Focus on Your Strengths

If you try to act a part beyond your powers, you not only disgrace yourself in it, but you neglect the part which you could have filled with success.

The Manual of Epictetus

How often in life are we presented with choices that take us down different paths? On the one hand, there is something we know we can do, and on the other there is the challenging opportunity that will stretch us and push us but require that we become someone we are not. The self-help, success culture of today would suggest we go for that thing that challenges everything about us rather than pursue the thing that aligns with who we are. Is it wise to try to become something you are not? 

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes. If there is not a new man, how can the new clothes be made to fit? If you have any enterprise before you, try it in your old clothes.

Walden

Henry David Thoreau

I can look at a man and, for whatever reason, desire those things he has or look with envy at his accomplishments or good fortune, but in the end I am also wishing I was someone other than who I am. We should work with the clay we have rather than wish we were made of different clay. Others have their own natures and good fortune that brings them their own burdens and freedoms, but in the end we are stuck with our own clay that can be molded, but not turned into something it is not. We all have to come to understand our nature and mold how we live to that nature so we can accomplish our true life's work. Keep well.

Fear

What you must practice and have at command is to know what you ought to approach with confidence, and what with caution; all that is beyond the control of the will with confidence and what is dependent on the will with caution.

Discourses of Epictetus 

The above quote, to me at least, is stating things in the opposite way I generally think. I tend to fear the unknown, fearing those things I can't control, but am confident about those things around me that are in my control. But, if I think honestly about it, it's clear we are our primary enemy. Looking back over my own life, any real damage that was done to me, whether physical, mental or financial, was the result of poor reasoning and a misapplied will. We are the villain we have to fear, not the villain in the street. Yes, there are horrible things coming to all of us, but most of those things are beyond our control so should not be feared. What we should fear are those things that are within our control. 

How do we come to avoid those things that are damaging to us? By using the one power that makes us human: our reasoning ability, our ability to stop, think and determine where we have control and where we do not. 

If I think back to problems that have occurred in my life, following the roots to the seed that grew the weed, I find that I planted the seed. At some point I made a choice based upon poor logic or, usually, no logic at all. For example, we spend hours thinking about the upcoming election, but ignore the things within our own houses that we should be working through. This isn't about being "happy," it's about not wasting our lives obsessing over things completely out of our control. For example, I used to read a lot about Nazi Germany and the Holocaust based upon being part German and living in Germany as a child. Historically, not to be trivial, it's an amazing, well documented piece of history. When I lived in Germany, I still saw the scars of war--bomb craters in the woods and ruins. But really, why read a dozen books about it when one would have done the trick. Why fill my mind with those grim stories and images of death and destruction. On a much smaller scale, I think we spend a lot of time with our own tragic stories going round and round in our heads reliving some childhood sadness, adult disappointment or worse. At some point, using our own reasoning power, we have to clear the shelf of those memories. Pull the weed.


This is what we have to fear: the demon within us that will push us to pursue actions that lead to an empty life built upon delusions. In the words of Seneca: A man is as miserable as he thinks he is. 

If we work to apply reason to our actions and thoughts, we can tame the beast. Keep well.