Self-Knowledge, Willpower, And Everyday Contentment

What if the pursuit of happiness is leading you away from the life you actually want? We dig into a kinder, sturdier target—equilibrium—and show how to build it through three practical pillars inspired by Arthur C. Brooks’s take on Thomas Aquinas and grounded in lived experience. Instead of chasing constant highs, we lay out a simple framework for steady days: know yourself, focus your passions, and train willpower like a muscle.

We start by mapping real routines and frictions. If the gym detour never happens, move the workout into your flow. If washed fruit keeps you on track, prep it once and make the better choice the easy choice. We talk about solitude as fuel, the subtle signals of being off balance, and how mindfulness, prayer, or therapy can turn vague discomfort into clear, actionable insight. Then we pivot to passion without burnout: pruning inputs, picking one priority, and choosing a small repeating action that compounds into identity.

Finally, we reframe willpower from a moral test to a trainable skill. Pre-decide your defaults, use environmental cues, and practice progressive resistance—choices that get easier only when your capacity grows. Expect joy to come in flashes and let contentment carry the rest. By the end, you’ll have a compact, human plan for the new year that rejects grand overhauls in favor of honest, sustainable habits that fit your real life.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a steadier path, and leave a quick review to tell us the one small habit you’re starting this week.

Chapters

• 0:00 Mini Intro And Happiness Lens
• 0:36 Aquinas, Brooks, And The New Year
• 2:06 Knowing Yourself And Realistic Habits
• 4:10 Passions, Focus, And Small Starts
• 5:35 Willpower As A Muscle
• 8:00 Choosing Contentment Over Constant Joy
• 9:30 Three Steps Recap And Closing

Transcript

Mary: 0:00

Hi, and welcome to a mini episode of No Shrinking Violets. So I came across a link to an article today by Arthur C. Brooks. He writes for The Atlantic. And he wrote How to Be Happy like Thomas Aquinas. Now I don't know what date is on this article. It could have been written quite a while ago. But Thomas Aquinas was a 13th-century theologian. And I was interested in reading this because I love the book, The Art of Happiness, which is based on the Dalai Lama's ideas. It was written by a psychologist who kind of translated. But I think this idea of happiness is interesting to me because I love language and I like the words that we use for things because I think they have a lot of power. So many of us, I think, strive for happiness. But I feel like happiness is fleeting. We can't always feel happy because we have a range of emotions. We're supposed to have a range of emotions as humans. So I tend to strive to feel equilibrium or content. I mean, they're more kind of scientific words, but to have a sense of being grounded, of being able to kind of ride out the times where maybe something isn't going well, or you're actually not feeling happy or content to get back to that equilibrium. So I wanted to go over just the three highlights that Arthur C. Brooks talks about that he sums up in this article. And it's something that we already know, but I think pulling it all together, especially right now, because I think we're all thinking about the new year and whether you set a resolution or not, new beginnings are seductive because it makes us want to be better often. So he talks first of all about knowing yourself. So he says that knowledge is power. We all know ourselves, but sometimes I think we can fall into the trap of thinking, well, I'm going to do it differently this time. And probably weaving through this today, I'm going to be talking about the idea of maybe exercise or movement. So I can tell you for me that if something doesn't already fit into my daily plan, it's not going to happen. So even when I was sort of, I would call it a gym rat, I went to the gym a lot when I was younger. If it wasn't on my way home from work, it would be very difficult for me to go out of my way, add time to my day after work to do that. Sometimes I think I need to start getting up earlier. I already get up about 5 a.m. often or 5 30. So to get up earlier, especially in the winter, to think I'm going to go out and take a walk, I need to be realistic about that. I love to do the rowing machine. I know that. So we got a rowing machine. I don't love the treadmill. I think we all sort of have tendencies. So I think knowing yourself, and this is for anything. I think it is for food, you know, buying food that you're going to use, knowing that you have to cut up those whatever it is, clean the celery, cut it up, have it ready to just grab from the refrigerator, because we can always find a reason to not feel like cleaning the strawberries or, you know, um cutting anything up, cutting up a melon. I love cantaloupe, but I often am like, oh gosh, I don't want to take the time to cut it up. So if I just do it all at once, then it's all done. So understand what your habits are. Understand what drives you, what are your emotional tendencies? And I think the other part of the emotional tendency is figuring out what knocks you off balance. So I talked about contentment and balance. Are there situations that make you feel unsettled or you have a somatic or a body response to it? So I can tell you for me, and especially coming out of very busy holiday season, if I don't get enough time to myself to have solitude, to just kind of not have to really think about anything, anyone else, or have have something that I have to do. If I am really off balance, having a day where I can just decide what I want to do as the day goes, or I prioritize one special thing for myself, or just have some time alone with a book, that gets me back to that equilibrium. And to me, that's happiness because I feel content and I feel calmer. So if you struggle to know yourself, then you may need some reflection time. And I think mindfulness is good for that. When you're feeling something, be curious about it, sit with it and think what is happening right now that might have me off balance. And some people use prayer for that. Some people go to therapy to learn more about themselves. So maybe that is something as you're thinking about a new beginning, if that's your jam, you can think about what do you want to do to deepen that self-knowledge and to really accept that that is who you are. If there are just some things you don't feel like doing, you can overcome that for sure. But thinking you're going to change five huge habits all at once is probably going to be a recipe for defeat. So I think being, you know, being realistic about that. And then thinking about what are your passions? Because not all passions are equal. So I love to learn. Um, sometimes I overdo it. Like I will subscribe to all kinds of things, and then I don't have time. I want to learn Spanish and I want to take this course and I want to take that course. So I think being aware of what your passions are, if you love watching certain shows, overdoing it is binge watching. So I think being aware of what your passions are and leaning into that, but figuring out what do you want to focus on and start with one small thing, start with an action step. So knowing yourself, really understanding your passions, and knowing what you want to prioritize. And the third thing is using your willpower for change. That's how, that's how um Arthur Brooks puts it. You need to strengthen willpower. So we all have it. And I think sometimes we just sort of give in to something we want. And I don't think that's a bad thing, but I can tell you that the more you use your willpower, the stronger it gets. So, an example is at one point I was really focused on trying to make some changes to my diet because I was getting a lot of headaches. And so I made those changes and I got to the point where I wasn't tempted at all if someone brought in, say, cupcakes to work. Like that didn't even tempt me, or we would have staff meetings and people would bring a lot of cookies and you know, that kind of stuff. I didn't even entertain the thought of it. It wasn't even that I had to um really talk myself out of it. But when I did have times where I felt like, oh, I would love to have a cookie right now, I ate the cookie or I ate a couple bites of the cookie and I threw the rest away because I just wanted, I just wanted the taste. It tastes good. But my point there is it's like lifting weights. If you try to start out um curling, doing a bicep curl with 25 pounds, that's probably not going to work unless you're already pretty strong. But if you do it repeatedly, then you'll be able to do it eventually without thinking about it, without struggling. And that's how willpower is. I think the more that you are able to make the choice you want to based on the two things we already talked about, knowing yourself and knowing which passions you want to build or prioritize, and you stay as consistent as you can with that, you're going to build that willpower. And those things are not going to feel as hard anymore because you will have strengthened that. So I just thought that was a really timely article. And that is one theme. Like I said, I love the idea of happiness. Martin Seligman studied happiness, what makes us happy. But again, I like to think more in terms of equilibrium or contentment. That's something I think we can strive for every day. Joy comes in moments. We can't really sustain. That's like a high level. It's like happiness on steroids. So look for the joy. But I think striving for contentment and just feeling overall like your life is going well and recognizing that it's not a straight line. It's not always going to be perfect. But thinking about who are you? You know, know yourself and really be honest with yourself. Dive into ways to learn more about yourself if you feel like you need to do that. Really focus on what do you want to build? What are your passions? And then figure out how you're going to build your willpower with small habits. So hopefully that's a little food for thought as we go into the new year. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.