In 1726, at the age of 20, Benjamin Franklin
established the 13 Virtues for
self-improvement. While Franklin wasn’t able to always follow his own advice
regarding to the virtues, he aimed to inspire others to live a better-quality
life (Cain, 2016). Below are Franklin’s 13 Virtues and a short description of
each (PBS, 2002):
1. Temperance:
Eat not to dullness. Drink not to elevation.
2. Silence:
Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself. Avoid trifling conversation.
3. Order:
Let all your things have their places. Let each part of your business have its
time.
4. Resolution:
Resolve to perform what you ought. Perform without fail what you resolve.
5. Frugality:
Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself: i.e., Waste nothing.
6. Industry: Lose no time. Be always
employed in something useful. Cut off all unnecessary actions.
7. Sincerity: Use no hurtful deceit. Think
innocently and justly; and if you speak, speak accordingly.
8. Justice:
Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.
9. Moderation: Avoid extremes. Forbear
resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.
10. Cleanliness:
Tolerate no uncleanness in body, clothes, or habitation.
11. Tranquility:
Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.
12. Chastity: Rarely use venery but for
health or offspring; never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or
another's peace or reputation.
13. Humility:
Imitate Jesus and Socrates.
Of the 13 Virtues, I was mostly able
to relate to sincerity: where ones
communicate and act in accordance with their feelings, thoughts, and beliefs. Personally,
I believe this virtue is very important since sincerity also revolves around
honesty (McKay & McKay, 2008). In my organization for example, sincerity is
very important since it help establish positive relationships and trust with my
students. As an advisor and a student myself, I want to ensure they succeed and
do not go through some of the struggles and mistakes I’ve experienced. Because
of this, I often times share personal experiences to enhance or clarify advisement,
but to also show students that I understand and is willing to help.
Prior to the making of this blog, we
were given a brief placement quiz based on Franklin’s 13 Virtues. While the
results show that I overall made very virtuous choices and closely followed
Franklin’s own self-improvement plan, the two virtues I might need to focus
more on were resolution and moderation. I chuckled at these
responses since they were very accurate and is indeed something that I need to
improve on.
While I understand the importance of maintaining goals
and keeping things in close moderation, I personally believe that I scored low
on these because of my current struggle on balancing my school, work, and
personal life. Due to the stress buildup on these things, I tend to
procrastinate and go off track. For instance, rather than making little
progress each day on homework, I almost always end up playing excessive amounts
of video games: which cause me to do my assignments in large chunks (which
means staying up too late!). Another example revolves around dieting. Despite
having the goal to shed a few pounds, I constantly get distracted and stressed
from school and work: which often times leads me to eat for comfort (junk food
and excessive eating). While overcoming these mistakes is excruciatingly
difficult right now, the best thing I can do is to improve my time management
by sticking with some sort of schedule. Since I tend to spend too much time on
work and school, I need to ensure that I make time to do things that I enjoy:
which can not only relieve stress, but also increase willpower to stay on
track.
References:
Cain, A. (2016). Visiting a modern-day salon where
people discuss Ben Franklin's ideas showed me how valuable his insights can be
290 years later. Business Insider.
Retrieved from http://www.businessinsider.com/ben-franklin-circle-salon-2016-11
Mckay, B. & Mckay, K. (2008). The Virtuous Life:
Sincerity. Retrieved from https://www.artofmanliness.com/2008/04/13/the-virtuous-life-sincerity/
PBS. (2002). Ben’s 13 Virtues. PBS. Retrieved from http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/pop_virtues_list.html
No comments:
Post a Comment