At some point in time we all have found ourselves in the position where we felt lost, like we
didn’t know what steps to take next, having no confidence in ourselves and feeling like
we’ve lost control over our lives.
To regain that control does not mean to become able to control everything that happens to
you, but rather to gain the necessary confidence in yourself and your capabilities that you
can tackle anything that life throws at you.
Throughout history, many have pondered over the best strategies one can take to get that
control back and feel confident again, with writings on the subject from as far back as
the ancient Greek philosophers, including Plato.
Plato lived between 429 and 347 B.C.E and he is without a doubt one of the most influential
writers in the history of philosophy.
The ethical, philosophical, and political questions he raised in his work are so profound
that almost every great thinker from any epoch after him was influenced in one way or another
by Plato’s work.
Plato was the first thinker in history who established philosophy as a rigorous and systematic
examination of life’s important questions.
His philosophy is often referred to as Platonic idealism and his biggest contribution to the
field is the Theory of Forms or Doctrine of Ideas, which is the philosophical view that
what we perceive through our senses are illusions, merely the shadows of a more profound reality.
Plato was part of the trio known today as The Three Great Golden Age Philosophers, together
with Socrates, Plato’s mentor, and Aristotle, Plato’s student.
Plato was the one who founded Academia, or The Academy, the first world’s university.
He was very involved in the educational system of Athens and wrote a great number of books.
Some of his most important books include: The Republic, Phaedo, The Apology of Socrates,
Parmenides, Symposium, Protagoras, Charmides and many others.
In almost all his books, Socrates’ figure is overwhelmingly present.
Socrates didn’t write anything in his life but, through Plato, his philosophy became
heard across the millenia.
That is at least in part because Plato’s way of thinking often coincided with Socrates’.
Plato didn’t provide abstract teachings through his books, but rather had lessons
which anyone can apply to their own lives.
Some of the most basic lessons have to deal with the idea of being a good citizen and
friend without overestimating your own ideas, to hold yourself to the same rigor you hold
others to when you are making assertions, and to always look for intellectual integrity.
Another important lesson is that first you need to take control over your life by first
conquering yourself, your impulses and drives, in order to live a moral and fulfilling life.
To better understand the Platonic philosophy on how we can better take control over our
lives, here are 5 lessons from the philosophy of Plato:
Change your mindset
Plato said: “Reality is created by the mind.
We can change our reality by changing our mind.”
In Plato’s view, what we perceive by our senses is not true reality.
Our perceptions are just the shadows of a world of ideas that we can access through
reasoning.
For Plato, the mind is not simply an instrument to perceive the physical reality we see with
the naked eyes.
Reasoning, using your mind, is the only way to access the world of Ideas, the true reality,
which is beyond all physical objects and natural phenomena.
Thus, the more sound our reasoning is, the closer we are to true reality.
To understand what is truly real, we don’t need to look outside, to the external world,
but inside, into the intricacies of our own mind.
Only when you look inside yourself, when you use philosophy as a tool to clarify what is
right and what is wrong, what makes logical sense or what does not, can you reach the
truth.
When you reach then truth, then you can start developing certain life principles, guides
to use to act properly in society and how to treat your fellow human beings.
Moreover, you will start to see what is around you much more clearly, as well as understanding
yourself much better.
Knowing what is good and bad will help you act faster, more decisively and more ethically.
Knowing who you are will change your reality; you will attract like-minded people and start
to live a more fulfilling life, in line with your core principles and values.
However, according to Plato, just because we wish something to happen, does not imply
it will.
Reality does not change according to what we wish.
But what we can change is how clearly we perceive what is truly real if we change our mindset.
Reality can be understood only through deep thinking which helps us understand the most
profound concepts of reality, including what is good and bad.
Plato understood that by changing one’s mindset, we can elevate our minds to a higher
level of understanding.
True change can only come from looking inside.
When we understand ourselves better, the reality around us will change.
According to Plato, our normal lives are spent in a sort of cave and we can see only the
shadows of true realities, projected on its walls.
To see true reality, we need to get out of the cave, in full daylight.
Only when we strengthen our mindset, learn how to control it and focus on reflecting
more on the deepest issues of our existence, will we be able to get out and see a brand
new reality.
The quality of our thinking influences how we feel and how we feel influences how our
body reacts, how we behave, and consequently who we become.
For example, consider you’re unemployed, because of this you develop a negative attitude
and low self-esteem, thinking you are a failure, feeling discouraged and depressed.
Your body will reflect this state of mind, you may slump your shoulders, avoid eye contact,
and generally project no confidence.
If we are to follow Plato, the solution to get out of this helpless state is not to correct
your behavior, apply behavioral psychology or use some psychological tricks to make you
feel better, but rather to reflect deeply on why your way of thinking was wrong in the
first place.
You need to use objective reasoning and try to see yourself from the outside.
Perhaps you can look at other people around you.
Are there people you know who are out of work, but are otherwise extremely skillful?
Can you know cases in history when highly qualified men or women were refused a good
job?
Take Walt Disney, for example: In 1919, Disney was fired from the Kansas City Star newspaper
because, according to his editor, he: "lacked imagination and had no good ideas”.
Let that sink in a moment: The man behind the most popular entertainment brand for generations
got fired from a local newspaper for his lack of creativity!
If this is true then we can see objectively that being unemployed today doesn’t deny
one the potential for success in the long term.
Thus, by reasoning objectively, you can access the reality behind your fears and you can
start to have a clearer perspective on what is truly possible for you.
Changing your mindset will change your reality.
The more optimistic and confident you become, the more eager you will be to apply for other
jobs on the market.
Deep reasoning will help you understand what is possible for you and will help you change
your mindset, which is the first step in taking control over your life.
Change your habits
According to Plato “We do not act "rightly" because we are "excellent", in fact we achieve
"excellence" by acting ''rightly”.''
A major aspect of taking control of your life is to take control of your habits.
To reach our goals, we need a plan, which cannot work if we do not follow through.
Habits are those activities which help us progress towards our goals.
To achieve anything worthwhile, we need to prove that we can be excellent in a certain
area.
For Plato, excellence is not a gift but a skill that takes practice.
Talent is not enough, we are not skilled from the moment we are born, and any talent needs
proper work.
Plato was a great example of a person who achieved excellence by acting rightly.
He achieved excellence by becoming one of the greatest philosophers, it can be said
that philosophy is one of the inventions of Plato, as he was one of the first thinkers
who laid down in writing a rigorous philosophical system.
In addition, he was also the founder of the Academy or Academia, the first organized school
in Western Civilization.
None of these were by accident, he chose to make education and philosophy a priority in
his life and he worked to bring his ideas into reality.
He didn’t expect other people’s help to achieve his goals, he took control of his
life and he by himself made the plan to achieve his goals and he followed through with the
plan.
No matter how brilliant he was, he knew that only through the habits of the hard work of
writing and coming up with initiatives could he succeed.
The habits that we choose to apply in daily life will take the form of our character in
the end.
The more you practice certain habits, the more they will become a part of yourself,
the more they will define you.
Therefore, it is important to have a vision of the goal you want to reach, of the person
you want to become, then you can construct a system of habits to help you take you there.
The bigger your goal is, the more careful you need to be with the kind of habits that
you have.
If you want to be a great salesperson, for example, you need to practice being in front
of the clients as much as possible, you need to have the habit of making many phone calls
per day and have the habit to learn from other successful salespeople before you, either
by directly asking them about their sales strategies, or by reading books written by
them.
If the habits that you have now don’t reflect the habits of a successful person you want
to be someday, then you need to change those habits and make sure you adopt the right ones
on a daily basis.
You cannot be in control of your life if you cannot control the kind of activities you
do every day.
Be in control of your emotions and behavior
To quote Plato “The first and best victory is to conquer self.
To be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.”
According to Plato, to be in control of your life is to also make rational thinking a way
of life.
This means that whatever you do, you need to guard your behavior, the words you say
and the emotions you feel, and act only after you filtered all your impulses through your
capacity of reasoning.
Although it sounds like common sense, in reality it takes a huge amount of willpower and discipline.
Plato compared the human soul to a person driving a chariot pulled by two flying horses:
one horse is white and beautiful and represents our thumos or “spiritedness”, emotions
which are justified by a spirit of justice or other noble sentiments, the other horse
is black, ugly and bad and it represents our destructive emotions.
The white horse is the part of our soul which gives us the rational and moral impulses and
the ugly horse is the one who pushes us towards irrational passions.
The white horse is immortal, temperate, modest and well-behaved, not needing any whips, while
the black horse is mortal, deformed and stubborn, and does not follow commands.
The chariot intends to lead the horses to the heavens, in the world of pure Ideas or
Forms, but the main challenge is to control the black horse that causes problems and pulls
us towards the earth.
To be able to climb to the heavens, or in other words, to access true reality or to
reach enlightenment, the driver has to learn how to control the black horse, and they can
control it only when they focus on heaven, on the world of forms, on the abstract concepts
behind the physical objects we see in our physical world.
However, we cannot throw our irrational passions overboard, so we should try to apply them
in a constructive way, to cooperate with the voice of reason.
If we don’t, they can backfire and cause extreme damage to our life.
Nothing is more rewarding than to know you conquered yourself, that you can drive your
actions in the direction you consciously want them to go, not in the way your emotions and
impulses demand.
If however you make decisions impulsively, nothing else would matter much, because you
would always be in danger of destroying everything you are trying to build.
Consider you love your job and want to rise up the ranks in your company, but you find
out your boss took one of your ideas and claimed to his bosses that he thought of the whole
thing.
Now he really needs your help to stay and work overtime in order to work on the project
and you, because you feel angry with him for stealing your thunder, refused him.
Instead of seeing the big picture of the situation, you just followed your first emotional urge
to punish your boss.
Or it might be the case that you have a drinking problem, the need to drink dominating your
daily life.
In this case, alcohol has conquered you and to gain your control back, you might need
to begin therapy sessions to address the problem.
No matter how big your problem is, there might be some ways to improve your situation and
to increase your willpower to resist the destructive emotions and control your behavior.
You need to learn to control your emotions and behavior if you want to be in control
of your life.
If you don’t control your emotions and behavior, you will damage all of your personal and professional
relationships, your career, your wellbeing and you could find yourself in a downward
spiral from which it will be very difficult to climb back.
The more you learn to control your emotions and behavior, the more in control of your
life you will be.
Pursue your deepest passions
In the words of Plato “To the degree that I cease to pursue my deepest passions, I will
gradually be controlled by my deepest fears.”
In Plato’s works, it can often be seen that Plato wanted to puzzle his readers by revealing
some truths contrary to common sense.
For example, one might think that when you pursue your deepest passions, you would face
difficult obstacles, that you would always be fearful of failing, and that you would
eventually end up facing your deepest fears.
However, Plato argues that the opposite is true.
It is when you stop pursuing your deepest passions that you end up being controlled
by those fears.
Although in some books like Phaedo, through the voice of Socrates, Plato emphasized the
danger of being controlled by extreme and destructive emotions, in other works Plato
recognized the huge importance of following constructive and noble passions.
For Plato, only the soul is immortal in us and our soul is trapped in our body which
is mortal.
During our life, there is always a conflict between the soul who is concerned with what
is good and rational and the body, which is driven by irrational passions.
If we are oriented towards pleasures like food, drink and sex, we would keep our soul
imprisoned in the body and it will not be able to express itself in this world.
Moreover, pursuing such common pleasures keeps us in fear.
The more concerned we are about living a lavish life, the more we fear we will lose our job,
not measure up to our peers, or lose our status in society.
A life focused on pleasures and security brings more anxiety.
By contrast, if we orient ourselves towards intellectual pleasures like philosophy, education,
the desire to contribute to society, to innovate and create, we will see ourselves as parts
of something greater.
We will be more inclined to take more risks and in doing so, achieve greater success and
fulfillment, because we pursue our deepest and most elevated passions.
In this case, we fear less, because our identity is not defined by what we lack or could lose.
Instead it is now defined by our positive contribution to the world.
Something we have already achieved, something immutable, locked into history.
Pursuing our deepest and most elevated passions helps us in reducing the fears in our life
and thus increases the sense of being in control.
Being less attached to worldly pleasures, like living in a big house, having expensive
cars, or over-indulging in physical pleasures, we can experience a greater sense of freedom,
allowing us to be more in control of our lives.
Be the leader of your life In our final quote from Plato for this video,
he says “He who refuses to rule is liable to be ruled by one who is worse than himself.”
Plato often talked about the importance of getting involved in politics.
He was of the opinion that society should be composed of three groups - first the plebs,
the most inferior, then the ‘soldiers’ to keep society under control and the third,
the rulers who should always be philosophers.
Plato thought that philosophers, the most intelligent in his time, should govern over
the less educated ones.
Democracy meant that political decisions should be made by the “demos”, meaning all people
in a state.
Plato was against this idea as he considered that making political decisions requires the
judgment and skills that only experts have, experts being in his view, philosophers.
However, his view that people should be proactive and should strive to lead those who are less
knowledgeable than them deserves consideration.
Many of us have had moments when, instead of assuming leadership in uncertain situations,
we felt scared and we let people less qualified than us lead us.
When we do this we leave them control over us, and this can have damaging consequences.
When we repeat this pattern of not taking initiative and leadership, other people will
take advantage of us and will rule over us.
To take back control of your life, you need to learn to make your voice heard, to analyze
each situation objectively, to recognize those situations in which you have the most expertise
and to take control of them when needed.
For example, it might be the case that you need to say something in a work meeting when
you see a problem, even if your position in the company is very junior.
Your courage for speaking up leads to the issue being addressed, and improving the company.
This may be rewarded and may even lead to a promotion.
However, if you just keep quiet when others around you make mistakes and you follow along
with bad decisions for an easy life, you will continue being ruled by them and as such,
they will have control over you.
According to Plato, the person with the most knowledge in a situation should call the shots,
no matter the position of that person.
Do not let yourself be intimidated by the hierarchy of the team you are part of.
You are the leader of your own life: Do not allow anyone to make decisions instead of
you if they have less knowledge than you in matters at hand.
Choose to be the ruler of your own life, to take control of your mindset and find true
happiness.
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Thanks so much for watching.