Know Yourself

The book “Killing Lions” is a conversation between John and Sam Eldredge about the trials young men face.

[John] The more you know yourself, the more this will prove an immensely helpful category. (And please, as Socrates urged, do not live an unexamined life; know yourself.) What are you historically prone to do when it comes to making decisions? If yours is a story filled with indecision, that “confusion” might have nothing to do with clarity and everything to do with fear, or shame, or a wounded heart. A young man afflicted with relational paralysis (he just couldn’t commit to the girl he was dating) came to my friend Craig for counsel. They discovered his indecision was rooted in a childhood wound. As a boy he loved music, but his father shamed him for it. He killed his dream and his desire, and for years afterward he could not discover “what to do with his life.” It had nothing to do with clarity; what was needed was healing.

Are you typically driven by a desire to please others? You don’t want to choose a grad school, a career, or even a spouse just to make someone else happy. Are you ruled by insecurity? You don’t want your false self committing you to a profession simply because it’s “safe.”

Don’t give your false self the keys to the car.

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