“The unexamined life is not worth living.” -Socrates (socratic method used to teach)

“You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.” Leonardo da Vinci

“He who cannot obey himself will be commanded.”- Friedrich Nietzsche

“Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.” – Bertrand Russell

“The perfecting of one’s self is the fundamental base of all progress and all moral development.”
Confucius

(development concept for a female Demon Hunter class in Diablo 3)

Almost all successful people who accomplish great things begin with mastery of the self. We can spend a lot of time arguing about what the self means, or if it even exists, but that is ultimately irrelevant. Take anybody you might respect or admire in any respect, and chances are that they have some semblance of what could be described as self-mastery.  Some people DO accomplish great things without much self-mastery, and the process is almost always destructive and heart-breaking to witness.

Absolute  self-mastery appears to be nearly-impossible to achieve. Perhaps it isn’t- and I think the Pareto Principle makes itself useful here too. Marginal differences in self-mastery make a huge difference. An analogy- you can never well-and-truly master a musical instrument, and the greatest musicians whom we anoint as masters are often quick to point out that they are still learning. That said, developing your mastery of your instrument improves your potential and capability as a musician- you could say about the fitness and physical self-awareness of an athlete or dancer. If it is obvious that the development of awareness and control over one’s instruments are pivotal to to the quality of one’s work, then I think it is self-evident that the relationship can be abstracted and extended to reveal the same insight over self-mastery and quality of life.

Self-mastery is its own reward. It helps you “accomplish great things” (a highly subjective concept), but even if it doesn’t, it could easily be perceived as a great thing in itself.  I would go so far as to postulate the following- If you have no idea of what you want to accomplish, aim to develop self-mastery, and you will most likely go on to accomplish great things. It’s a good place to start. Nobody becomes a brilliant dancer, painter, athlete or musician overnight, and none of those individuals can truly define, with absolute certainty, the contributions that they are going to make in their art. Many people switch roles halfway, change gears, try different things and go on to accomplish things that are completely different from what they set out to do- and that’s totally okay. It is the accomplishing that matters, the minor details of  which are irrelevant in contrast against the infinite alternative scenarios wherein nothing is accomplished whatsoever.

So that’s the fundamental idea underlying this entire 90 week experiment. It is my personal Bildungsroman. I have a decent idea about what I hope to accomplish with my life, but I am choosing not to discuss that- not here, not now. Instead, for the time being, I think it is far more prudent to focus on setting myself on a trajectory which will allow me to develop into the individual I will need to become to go on and accomplish that which I desire.

“Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.” – Leonardo da Vinci