Know Thyself by Joseph Campbell

"Only by much searching and mining are gold and diamonds obtained, and man can find every truth connected with his being if he will dig deep into the mine of his soul."

~ James Allen, 19th century philosopher

Self-awareness. Remember Socrates? The Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece? What did they teach us?

“Know thyself,” of course.

Well, how well do you know thyself?

What are your greatest strengths? What are you most passionate about? When are you most naturally yourself? What are you most proud of? What gives you goosebumps? If you were absolutely guaranteed to succeed, what one thing would you dare to dream?!?

I can’t begin to stress how important self-awareness is. Again, all kinds of scientific research has been done on this subject.

Psychologists have often wondered why IQ isn’t that well correlated with success and happiness in life and several authors have explained the keys to what Robert Sternberg calls “Successful Intelligence”: In its simplest form, he says that the most successful people in the world know their strengths and know their weaknesses; they create a life around their strengths and spend enough time on their weaknesses so that they’re not liabilities.

Basically, they “know themselves.”

Martin Seligman, the past President of the American Psychological Association, Professor at Penn, one of the most preeminent psychologists alive and the founder of the current positive psychology movement, wrote a book called Authentic Happiness.

In it, he boils down Aristotle’s good life to a simple formula (ridiculously simple but backed up by some impressive philosophical and scientific data).

His axiom: Know what he calls your “signature strengths” and use these strengths as often as possible throughout your daily life.

Sound simple? It is in theory.

Tragically, most people don’t take the time to figure out what they are and even fewer actually consciously build their lives around them...

So, what are your greatest strengths? Are you creating a life around them?

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

~ Plato, 5th century bce Greek philosopher

More from Joseph Campbell…

• Joseph Campbell’s Big Ideas
• Joseph Campbell’s quotes
• Buy the book from Amazon!

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