Jimmy Beh

The self-help (or self-improvement) industry is now a multibillion dollar industry. It has guest speakers, one-on-one coaching, online modules, reading lists, and many other activities that are all aimed at helping you achieve your full potential. While the folks in this industry are hard working and genuinely do help people, there still seems to be a disconnect between self-improvement approaches and lasting change. In this essay, I am interested in exploring how a virtues-based approach to self-improvement might be a more sustainable way to improve yourself and your life. (and at the least it will definitely be cheaper).

First, we need to define self-improvement, and then we will walk through two virtues I see as being sustainable and practical alternatives to some standard themes in the self-help industry. Self-improvement, for the basis of our conversation, will be defined as the changes an individual makes (or is willing to make) to their way of thinking and acting in order to have more freedom and happiness in their life. 

For our first virtue, let’s start with Epictetus. Epictetus is a Stoic Philosopher who lived 2,000 years ago. He argued that the only worthy goal in life is freedom, and freedom is only attained by focussing on the internal not the external. Epictetus believed that “authentic happiness is always independent of external conditions… your happiness can only be found within.” As a former slave for the first thirty years of his life, Epictetus was not talking about achieving freedom in the abstract. He was speaking about how to live free regardless of your immediate circumstances by changing the way you think and focus your time and energy. 

This argument from Epictetus is related to the virtue of constancy. Constancy is surely a popular self-help term because it refers to the idea of staying consistent. However, I am not using this word to say ‘you need to be consistent with when you wake up and with what you eat’– although those can certainly support a healthy and productive lifestyle. Instead, the virtue of constancy is speaking to the idea of being consistently you. An idea that self-improvement approaches, at times, can get blurry on. 

Stanley Hauerwas, a theologian at Duke University, says aptly, “Constancy is the virtue that makes possible ‘you being you’ through the changes, changes that may be good or bad, that constitute your life.” These are changes in age, socio-economic status, career, or relationships to name a few. These changes may seem catastrophic at times, yet Hauerwas is reminding us that our goal is not to be rigid or emotionless towards these changes, but to always be ourselves through them. These changes and challenges give us the wonderful opportunity to know what we are made of. 

Therefore, if we approach the constant challenges and changes in our life as opportunities to know ourselves better, by focusing on the things within our control, we are able to find happiness and freedom in who we are, how we think, and how we act– at all times. 

The second aspect of self-improvement I want to examine is the appeal of fulfilling one’s desires. It is often an unconscious assumption that when we seek self-help guidance we are doing so because we want something that we do not have. That something is usually a job, lifestyle, material good or relationship that we believe, if attained or tweaked, will make us happy. You might hear things like ‘all I need is this level of income and then I will be happy’ or ‘if my boyfriend and I were on better terms everything would be better.’

Fr. Tony De Mello, a Jesuit Priest, has a beautiful line in his book “The Way to Love,” that says, “Another false belief: If all your desires are fulfilled you will be happy. Not true. In fact it is these very desires and attachments that make you tense, frustrated, nervous, insecure and fearful… The fulfillment of desire can, at the most, bring flashes of pleasure and excitement. Don’t mistake this for happiness.” 

It has become incredibly natural in our society to believe that the value of doing something is based upon the outcome it provides. The fruit of our labor. We go to work to make money, we work out to look good, we put time and energy into relationships to have them provide us intimacy. On some level perhaps there is a biological factor that comes into play around outcomes– eat what you kill and all that. However, we are not talking about survival here. We are talking about the disordered state of our desires and the need we all have for the virtue of temperance. Temperance is one of the four cardinal virtues that is associated with balance or moderation– an essential aspect of a good life.

The virtue of temperance is a thread that stitches through all the virtues because in moderation is where we find virtue. Aristotle referred to this idea by saying, “virtue [is] the mean between two extremes.” For example, between recklessness and cowardice we find courage. 

Now, you may have this initial gut reaction that choosing temperance means we have to always act stoically, or that we should not act strategically in order to be innovative or creative. This is not true. Instead, temperance helps us be in a more honest relationship with our desires. What is it we really want out of life? To love and be loved? To have reason govern our life– or perhaps faith? To be able to express ourselves? Whatever deep desire you hold closest, the virtue of temperance is your compass in making decisions around that desire. It helps you find clarity within your own extremes. 

Perhaps a real world example might help ground this idea. Imagine you are recently out of college and unsure about what you want to do. You are feeling strong, passionate emotions like anger, frustration, and sadness. In an attempt to address this state, you decide to attend graduate school. You know this will incur financial debt and you know you are still unsure on what it is you want to do– but blinded by your emotion and the desire for purposeful work you make the decision to go to graduate school. Those around you applaud the decision to further your education and pursue a meaningful career.

This decision, however, does not include the virtue of temperance because the decision was made while you were blinded by your emotions. You made the decision hoping that graduate school would give you an outcome that would make you happy– a sense of purpose and meaning in your work. The value of temperance in this situation would have been a push toward patience, so you could make a clear decision toward a clear goal rather than making a decision hoping that clarity would appear during the process. While using the virtue of temperance to practice patience amidst emotional distress is not as sexy as working toward a new car or a C-suite office, it is– undeniably–  a key aspect of a well-lived life.

In the end, I should be clear that although I shared my thoughts and beliefs around these virtues, I am by no means an expert at applying them to my own life. In fact, I chose these virtues precisely because I need to do a better job embracing them and turning them into daily habits. Hauerwas reminds us that “if you rightly understand the virtues, you realize that they’re meant not to protect us but rather to help us negotiate the dangers of the world in which we find ourselves.” So in this New Year I hope you are able to find that freedom and happiness you deserve through the virtues that help us all improve ourselves toward a well-lived life.