Know Thyself
by Miki Saxon
How does one really change for the better, since it seems so much easier to change for the worse?
One takes time to know thyself.
The proverb has been around for eons. It started with the ancient Egyptians, who inscribed it in the Luxor Temple (“Man, know thyself, and you are going to know the gods”), continued with Socrates and Plato, and on down the centuries.
The oldest philosophical wisdom in the world has one piece of advice for us: know yourself. And there is a good reason why that is.
Without knowing ourselves, it’s almost impossible to find a healthy way to interact with the world around us. Without taking time to figure it out, we don’t have a foundation to built the rest of our lives on.
Interest in knowing oneself has decreased as the number of distractions have increased.
Why?
Because it’s often uncomfortable, requiring us to face stuff in our beliefs and our MAP that we would rather avoid or just plain ignore.
Worse, getting to know yourself requires time spent alone and in silence — anathema to the modern world.
Being alone and connecting inwardly is a skill nobody ever teaches us. That’s ironic because it’s more important than most of the ones they do.
You aren’t born knowing yourself, nor can you learn about yourself from others.
However, spending the time and effort required, and enduring the sometimes extreme discomfort, to develop and use this skill provides the highest ROI of any effort at self-improvement in both the short and long-term.
Learn the skill.
Apply it.
You’ll never regret it.
Image credit: Zaneology
