The 2,000 Year Old Temple Inscriptions That Sum Up How Self-Improvement Works

It turns out that the ancient Greeks knew some secrets that we’re still struggling to learn

During the height of Ancient Greece’s influence, one could go to Delphi and visit the renowned Temple of Apollo. It was one of a series of temples built around 550 BCE. Unfortunately, it was destroyed under the influence of Roman emperor Theodosius I around 390 CE.

In one of the pillars in the forecourt of that temple were carved, 3 maxims — said to have been the best advice of the revered 7 sages of ancient Greece. They were:

Know thyself
Nothing in excess
Certainty brings ruin

Over 2,000 years have passed since the temple was built, and these maxims still hold true. In fact, in the absence of established rules for yourself, you could do a lot worse than these.

Know Thyself

I’ve attempted to explain self-improvement and personal development to hundreds of people over the years. And I don’t think there’s a better way to sum it up than this:

Self-improvement is actually just ongoing, iterative self-discovery.

We can’t improve what we don’t understand. And so many of us don’t understand ourselves nearly as well as we think we do. And it’s often during the process of trying to simply find out who we are that we stumble upon the very things that will propel us to incredible personal development.

That’s why reflection is such an important part of the journey of self-improvement. But it also explains why so many people are frustrated by that journey.

People can adopt a productivity system, build an awesome morning routine, and adopt a positive mantra. But without getting to know themselves deeply, none of that will yield sustainable growth.

And because situations are constantly changing, and in turn we also change, knowing yourself is not a one-and-done achievement. Rather, you learn, revise, and rediscover things about yourself. Again, this is why reflection is so important. The less you really know yourself, the less you can trust in yourself to follow through on things. And if you can’t trust in yourself, you don’t have much going for you.

Nothing in Excess

There’s a theory that dates back to the days of Aristotle that says that any virtue is simply the midway point between two extremes. An excess of something or a deficiency in it ends up being a liability.

For example, courage is said to be the midway point between two extremes related to it. One extreme is cowardliness — the avoidance of danger or conflict to a fault. The other extreme is foolhardiness — the careless headlong jump into any and all conflicts or danger.

Another example is someone’s bias regarding action. Always acting right away to address situations can lead to errors, waste, and getting in your own way. But tending to wait all the time before acting — gathering data, ruminating, etc. — can have similar undesirable results.

While people tend to understand that you shouldn’t have too much of anything, they tend to forget that the opposite is true as well. We can get into mindsets where we believe the answer is to impose harsh restrictions on ourselves. No more eating this. No more drinking that. Never, none, zero. But this mindset is also an example of excess. It can very quickly backfire on you, even with the best of intentions.

So, since an excessive tendency toward either end of a given spectrum tends to be bad — aim for the middle. Be temperate. Practice restraint and moderation. Of course, this is easier said than done, I know. And that’s okay. The journey of personal growth, in large part, is about learning to avoid the harmful excesses that can be so easy to fall into.

Certainty Brings Ruin

All things being equal, we humans crave certainty. We don’t tend to take risks regularly, and we long for the sure things. But anyone who’s thrown down the yokes of comfort to pursue serious personal growth can tell you what happens when you cling to the sure things: stagnation. That stagnation comes by way of dependence.

The way it happens is: you get dependent upon the comfort of the sure things. And after a while, you close yourself off to anything that seems to risk that comfort.

This happens all the time with people’s belief systems. They cling so tightly to the intellectual certainty of their web of beliefs. They stop asking questions — for fear of finding out they might be wrong. They surround themselves with like-minded people, who serve only to support their existing beliefs. As a result, they grow very little — if at all.

The Takeaway

For all the ways the world has changed in the last 2,500 years, there are principles from that time that still represent the best advice for modern living. The 3 discussed here are by no means all-encompassing. But they’re at the very least universal.

They’re not the whole story of what it means to live a good life, but they do certainly have a place in whatever version of that concept someone might come up with.

In fact, many of the principles and values we adopt can be derived from these 3. Alternatively, following these principles can be gateways to finding the specific values and principles that drive our individual lives forward.