confidence

How to Do Your Duty

Claude Hamilton 13 Comments

If you’ve been following my blog, then you’ve spent plenty of time reading about duty. I’ve written a lot about the theory and history of duty, and my last post explained why it’s critical for you to find your life’s purpose and do your duty. But none of that will do you any good unless you know how to do your duty. Today’s post will point you in the right direction.

Step One: Build strength

When it comes to doing your duty, you can’t be hesitant. You need to act with confidence and precision. But before you can do that, you need to know what your purpose is. Otherwise, you’ll feel indecisive and weak—exactly what you don’t want when you’re trying to make an impact in the world. So spend time getting to know yourself better. Once you understand what you were put on this earth to do, it will be easier to focus on the task at hand. Abraham Lincoln once said: “Let us have the faith that might makes right; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.” 

Step Two: Build your confidence

Once you’ve found your purpose, you need to learn as much as you can about it. Whether it’s a business idea or a desire to build a family, start by talking to other likeminded people, reading books, listening to audios, and taking courses. Immerse yourself in it. Because the more you understand your goal and everything about it, the more confidence you’ll have when it’s time to do your duty. And that’s important—because confidence drives action.

Seems simple, doesn’t it? That’s because it is. But it doesn’t mean it will be easy. As I wrote in Toughen Up, “We have to strive for it, work for it, and settle for nothing less than real excellence. Never let convenience or any other distractions get in the way. That’s toughness. And it’s our duty.”

Step Three: Build your plan

Imagine that you’re building a new home. But your contractor tells you that since they have the materials and the skills, they don’t need a blueprint. They’ll just design your house as they go. You probably wouldn’t have a lot of confidence in them, would you? After all, building a house without a plan just doesn’t make sense.

It’s the same when it comes to doing your duty. You may have confidence and strength, but without a plan, it’s easy to get confused and make poor choices. Plus, putting a plan on paper makes your life’s purpose real. It will bring you clarity and it will make it easier to gather people who will work with you to achieve your duty.

Why not sit down and write your plan today?

Building Confidence and Character

Claude Hamilton 11 Comments

Throughout our lives, we’ll all experience adversity—in our personal lives, our careers, or both. We meet adversity when we learn to take our first breath, and we encounter it again and again for the rest of our lives. Not only is adversity a great test of character, it’s often what motivates us to keep trying until we get it right.

But there are a couple of other things, namely power and mistakes, that test character, and have the potential to reveal much more about a person than adversity ever could.

POWER

When you’ve got everything you need and the ability to get pretty much whatever you want, it can be easy to lose sight of what’s important. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.”

In Plato’s Republic, he writes about a discussion he had with several men. One of those men is named Glaucon, and he argues that “no man would keep his hands off that which was not his own if he could safely take what he liked.” It’s a sad argument that leaves no room for common human decency.

Of course, people will always be tempted to take the easy way out, but someone with true character will resist that temptation and find the honest, fair way to get what they want or need. In fact, I’d go one step further and say that many people in power will consciously avoid using that power in an abusive or negative way, because they’re fully aware of how easy it is to become corrupted.

MISTAKES

How we respond to our mistakes can give away a lot about our character. In his novel Confessor, Terry Goodkind, a successful fantasy writer, says, “I’m afraid that we all make mistakes. One of the things that define our character is how we handle mistakes. If we lie about having made a mistake, then it can’t be corrected and it festers. On the other hand, if we give up just because we made a mistake, even a big mistake, none of us would get far in life.”

And he’s right. I believe that mistakes are opportunities. They’re the wake-up call that tells us we’re doing something wrong and forces us to start over again, with a different approach.

Taking responsibility for mistakes is key to improving character. When we own up to our errors, we’re free to move on, and fix whatever caused the mistake in the first place. And when character is built in this way, we also benefit from increased self-confidence. As journalist Joan Didion wrote in On Self Respect, “Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one’s own life—is the source from which self-respect springs.”

Enjoy your weekend everyone!

-Claude Hamilton