Leadership lessons from Confucius: personal development path

Confucius said: “At fifteen, I applied myself to learning. At thirty, I stood on my own two feet. At forty, I had no more doubts. At fifty, I understood the will of heaven. At sixty my ear was attuned. At seventy, I followed all my heart’s desires without overstepping the line.”

Do you have a personal development path? How do you see yourself growing over the next few decades? Will you be able to achieve the same level of contentment that Confucius claims to have reached in this famous snapshot that he composed of his life.

Of course, it’s relatively easy to look back on your life and fit its key milestones into a favorable narrative with the benefit of hindsight like Confucius has here. But it’s much more difficult to lay out plans for how you want to develop as a person in the future and the skills and faculties you will need to hone in order to achieve your objective.

Difficult but not impossible. And highly desirable too if you want to make the most of the rest of your life and not turn into some grumpy old git boring everyone to death with your constant harking back to the good old days!

Notes

This article features a translation of Chapter 4 of Book 2 of the Analects of Confucius. You can read my full translation of Book 2 here.

(1) The phrase 六十而耳順, which I have translated as “At sixty my ear was attuned” is a little strange and has befuddled both Chinese and western commentators alike. Its literal meaning is exactly as I have translated it, but it is possible that the last two characters have been corrupted during transcription of the text.

(2) The character 心 (xīn) can also be translated as “heart-and-mind.” I have translated it as “heart” for the sake of simplicity.

I took this image at the Temple of Confucius in Beijing.