumb: don't try to fix people.

Just yesterday I was walking into a hardware store, a fantastic idea had just come to me. It occurred to me that all I could do is watch my life as if I'm watching a movie to see if the follow-through will accompany this particular idea. But I'm older. I've been watching this movie for a while now. Visualizing may or may not have any bearing.

Once I was at the base of a cliff. The landscape was covered in about a foot of snow. I decided my best way forward was to climb the cliff (which I'd done before without the snow.) About a third of the way up I reached an iffy portion. I'd need to jump like superman and grab. I took a moment and visualized the leap several times. I leaped and caught two hands full of ice and slipped all the way back down the cliff. At the base again, I let out a scream because it hurt and without thinking I just scrambled up the cliff without any visualization at all... probably the way the average primate would do it.

Good analogy... I do wonder what weight visualization actually has to real life. Not as if that is measurable.

I forgot where I read it but the author wrote that relationships are the most difficult thing that one can attemptin life.

He is on his journey and you are on yours. Can both of you figure out a way to work it out? It does take two to Tango and I assure you, from experience, the Tango is very difficult since it requires two to dance as one.

All I can suggest is to be true to yourself, say what you feel and then observe and learn from what happens, all the while paying as much attention to yourself to others. Hope this helps a bit.

Very true. I guess I have already been on the right track with it in that sense. I tell him what I see and just let him think what he wants and do what he wants with it. Hard to watch a friend struggle with wanting to be better and do better (and I feel like I know how to get there) but he can't seem to hear the suggestions.

Talking is an action per se. Some people make a living just by talking - lecturers. From the time we wake up till the time we go to sleep, we're acting in a play with an audience watching our moves - our judgers. What is the worst of the judgers if not our own consciouness? The claps mean our success. But does recognition mean we're on the right track? If your friend's actions are to be changed to suit a need, the question is where does this need come from.

I suppose he just doesn't need the things that I think are "needs" or that he claims are goals. Maybe once they become a need (physically or mentally) he is be more apt to put his unspoken plans into motion.

I don't think it's too controversial to say that most people, if not all people, live most of their lives "in the future". They contemplate what reality could be like, what their lives could consist of. This is one of the great contributions from phenomenology, it seems: possibility is always "better" than actuality - existence itself seems to be some sort of imperfection. So long as the dream is maintained, the actual world is forgotten. An escape from reality that provides a person meaning even if the dream never actually comes to be, a dream in which they imagine a perfect avatar of themselves.

I have a friend who is always talking in terms of philosophies of life. — Rachel

You understand, I would guess, that you are addressing a room full of people who are "always talking in terms of philosophies of life". You are probably making a couple dozen souls jittery just by bringing up the topic of unproductive philosophizing.

The guy likes to talk. It's a way of being in the world, his shtick. Maybe he needs new material--more interesting content, better jokes, improved delivery.

While some of the world's problems are the result of people who are all talk and no action ("All that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing,") most of the world problems are caused by very efficient and effective people who are very good at doing things, whether they talk about it or not. Like Donald Trump, for instance. He's one busy guy and a royal pain in the body politic, par excellence.

On the other hand, I assume he is not holed up in a basement closet playing video games and reading Plato. It is good for people to engage the physical world -- do something, run, walk, swim, climb, dig, lift, pile, build, destroy -- something.

What does he do all day?

Have you read that book, The 7 Habits of Not Very Effective People? I wrote that.

Hi Rachel and welcome to TPF.

I don't have any links to the relevant studies, but there is evidence in psychology suggesting that stating publicly what you're going to do makes it less likely that you will do it, and also that positive thinking doesn't work, at least for some people. Your friend could be making things hard for himself.

Aside from that, if your friend's social media posts are anything like the ones I see on Facebook, then there isn't anything very philosophical in them, even if he includes quotations from famous philosophers. It sounds like your friend might be uncritical of himself and dismissive of the criticism of others. This is very unphilosophical.

I like to be realistic, so I would agree with you that the steps towards a goal don't just magically transpire without a lot of work. I find positivity of the kind you describe humourless and dishonest, and that has brought me into conflict with people like your friend. It's not much to do with philosophy--more to do with the fashions of self-help, the law of attraction and all that stuff.

While he definitely needs to act to reach any goal of his, I don't think that that the "philosophy" is a crutch to not do them, though it is an act itself, as has been mentioned. What we want is very difficult to figure out after all, and nowadays there's a lot of choices, so I would see the philosophy as a projection of a sort of tendency towards the future that we all have, but that is too unclear to lead to any action, since the steps needed for action are not clear. There's no first step to be taken, so no action is possible, like not knowing where to start to clean with your room as a complete mess.

So I'd say the talk stage is important, though can be frustrating to others. It could provide an opportunity to start him on thinking of the goal more concretely (e.g. what does he want, what kind of person is he in those visualizations, why does he want it) so that he can get a more clear picture of it and start finding the steps himself. I do think that he has to act as well though, but if it seems there's nothing to gain it's difficult to start before you've started, and to gain something from an action before it gives an external reward (e.g. money, ability to do something, appreciation from others) there has to be some end to an action.

What he seems to have is hope for the future and the will to act (this I assume from all the talking, though it might just be for the rewards of seeming like the motivated, successful type of person, and a kind of self-delusion), so I'd agree that there's insecurity (from what seems a kind of imperfection, as has been said), but that's just a necessity to live with your (what seem like) imperfections when you hope so much from yourself. I'd think that if he finds the end and is able to figure out (with trial and error) the steps towards it and diminish his affection towards things irrelevant to that end, he'll be able to walk the talk, so to speak.

Rachel, this is called laziness. Ambition is pointless without discipline.