Virtues
It's a pretty safe assumption that if you're on this site, you are some kind of strength athlete. Or a strength enthusiast. Basically, if you hang around here much, chances are that strength is important to you.
We talk about strength all the time, but most of us know there's a lot more to being a man (or a woman if you prefer) than just being strong. Sure, strength is important, but only if it's coupled with strength of character. I'm going to go on a tangent for just a second, but it's an important point...
If you think talk of character is for parents or just useless in general, I have no patience for you. Who you are -- your identity as a person -- IS your character. It's not your job. It's not your hobbies. Its not who other people say you are. Your identity is your character. People often get this wrong and that's why they lose their minds when they lose their job. They crumble mentally when they are injured physically. I'm not saying that those things are not serious -- they are! But if you have a clear picture of who you are and not just what you do, then you are much more capable to weather such storms in life.
Back to virtues...
We all know lots of virtues. Self control, toughness, patience, kindness, compassion, etc, etc. Even strength -- physical and mental -- are virtues if you ask me. These things shape your character. Put another way -- they help define WHO you are and not just WHAT you do.
But if strength is a virtue and I asked you, "How strong is strong enough?" How would you reply? Since you're a strength athlete, I'm going to assume the answer would be that we're never "strong enough". We might be strong enough for a certain event, situation, or achievement, but it's never enough. It's a constant process of self improvement. We continue to pursue strength because we like it, but also because we know that when you need it, it's too late to start developing it. Strength is something that has to be developed in advance. The rest of your character is the same way.
Take self-control for example. You can ask the same questions that we asked about strength, just replace it with Self Control. How much is enough? You can't have too much. And since you never know what you'll need in the future, you should go about developing it now. That goes for all the virtuous aspects of your character. Become the person you want to be -- the person you will need to be in the future -- and do it now so that later when the storms come, you already have a strong enough character to weather it. And the storms will come. Everyone I know says "life is hard". It doesn't matter if they're rich or poor, happy or sad, tough or weak. Everyone gets storms from time to time. This ties in to the conversation we had earlier about mental toughness and self pity. You don't develop mental toughness once everything has hit the fan. You develop it piece by piece long before that through a process of controlling your thoughts and building yourself up.
Think of character like a world record squat or winning a top tier strongman event. You never just walk in on Day 1 and have it. Nobody is born with a world record squat. It's built piece by piece from where you are right now. How do you squat 500 if you can only squat 300 right now? Well, you exercise the squat. You practice and build yourself up to that achievement. Likewise, how do you build self-control if you have very little right now? You have to start by exercising it. If you look at others and admire their self control, yet do nothing about developing your own, that's like being an obese slob watching WSM on TV thinking, "boy, I wish I could do that." but never getting off the couch. We all see the problem with the one, but many don't see a problem with the other. That's bad because if you ask me, the whole of your character is far more important than the whole of your strength. Click here to see the discussion.
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