When people say that they are trying to improve themselves, they are in one way or another practicing the virtue of temperance. Knowing this is the first step towards actually being successful in self-improvement.
Nothing is inherently good or bad, this is something that many of us fail to realize. We all like to put labels on things without understanding that it is not actually the thing that is bad, it is how we use it that makes it bad. For example, there is absolutely nothing wrong with social media. It is actually a great tool that we can use for a myriad of different, positive things. But in excess, it can become a major problem. When you have to check your Twitter feed every five minutes, it becomes an issue.
Everything that you do has negatives and positives. Our goal should always be to take all of the positives while discarding the negatives. This is essentially what temperance boils down to. It is all about getting the good without the bad.
Back to the social media example. Obviously, social media has a bunch of positives. But it also has a bunch of negatives. Luckily for us, these things don’t have to come in a combo. You can get the positives without the negatives. But only if you have temperance. If you decide to post on Instagram every once and a while and refresh your feed a couple of times a day to see what your friends are up to, then you are using Instagram. But if you can’t focus on anything because you are too busy checking Instagram, then it is using you.
“No man is free who is not a master of himself,” wrote Epictetus. Think about this. The people who compulsively scroll through their feed for hours are not a master of themselves. In some way, social media has at least a little bit of control over them. This is what we don’t want. We want to always be in control, never allowing our first impulse to control us.
The extremes of both sides are the enemy. If you work too much, you won’t have time to spend with family and friends. But if you don’t work enough, your career ambition won’t be satisfied. In everything that we do, the goal is to find that sweet spot right in the middle of both extremes. That is self-improvement. That is temperance.