Listen to Yourself
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
“For to be wise is only one thing—to fix our attention on our intelligence, which guides all things everywhere.” - Heraclitus
You’ve seen this pattern often enough that it no longer surprises you, yet it remains the central tragedy of human life.
A patient sits across from me with newly diagnosed hypertension or diabetes. They nod. They understand. They repeat back the instructions. Fewer sugars. Less inflammatory food. Take the meds. Walk daily. Lose some weight. Sleep better. And somewhere inside them, a wiser voice agrees. It knows this is manageable. It knows this is reversible. It knows what’s at stake.
Then months pass.
They stop the medication. They skip reviews. They get back to old habits because change feels demanding and discipline hard. You only live once, right? We usually call this laziness or stubbornness. But those words are too weak and inconclusive to my liking. They don’t explain why a rational person would willingly destroy the only body they will ever own.
The writer Steven Pressfield gave this force a name- Resistance.
Resistance is an active, malevolent force. Pressfield himself succumbed to its allure for 32yrs before writing his first novel. It’s the invisible gravity that kicks in the moment you try to move from a lower level of existence to a higher one. It doesn’t just want you to stay still; it wants you to sleep. It wants you unconscious to your potential.
And years later, the cost arrives- kidney failure, a stroke, a silent heart attack. Often fatal. Often preventable. The tragedy is never ignorance. You knew what to do. The main problem is disobedience to better judgment.
Ignoring the problem feels easier than reorganizing a life around it.
This is how what Carl Jung called the Shadow self works everywhere, not just in medicine.
Jung famously warned, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
When you ignore the wiser voice in your head you’re feeding this Shadow. This is the dark, repressed side of your psyche. When you deny its power over you, it doesn’t disappear. It just goes into the basement and lifts weights. It grows stronger in the dark.
The Shadow argues for readiness. It promises comfort. It whispers, “You can start tomorrow.” But it’s lying. The Shadow knows that tomorrow is the code word for never.
Listening to your higher self feels strange because it often contradicts what you want in the moment. It asks you to choose action before motivation appears. It asks you to inconvenience yourself now so you don’t suffer later. It feels unnatural because it requires planning, restraint, and consistency. And yet it’s the only voice that has ever wanted your long-term good.
This is why rituals matter.
You don’t rely on morning willpower when you plan your day the night before. Clothes laid out. Tasks chosen. One clear priority set. You wake up into motion instead of negotiation. You reduce friction so reason can lead. Before social events, you set an intention- to listen more, to speak with care, to love, to leave people better than you found them. You don’t improvise virtue. You prepare for it.
Philosophically, this voice has always been known. The ancients called it your daimōn. Not a mystical force hovering above you, but the rational guide within you. The part that sees farther. The part that knows the order of things. The part that urges you toward growth, responsibility, and service.
When you ignore it, life becomes chaotic and reactive. When you follow it, life grows fun, intelligible and workable.
Over time, obedience to this inner guide produces something rare. Something wonderful. You trust yourself. You stop creating avoidable crises. Health stabilizes. Relationships improve. Work compounds. Peace arrives as a byproduct of alignment. Joy follows effort well spent. Prosperity grows from consistency.
Your daimōn does not promise you ease. In fact, prepare for a life of strife. What it does is promise you meaning. And if you listen, it will indeed shape you into someone capable, someone interesting, someone eminent- as you were destined to be.
Join 93,500 other Stoics,
P.S: Annual & Patron members get all my books with their subscription. The bundle includes, ‘The Best of Marcus Aurelius’, ‘The Tools’, with over 40,000 words of bonus content + a free copy of ‘The Stoic Manual Vol. 1’ dropping September next year. Patron members also get Lifetime Access to the publication with a one-time fee, all bonuses, and all future benefits- at no extra cost. Featured,
P.P.S: Most people loved the series on How to Deepen Your Friendships, Part I, Part II & Part III. Also check out the practical entries on How To Deal With Toxic People, How to Process & Overcome Grief & How to Prevent and Overcome Burnout. Happy reading!
Did you like this entry? Tell me about it.
I always enjoy hearing from you, and for you to hear from each other.
Please leave a like (❤️), tell me what you think (💬) in the comment section and share this post with someone so that more people can discover and benefit from it.
Support The Stoic Manual and access 280+ premium in-depth essays: lessons & mini-courses in the art of living, consolations for difficult times, Relationship Mini-courses, The Wealth Playbook, Leadership Skills, Social Skills and Health Tools for a virile and distinguished life.
What you say here is so true. I am a retired dentist and all most people need to do to reduce prevalence of decay and gum disease is floss daily and brush for 3 minutes once a day. Doesn't take much time or cost much either, but do they do it? Mostly No! Do they know they should? Yes! It was sad to see hard teeth go soft due to a lack of dental homecare!
Also in Positive Psychology they talk about the voice of refusal, which is the inner narrative of I am not good enough, I can't do that or other fake reasons to not pursue what would be good for your well-being. I think the key is to value yourself, you are here, you are worth spending effort on getting your body and mind in good condition to live to your full potential during your lifetime. Go for it! The effort is worth it and when you floss be sure to floss the teeth you want to keep!
"Resistance" (in general terms) is a problem I often see with the implementation of self-help literature, leadership training materials, and the translation of Stoic philosophy into Stoic behavior.
When you break it down, it comes down to brain vs. heart.
Brain says "I should do XYZ" because Steven Covey/Jim Collins/Marcus Aurelius says that it works.
Heart says "Yeah, but that makes me anxious/ashamed/guilty/angry."
Or, heart initially agrees. Then a moment of weakness arises, and gluttony/hubris/sloth/lust/envy seizes control.
Brain then joins the conspiracy against the self by making excuses.
"You weren't ready."
"You can start tomorrow when it's convenient."
"You can start when you feel motivated to do it."
Self-help books, training materials, and philosophic meditation work a for self-selecting crowd. The authors preach to a choir, filled with singers who only need a little reminder to go back to what they were doing before. The preachers' job is to keep the choir immersed in the Right Way, and the rest usually takes care of itself.
But for everyone else? They have unresolved emotional hangups. They start out with good intentions, but they end up spiraling back into a heart-brain conspiracy. The smarter the brain, the better it is at rationalizing failure and confirmation-biasing whatever preconceived notions it already had.
Getting the second group to think their way through an emotional problem is a Sisyphean task. I don't think ancient OR modern philosophy is equipped to deal with the second group.