I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. ~ Aristotle
There is no doubt that Leonidas was ready to face any outside enemy. But had he mastered himself?
What does that mean?
To me, this is talking about the eternal internal struggle of humanity. We seem to have a gap between what we know we should do and what we actually do. People who smoke or overeat are two obvious examples. Overcoming ones desires is a very difficult thing for most of us to do.
Conquering an enemy, or defeating any external obstacle, that is easy when compared to conquering that which lies within ourselves. With everything focused on the outside, you can ignore the internal conflict. When facing yourself, you must bring a level of honesty and integrity that is very admirable, and more than a little difficult.
Why is self-knowledge important?
Self discipline begins with self-knowledge. Self knowledge is necessary to understand your motivations and your desires. So to overcome your desires, you must start with self-knowledge, then you can move to self-discipline, then, with practice, comes the victory over your desires.
But why is the victory over your own desires, well, desirable? For all of the people who have no vices and no character faults, you have probably already done something like this. For the rest of us, this victory over self is a way to improve ourselves and attempt to eliminate another personal weakness.
Where can I apply this in my life?
Grab some paper and write down all your faults. No, wait. Let’s start by picking a portion of you life where you feel you need some improvement. Choose two or three faults and write down something specific about each. These should be the specific aspects of your life that you want to improve.
Take a moment to look at the choices you have before you. Think about what the result would be if you could overcome that portion of your life. How much of an improvement would it be? What part of your life would be improved, and by how much?
Now look at each and determine how difficult of a task it would be to completely overcome that aspect of yourself. Should any of them be divided into steps? Not everything should be tackled in one go. Make notes next to any of the choices that will be broken into chunks.
Now take a moment and select which choice (and chunk, if applicable) you have decided to purse. Again, take a moment to become invested in the end result. How will this particular change improve your life? Can you see yourself and how you feel with your change in place? How much better is your life? What aspects are better? Jot some notes about the new you next to change you are getting ready to start.
Now comes the hard part. You have to be honest with yourself, brutally honest. You are going to have to dig into why you aren’t behaving the way you think you should. Each time you think you have an answer, ask yourself “Why?” again. Keep digging. If you don’t get the root of this weed, it will likely come back, and you don’t want that.
Once you have a clue as to why you do what you do, you have achieved a new level of self-knowledge. Now that you understand yourself a little better, you can start to figure out how to interrupt your usual pattern of behavior. It’s time for some self-discipline.
Nature abhors a vacuum, so you will need to replace the old behavior with something that is more in tune with what you want for your improved self. What would be the ideal replacement behavior? Think about it, and write down a few notes, so you can check your progress in a few weeks.
The next step is to try to make the new behavior automatic, and the old behavior abhorrent. Only you can determine how to make the new behavior a regular part of you, but making the old behavior unwelcome is fairly easy.
You chose this behavior because it has some aspect that you dislike. Think about how much you dislike that behavior. How will it mess up the whole rest of your life? How will it impact your friends and family? If you make this as painful as possible and associate it with the old behavior. Some of that pain should rub off, and you will feel a pang of remorse when doing the old behavior. At least that’s the way it works for me.
Will this work like magic? That depends. How honest were you with yourself? How deep did you dig to find the real root of your problem? How much effort did you put into regretting the old behavior? How much effort did you put into finding a way to remember to do the new behavior? These factors, plus your dedication will determine how well this works.
Don’t fret, you can always come back and try again, armed with the knowledge of what worked and what didn’t. Self-knowledge and self-exploration is a journey, not a destination. You can do this every month for the rest of your life and still have things to work on. They’ll just be smaller and smaller each time. Get busy!
From: Twitter, @philo_quotes
confirmed at : http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/a/aristotle117887.html
Photo by Guillaume Cattiaux
