May 26, 2025
In ancient Greece, there is a Temple of Apollo located at Delphi.
Upon the entrance is encrypted the statement “Know Thyself.”
For centuries philosophers have discussed the application of this principle in many ways.
Unfortunately, in the modern world, the ability to truly “know thyself” has slowly been eradicated in the culturally distracted norm that we embrace on a daily basis.
For most of us, we barely have a few quiet moments to gather our thoughts, let alone to spend time in quiet contemplation analyzing our thoughts and dreams to truly understand who we are and where we want to go…aka to know thyself.
A common thread that I have observed in my short 9 years of serving patients is the trend to do the opposite of knowing thyself…which would be to forget thyself.
The cultural phenomenon of Muhammad Ali and the statement, “I’m going to show you how great I am”, is an embodiment of a portion of knowing thyself – courage, confidence, bravery, fearlessness in the face of adversity…you get the point.
However, in the 21st century this statement is viewed as a chauvinistic philosophy and frowned upon as a pompous, arrogant person and not one that is embraced for truly accomplishing greatness.
Instead, we are inundated with the philosophy of self-depreciation and negative self talk and imagery. It is almost as if we embrace the shaming identity and idolize it day in and day out to curb the success principle of HWPO (or hard work pays off) aka knowing thyself. In exchange, we decided to embrace shaming these people. We say disempowering statements like:
- “He was just lucky.”
- “Must be nice to have that quality of life”
- “I wish I could look like that.”
- “My genetics are flawed”
- “I just got dealt a bad hand for my health”
This trash needs to stop this instant.
As a former moderate level collegiate athlete, these statements rob people of the blood, sweat, tears and years they have dumped into pursuing something amazing, more specifically the art of truly knowing thyself.
Instead of playing victim and associating yourself with low power statements like I just provided above, it is time to start setting aside time to truly know yourself on a daily basis and organize your thoughts to see exactly where you are great.
Maybe you are a great husband or wife.
Maybe you are a great friend.
Maybe you are great at business, counseling, singing, raising kids.
The odds are endless and the changes are high that you actually are great at something in this life and you have chosen to ignore it because society has shamed you from showing excellence.
Listen, the “everyone gets a trophy generation” needs to be buried 6’ under ground.
An Olympic Gold medal takes YEARS of work.
Building a 6 figure business that is generational…takes YEARS of work.
Constructing a state of health that is free of disease and illness…takes your entire life.
There are no days off.
There is no retirement.
You have one life to live and if you decide to waste it by ignoring yourself and your greatness, you are going to get no empathy or sympathy from yours truly.
Take a chance, right now.
Know Thyself and pursue the things you are great at. That is your God appointed duty as a human in this time and this place. To know thyself is to fulfill your vocation in this life so you may celebrate in the next.
And guess what…if there is an area you are lacking in…and this message stung just a little bit…it’s a nice little reset to start pouring the rest of your life into improving your mind, body and spirit so you too can be great at pursing what God put you on this earth to do.
Know Thyself and be great at it!
Remember…it’s 4:45 AM…a long time ago I was living of the world and cultivating this habit has created the opportunity for me to know thyself…and if you are walking with me, wherever you are in the world, know that I am praying for you as you figure out how to nurture your roots.
Since I don’t make posts like this on social media … if there’s someone you know that would benefit from reading this, share it with them so they can start working on making their Monday great again.
