Plato is one of the most famous philosophers of all time. He represented the philosophy of ancient Greece, belonging to its Classical Period. He was born into an aristocratic and influential family in Athens, where he founded the Academy, the first institution of higher learning in the entire Western world. Along with his mentor Socrates, and his student Aristotle, Plato is one of the most influential individuals in the entire history of humankind. It can even be said that he is one of the pillars of Western civilization. His philosophy is often referenced as Platonic idealism and his biggest contribution is the Theory of Forms or Doctrine of Ideas, which asserts that the physical world is not the real world. Instead, ultimate reality exists beyond our physical world, in the world of ideas. Plato was not only a prominent figure of philosophy but also of religion and spirituality; so-called Neo-Platonism deeply influenced Christian theology. Plato invented the written dialogue and dialectic form of philosophy. Some of his most famous books are The Republic, The Symposium, The Apology of Socrates, Allegory of the Cave, and The Dialogues of Plato, in which the main character is Socrates, who influenced Plato’s philosophy to a great extent. His entire work has survived for more than 2,400 years and has remained very popular the entire time. Like his mentor, Plato was a practical philosopher and there are many life lessons to learn from his philosophy. To help you understand his philosophy and how it can be applied to your daily life, here are 9 life lessons from the philosophy of Plato:

1) Conquer yourself

Plato says: “The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.” Plato believed that conquering yourself is the greatest victory, having a deep impact on your life. To conquer yourself means, according to Plato, to not let your instincts and desires dictate your actions. In his life, Plato has seen many Athenians taking irrational decisions, being driven by their passions and desires and not by good judgment. One example is described in the dialogue between Socrates and Phaedrus in which they talk about a man who murdered his wife’s lover, Eratosthenes. Although some passions are positive and Plato, through Socrates, confirmed that life's greatest blessings flow from the madness of love, many of our passions are damaging and, in Plato’s view, the more we diminish our worst passions, the better. If you do not control yourself, your worldly passions and desires will blind you, making you take irrational decisions, jeopardizing your future. You might get temporary satisfaction by following your heart's desires and impulses, but you will suffer in the long term. Before doing anything, ask yourself whether or not what you intend to do is beneficial to your life, and to the lives of others you care about. For example, if you are a smoker and you know smoking is detrimental to your health in the long run but you can't quit, it means you are not able to conquer yourself. Your impulses make you buy and smoke cigarettes every day, you lost the battle over yourself and, according to Plato, this is the most shameful and vile thing. To regain control over your life, to ‘re-conquer yourself, you need to do everything you can to resist the temptation to buy new cigarettes. There are many methods to give up smoking. For some people, nicotine gums and patches help take the edge off gradually. For others, the only way that works is going cold turkey and stopping entirely, immediately. Whatever works for you, plan and implement it in order to conquer yourself.

2) Being angry solves nothing

According to Plato: “There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.” Anger is a negative emotion which we should avoid. It is much better to use reason and calmly evaluate a situation instead of getting angry and damaging your relationships. By using reason, you evaluate the problem more objectively. When you use reason to analyse a situation, you rise up to a superior level, the level of ideas and you can come closer to the truth of that situation. There are two types of problems in life: those which you can solve and those which you cannot. Regarding the problems you can solve, there is nothing to get angry about. Just plan to find the solution, implement it and go with it. If the problem cannot be solved, then the only thing you can do is to accept it and adjust your life accordingly. For example, if you have a small business and you find out that your accountant has stolen a lot of money from you, look at the situation and ask yourself: is there a way I can solve this problem? You might come up with the idea that you can report the theft to the police, get him arrested, and facing a court of law, but if you don’t have enough written evidence to prove the accountant stole from you and he refuses to return the money, you are left with just one option: to fire him, never talk to him again and try to avoid similar people in future. Therefore, when you are confronted with a problem and you have exhausted every possible solution, don’t waste time and energy being angry; just accept the situation and move on.

3) Choose the people you spend time with wisely

To quote Plato: “People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.” Spending his life in the public arena, being born into an aristocratic and influential family, descending from the king of Athens - Codrus, Plato was a popular individual with many acquaintances and friends. He rightly understood the tremendous influence other people can have on us. A bad alliance can destroy your life, a good alliance can lead you to the greatest peaks of success. Therefore, there are few things as important as the skill of choosing the people you spend time with. You might think that you don’t have much control over this. For example, when you have a job where you meet the same people over and over again, it is not in your power to choose who will be fired or employed. Being in a long-term relationship, one can feel pressured to stick around even when they mistreat and don’t respect you. Similarly, you cannot choose your relatives, yet for many of us it is a given that you have a duty to keep in touch and visit them, at least during the holidays. But you might be wrong: It is in your power to leave a job where you don’t like the people or culture, you can almost always find a better job with a higher quality of people, or you can start your own business and hire only people you like. Equally, it might be daunting, but your partner doesn’t own you and you can always leave and start again, no matter what. Nor is it mandatory to meet relatives with whom you do not have anything in common beyond blood. We have more power to choose the people we spend time with than we think. If we do not choose them carefully, their influence will affect our lives in negative ways: a bad boss will diminish your self-confidence and make you doubt your abilities, a bad spouse can make you feel insecure and insignificant, bad relatives can make you stressed and miserable. By contrast, a good boss will make you feel like your skills are improving daily, a good spouse will make you feel attractive and loved, good relatives will make you feel you are part of the family, you are respected and loved.

4) Find your other half

in the words of Plato: “Each of us, then, is a 'matching half of a human whole…and each of us is always seeking the half that matches him. “Plato wrote that initially people had four legs, four arms, and a single head with two faces, having a quasi-spherical shape and no sex, they were androgynous. But because they started to become very powerful, Zeus got angry and split people in half to diminish their strengths. Since then, people have felt incomplete and they are always searching for their other half to complete them. Thus, Plato was the first philosopher to discuss the concept of a soulmate. Aristophanes, who is known as the father of comedy, in his speech from Plato's Symposium, gave a detailed explanation of why people in love say they feel ‘whole’ when they have found their partner. The love they feel for each other is not only a physical attraction, led by the desire to physically reunite to become a whole, it is something deeper. Also, in Aristophanes’ speech, homosexuals are explained as people who were split in half, but both halves happened to be the same gender. In Ancient Greek society, homosexuality was generally seen in a favorable way. He also claims that when a person truly finds their other half that they never want to be separated from them ever again. To apply this teaching in our own lives, we should never stop searching for our soulmate until we feel that we’ve found somebody from whom we never want to be separated again and we don’t feel any desire to be unfaithful. As a checklist, you can use the following: they are your best friend, you have a sense of calm and ease around them, you feel at home when you are together, you have extreme empathy and respect for them, you agree on the most important things, you share similar life goals, you can totally be yourself in their presence... you just want to be around each other. If they check all these boxes, chances are you found your soulmate.

5. Get involved in politics

Plato notes: “One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.” Although Athens was the first democracy in the world, Plato never liked democracy. When Socrates died after being imprisoned for corrupting the youth of Athens with his philosophical wisdom, Plato was deeply saddened, concluding that democracy is antithetical to philosophy. Plato described his distaste for democracy with this analogy - Imagine a ship where the owner is the strongest man on the ship but doesn’t know how to sail. There are other sailors on board but they are quarreling with each other without concluding, and then there is a navigator who knows the direction but doesn’t have any desire for leadership. In Plato’s metaphor, the owner is a common citizen – the strongest, the most powerful but ultimately clueless, sailors are the politicians – who keep quarreling without coming to any conclusion, and the navigator is the philosopher, the most knowledgeable person – but has no will to take control of the situation. He identified that the real problem with democracy is that it gives equal chances to people who are not equal in skills and knowledge and thus produces poor leaders who make poor decisions that can destroy the state. He was of the opinion that society should be composed of three groups - first the plebs, the most inferior, then the ‘soldiers’ to keep the society under control, and then the rulers who should always be philosophers. The lower classes should have no say whatsoever in how the state was to run and whether the philosophers, the most knowledgeable people at that time, should become the rulers. Although Athenian democracy is different from modern democracy, Plato’s criticism of democracy remains relevant even today, especially regarding the fact that in a democracy the opinion of a less informed and less educated person weighs the same as the opinion of a highly educated and informed person. If the educated and informed don’t get involved in politics, then the political roles will be taken up by the remaining populace, and that can ruin a country. So, if you have the reputation of a good citizen and you have many years of professional experience, proving over those years that you are a good leader and you are capable of managing complex projects, you might consider running for mayor or the equivalent in your community, be it a small town or a bigger city. Having achieved several accomplishments in your life and knowing yourself as a capable person, you should consider that it is your responsibility to join the area of politics. Do not refrain from public life, otherwise, you increase the chances of being governed by people less capable than you... but more popular. Democracy offers great opportunities for each of us, but it has its flaws. In order to avoid important roles being filled by the less capable of us, the most capable should step up, try to be more popular, and take the responsibility of a governing position.

6) Learn to be a follower

master Plato tells us: “He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.” As a teacher in charge of conducting the prestigious school he himself founded, the Academy, Plato knew that to be a great teacher you first need to be a great student. Something that applies to any job. To reach a managerial position, first, you need to be highly experienced at the job you plan to manage. Leadership roles are usually earned through hard work and dedication. People must first prove their skills, demonstrate their knowledge before they are put in charge of other staff. Of course, in the modern world there are many exceptions where managerial positions are awarded without the appropriate skill-set or experience. But, in an egalitarian, less corrupted society, it is through hard work and dedication that one gets a leadership position. For example, if you work in an industrial company as a worker, you can acquire a leadership position if you prove every day that you are very reliable, can work autonomously, always fulfill your obligations, are polite but tough in your work and you keep yourself and your colleagues accountable. If this describes you, an occasion may well arise for a promotion, for example, your manager leaving the company or changing roles. Your employers might select you if you have proven to be the best follower. Thus, to be a master, one must learn to be a great follower.

7) Be content with little

Plato teaches us: “The greatest wealth is to live content with little.” According to Plato, if you have a roof over your head, food in your mouth and you can walk to work, you are wealthy enough. Any excess of these will not make you happier. Too often we are chasing the material things in life but these things will not make us happier. Plato was a wealthy individual, but he understood that it is not the richness that made him happy. Sometimes only when you are rich do you really understand that money doesn’t bring lasting happiness. Being happy with little will assure you happiness. Therefore, it is very important to cultivate gratitude, to bless everything we have in our lives, no matter how insignificant it may appear. For example, if you live in a studio, in a poor neighborhood, be content that you have shelter, be grateful for the bed you sleep in, for the window through which you see the morning sun, be happy to live in a neighborhood where you can find anything you need, the supermarket, the pharmacy and so on. Do not be resentful of people with a lot of money, living in expensive villas, and having expensive cars. Their wealth is only apparent, it’s impossible to know how happy they really are. They might have vast debts and financial commitments, a miserable family life, or suffer from drug abuse. You, with your little happy family, living in a tiny house and using the subway to go to work, might actually be much happier than those seemingly ‘wealthier’ people. As long as you learn to be grateful for every little thing and you have shelter, enough food, and you are able to walk and work, your happiness is assured, you have enough wealth in your life.

8) Be in charge of your own happiness

As we learn from Plato: “The man who makes everything that leads to happiness depend upon himself, and not upon other men has adopted the very best plan for living happily.” Plato was not a hedonist: he didn’t believe that the pursuit of pleasure is the most important thing in life, rather he was interested in knowing the true essence of reality, emphasizing the importance of wisdom, moderation and hard work. However, he acknowledged the importance of living a happy life, which he thought is a life lived in moderation and in which your happiness does not depend on other people, but on yourself. If you make your life depend on somebody or something else, for example, you say to yourself “I’ll be happy when I will marry this person” or “I’ll be happy when I will get rich and famous”, then you are dooming yourself to live an anxious life in which you will always be afraid of losing the person you love or not attaining the material success you wish for. If, by contrast, you construct your happiness based on a set of routines that makes you happy on a daily basis, you will not experience the extreme ups and downs of life, you will have a peaceful and much happier life than other people on average. To apply this teaching to your life, make a list of every activity which makes you happy, for example walking in the park with your dog, or going hiking in nature close to where you live, listening to music while cleaning the house, going to a museum, reading great books every day and so on. After making this list, make sure you check each activity every week. Making your happiness independent of what happens in your personal relationships or in your career will secure a safety net for your emotional well-being and will help you avoid having too many low moments in your life.

9) Work hard to accomplish great things

In our final quote from Plato for this post, he says: “I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.” Although he was a promoter of living a simple life and being content with little, during his lifetime, Plato was a hard-working individual. He believed that it is important to contribute to society as much as you can, as long as your work is not motivated by ambition for ambition’s sake. During his lifetime, Plato accomplished a great number of things; He was the innovator of written dialogue and dialectic forms in philosophy and he is considered the founder of Western political philosophy, being one of the most famous thinkers in the entire history of humankind. It would have been impossible for him to achieve all of this without working hard. Usually, nothing worth doing can be done easily. You cannot get a great sense of accomplishment by doing trivial things, like binge-watching TV, endlessly scrolling through social media or partying with your friends. The things you are proud of, the things that are worth doing, take plenty of planning and no small amount of effort. To apply Plato's lesson in our lives, we need to focus more on challenging projects and work hard to accomplish great things with these projects. For example, imagine that you have a stable job as a delivery driver, but you find it repetitive, monotonous, and unfulfilling. In order to feel some satisfaction in your life, you might decide to start a new project, for example, learning a new skill or language by signing up for online classes, or joining a community group such as a theatre company or choir, all of which can open you up to new opportunities and ideas you had never considered before. Hard work, when doubled by great planning, will lead to great rewards and satisfaction.