The PATH: Action, Habits, and Character
sent by J.W. Bertolotti | January 3, 2022
Welcome to The PATH — a weekly reflection with three timeless insights for daily life. This week’s three insights are Action, Habits, and Character.
“Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”
— Lao Tzu
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1. Action
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
— William James
According to Martin Luther King Jr. “One of the great tragedies of life is that people seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practice the very antithesis of these principles.”
Attempt to follow any philosophy of life, and you will quickly discover how challenging it is. For this reason, Epictetus urged his students, “Do not talk about your philosophy, embody it.”
The American writer and humorist Mark Twain put it this way, “Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.” The virtuous path is a difficult one. “Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution,” wrote Aristotle.
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2. Habits
Day by day, what you do is who you become.
— Heraclitus
It is effortless to forget how the small mundane actions of life add up to create habits. Aristotle explained, “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
Similarly, the founder of Stoicism, Zeno of Citium (and the Buddha), stressed the idea that, little by little, every drop adds up. Good (virtue) and wrong (vice) actions develop into habits. Therefore, we must realize every action matters.
Mother Teresa illustrated the point like this, “We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.”
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3. Character
In Marcus Aurelius’s journal, known today as Meditations, he wrote, “Revere the gods, and look after each other. Life is short — the fruit of this life is a good character and acts for the common good.”
Two thousand years later, the writer David Brooks wrote in The Road to Character this advice:
Character is built in the course of your inner confrontation. Character is a set of dispositions, desires, and habits that are slowly engraved during the struggle against your own weakness. You become more disciplined, considerate, and loving through a thousand small acts of self-control, sharing, service, friendship, and refined enjoyment.
According to Brooks, by making disciplined, caring choices, you can slowly engrave certain tendencies into your mind. Doing so makes it more likely you will desire the right things and execute the right actions.
“You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one,” wrote the poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau.
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful. If so, please consider sharing it with others.
Each week, we send a short reflection with three insights to help you live your highest good. If you are not a subscriber to The PATH you can sign up here to receive it right to your inbox.
Image credit: Ryan Bahm on Unsplash
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