Week 6

I really like Elder N. Eldon Tanner’s talk in our reading this week from April 1975 General Conference called Success is Gauged by Self-Mastery.

He quoted several different philosophers. I really thought they were some good quotes.

Plato said: “The first and best victory is to conquer self; to be conquered by self is, of all things, the most shameful and vile.”

I like how Plato compared self-mastery to conquering yourself. Self-mastery is like a battle with yourself.

Leonardo da Vinci said: “You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself.” Then he goes on to say that “the height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery, the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. … And this law is the expression of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others.”

Da Vinci’s quote states that if you can’t have self-mastery over yourself, you won’t make a good leader over other people. I think this applies well to being an entrepreneur or boss someday. If I want to be a good businessperson or boss in the future, I need to work on my self first and then I will be ready to lead others.

Solomon in all his wisdom made this meaningful statement: “He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.” (Proverbs 16:32) 

Some one that is patience can be good because sometimes good things take time, and you can’t always have what you want when you want. And you need to have patience because if you have a long-detailed project, you can’t rush though it because your work can end up messy and not the quality of work that you wanted.