To live well and prosper, first know your natural bent, your star, your genius and the place suitable to these; here live. Follow your natural profession.*
Marsilio Ficino

… becoming.

Courage means to live from the heart.

For this, we have to be who we are and not who we are not.

For this, we require humility: that is not to have to high an option of myself, nor too low an opinion, but a true opinion.

Back in 1489, Marsilio Ficino published his book on self-improvement Three Books on Life, and, whilst he mixes a number of things into this, including astrology, he expresses a timeless truth: we must recognise our talents and preferences.

Ben Hardy has written much more recently about the critical nature of our environments for growing ourselves, But Anna Katharina Schaffner notes that the fifteenth century, Ficino also

urges us consciously to choose the environment that harmonises most with our needs.**

Humility is critical for something else, too.

Together with gratitude and faithfulness, it helps form our inner guide as someone we can trust, our Truth-Self.

Not that this Self is ever fully formed, rather it is ever seeking to be complete.

I really appreciated a conversation yesterday with one of my dreamwhisperers about whether we can trust the inner guide – look at what some get up to because they trust their inner guide – because it made me really think about how we need to positively develop the person we can trust, and part of this is the conversation with good, loving, reverent, compassionate sources.

My inner guide is a communitas, not only me on my own.

*Marsilio Ficino, quoted in Anna Katharina Schaffner’s The Art of Self-Improvement;
**Anna Katharina Schaffner’s The Art of Self-Improvement.