🦉 The Wisdom School
The Wisdom School is a podcast by the Perennial Leader Project, an organization dedicated to providing tools for the art of living. Here, you’ll find short clips from the In Search of Wisdom podcast and selected readings from ancient philosophical and spiritual traditions.
On Being Honest with Yourself
In this episode of The Wisdom School — I share a short clip from my conversation with Julian Baggini (author of How to Think Like a Philosopher). You can expect to learn what philosophy can teach us about knowing ourselves and navigating the world.
🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
You write in the book of this brutal honesty with yourself. What does that brutal honesty, in your view, look like in daily life?
Julian Baggini — Self-knowledge is a huge issue; it's difficult. I say brutal self-knowledge, but there are people who are too hard on themselves as well. Maybe you could say I've got too much in mind, the kind of people who need the brutality, and I'm not thinking enough about the people who need a bit more self-kindness.
But, again, it's difficult. I think if you go back to Aristotle’s mean, getting the exact balance is difficult. So a general strategy we try to do is you, you error on the side that it's better to error on. And so if you're looking at yourself, you need to push yourself to the side, the opposite side of where you would tend to fall.
If you tend to be a rather cowardly person, you've got to push yourself to be braver than you're comfortable with, right? Similarly, if you're rash and you jump into things, you've got to push yourself to actually take what might seem a little cowardly in terms of your own assessment. […]
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Thank you for listening; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
J.W.
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