Perennial Meditations
Perennial Meditations is a podcast by the Perennial Leader Project. Each episode delivers a short guided contemplation inspired by the writings of Stoics, saints, and sages. One quote. One meditation. One practice to carry into your day.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
Plato on Conquering Oneself
This is Perennial Meditations. A daily practice.
“For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.”
— Plato, The Laws
Every tradition has a version of this. The Stoics called it discipline. The Buddhists called it renunciation. The Christian mystics called it mortification of the self. The language changes. The diagnosis is the same.
We are not, by nature, unified.
We contain competing appetites, contradictory impulses, and desires that pull us away from our deepest values. We want to be generous, yet we want to keep what is ours. We want to be present, yet we want to be elsewhere. We commit to change, only to see the old pattern reemerge before our resolve has cooled.
Plato saw this clearly. The soul, he argued, is not a single thing but a kind of inner republic—reason, spirit, and appetite each pressing their claim, each demanding to be heard. The well-ordered life is not a life without conflict.
It is the life in which the right thing governs.
This is not repression.
Plato was not asking us to silence the appetites but to order them—to let the deeper, wiser part of ourselves set the direction while the rest follows. The person who has achieved this, he thought, is not diminished but enlarged. They have more of themselves available, not less.
The conquest he describes is not a single victory. It is a daily negotiation, the quiet, unglamorous work of choosing again and again what you actually value over what you merely want in the moment.
Daily Practice
Where in your life are appetite and intention currently at war? Name it honestly. Today, in one small moment, let the deeper intention win. Not forever—just once. That is enough for today.
Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
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Thank you for reading/listening; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well.
J.W.
P.S. If you found today’s meditation helpful, consider sharing it with a friend!