22/11/2025
Client: You keep telling everyone “Know yourself,” but Thales said knowing yourself is the most difficult thing in life. Why bother teaching the one thing that’s basically impossible?
Know Yourself Centre: Do you agree with Thales that it’s the most difficult?
Client: Obviously. People spend decades in therapy and still get surprised by their own reactions.
Know Yourself Centre: Exactly. So if it’s the hardest thing, shouldn’t it also be the most important thing to try?
Client: Maybe, but if it’s truly the hardest, most of us are doomed to fail. Why set everyone up for failure?
Know Yourself Centre: When you learned to walk, did you succeed on the first try?
Client: Of course not. I fell a thousand times.
Know Yourself Centre: And did your parents say, “Walking is too difficult; better not try”?
Client: No, they kept encouraging me.
Know Yourself Centre: So even though walking was impossibly hard at first, the trying itself is what made it possible. Is knowing yourself any different?
Client: I guess not. But at least when you fall while walking, you see the bruise. When you fail to know yourself, you don’t even notice.
Know Yourself Centre: True. So the first step of knowing yourself is noticing that you just failed to know yourself. Isn’t that already a tiny bit of self-knowledge?
Client: Okay, fine. But most people think they already know themselves pretty well.
Know Yourself Centre: Do you think you know yourself pretty well right now?
Client: Better than most, yeah.
Know Yourself Center: A minute ago you said people are constantly surprised by their own reactions. Which one is it you, or “people”?
Client: (quiet) ….
Know Yourself Centre: See? The moment you claim “I know myself,” something inside already starts proving you wrong. That discomfort you just felt; isn’t that the beginning of actually knowing yourself?
Client: So you’re saying the path starts the second I admit I’m clueless?
Know Yourself Centre: Exactly. Thales didn’t say “knowing yourself is impossible.” He said it’s the most difficult. Difficulty is not the same as impossibility. The first act of self-knowledge is agreeing that the job is hard, and that you haven’t finished it. Have you taken that step yet?
Client: I’m taking it right now, aren’t I?
Know Yourself Centre: Yes. And that tiny admission just made you wiser about yourself than ninety-nine percent of people who are certain they’re already done. Welcome to the hardest, and therefore most worthwhile, work there is.
Know Yourself Centre
-knowledgelearning
