Character Development: Prudence And Affirmations

In this episode, we explore the strength of Prudence, an expression of the virtue of Temperance.

Prudence is the art of knowing when to act, when to pause, and how to move in ways that honor both desires and values. It guides us to live with intention rather than impulse.

True prudence begins within: in how we listen to our inner knowing and align our choices with what truly matters.

Through reflection and affirmation, may we learn to choose wisely, act with clarity, and trust the quiet guidance that leads us toward harmony.

Peace and blessings,
Hannah

Transcript

In a world that often focuses so much on what we lack,

It's easy to overlook the incredible internal strengths that each of us possess.

Grounded in ancient philosophy and modern science,

This series invites you to reconnect with the innate strengths that make you who you are,

Promoting balance and harmony in everyday life.

Whether you're looking to boost your confidence,

Overcome negative self-talk,

Deepen your relationships,

Or simply invite a greater sense of well-being,

My hope is that this series offers a practical and uplifting path to personal growth.

Hello beautiful people and welcome back to our Character Strengths Affirmation series.

Each session we explore one of the 24 character strengths identified by positive psychology,

All of which fall under the virtues of courage,

Humanity,

Wisdom,

Justice,

Temperance,

Or transcendence.

These strengths and virtues are universal and they form the foundation of our highest selves.

Today we are starting our journey into the virtue of temperance,

Which is the set of strengths that help us manage our impulses,

Find balance,

And live in alignment with our deeper values.

The virtue of temperance includes the strengths of prudence,

Forgiveness,

Humility,

And self-regulation.

Today we are exploring the quiet,

Steady,

And deeply powerful strength of prudence.

Now I can appreciate that prudence isn't exactly a word that people get,

You know,

Excited about.

It sounds a bit like prude,

Which makes us think of like somebody who's like super buttoned up and never spontaneous or any fun at all,

Which is not fair to what prudence really is.

You know,

I think that prudence is less about repression and more about refinement.

It's what allows for us to act with intention instead of impulse.

It's what allows for us to protect not only our peace of mind,

But our overall psychological and even physical well-being.

When we practice prudence,

We strengthen the part of ourselves that pauses,

Reflects,

And chooses an alignment with our values.

It's a form of inner self-care,

One that allows,

Excuse me,

Our decisions to support our nervous system,

Our relationships,

And our sense of integrity.

It's the voice within that pauses and asks,

Is this an alignment with who I want to be?

The Values in Action Institute defines prudence as being careful about one's choices,

Not fearful or hesitant,

But mindful and intentional.

On their website,

They refer to it as,

I love this,

A strength of restraint.

It's not about playing small or avoiding risk.

It's about discerning which risks are truly worth taking.

Prudence helps us balance intuition with logic.

It allows for us to align our actions with our deeper sense of meaning and purpose.

And it's what,

I mean,

It's what really allows for us to consider how today's choices may shape tomorrow's reality.

At its heart,

Prudence is about making space between what we're feeling and how we're behaving,

So that our choices reflect not only who we are,

But who we want to become.

Prudence shows up in both big and small decisions.

It's the quiet crossroads that shape our days.

It's the pause before sending a heated text or email.

It's the breath we take before making a major life change.

It's the moment of reflection that we have before spending money,

Or sharing information about ourselves or someone else,

Or before saying yes to something that actually doesn't really feel quite right for us.

It's the skill of being able to notice what energy we're moving from,

Be it fear or love or pressure,

And then choosing to act from alignment rather than impulse.

You know,

I mean,

We live in a culture that often glorifies a sense of urgency and being able to just get things done.

It's the act fast,

Don't miss your chance,

Move it or lose it.

You know,

Get it done so that you can put it on paper and prove to the world how great you are.

I think that prudence is what invites us to slow this rhythm down and to remember that peace is not found in how quickly we can get something done or how quickly we can react to something,

But in how deeply we are in alignment with whatever choices and actions we're making.

If you've been here before,

You know that each of these strengths,

It turns out,

Operate best in the balance between overuse and underuse.

It turns out,

You guys,

That you can overuse a strength and that this is not a new concept.

Aristotle figured it out a long time ago.

He called it Aristotle's golden mean,

That virtue exists between the balance of two vices.

So in this next section,

As always,

I'm going to be diving into what that looks like in practice for each of us.

So prudence,

When it is underused,

Might look like reacting impulsively or reactively,

Jumping into decisions without reflection or foresight.

It can look like saying yes to commitments we don't have the capacity for or spending our energy and resources without consideration.

Sometimes it shows up as speaking too quickly or sharing something that we might later regret or rushing a process that needed time to unfold.

My tendency is to have an idea and be like,

Let's go,

Let's get it done.

And,

You know,

From I've talked a little bit about my,

I try not to talk too much about spirituality in this context.

But one of the first things that a spiritual mentor of mine taught me is that spirit doesn't live in time.

Which when you think about it,

Like if God is infinity,

Then infinity,

Everything's already happened from its perspective.

So it makes sense that that it wouldn't live in time.

But that we might get messages or things that come through visions,

You might call it,

I'm losing some of you by talking like this,

But that's okay.

You know,

I'm just gotta be myself.

And it feels like it's like,

Oh,

That's what I meant to do.

That's who I'm meant to be.

And what I've had to learn is just because I have the idea or I can see it and I can feel it that this is something that I'm meant to do doesn't mean I meant to do it tomorrow.

You know,

Like we have to have patience.

I feel like patience is a strength that really correlates with prudence.

Okay,

So underused prudence can also mean ignoring our intuition,

Which can look like moving so fast that we don't pause long enough to check if something really feels right for us.

Or moving at the same pace,

But not just checking in with how our body is reacting to a decision.

You know,

We live in a culture I'm going to get on like this sort of cultural soapbox.

That's the word I was looking for cultural soapbox again for a second and say that we live in a culture that really values the intellect.

And it's,

It's great.

You know,

We love the intellect.

Listen,

I as much as the next person love to chew on ideas like we chew on bubblegum.

And yet what for me what yoga has taught me,

Especially yin yoga,

Where you're moving really slowly,

If at all.

And you can see the ways in which the mind trying to figure things out is actually going against the process.

You know,

The more I try to process things through my mind and a yin yoga class,

The more my body actually ends up contracting.

And the whole point of yin yoga is to get the body to relax to activate the parasympathetic nervous system enough that we can surrender and let the body's natural wisdom take over and heal itself in the same way it heals a wound.

And intuition is like that where it's a physical thing.

It's like,

What does this feel like in my body?

And how can I trust that my body might be tuning into something in my environment that my brain is not able to pick up on in this moment,

That my brain is an oversimplification,

But that my prefrontal cortex is not able to pick up on in this moment.

Because prudence is so much about being able to align our behaviors with our values,

It does require a certain level of intellectual understanding of what those values are.

How can I put language to the things that I care about?

How can I figure out are those things that I really care about?

Or are those things that I've inherited to care about and actually are not my values?

That's kind of the basis of acceptance and commitment therapy.

And how can I balance what my theoretical values are with what feels natural and feels right for me in my body and in my heart?

And how can I take my time in figuring out what that looks like in terms of integrating it into my daily life,

In whatever decisions I'm presented with?

It challenges us to not mistake movement for progress or urgency for a sense of importance,

But instead to understand that,

You know,

As as Jon Kabat-Zinn likes to say,

To do less is to do more.

Because we can be more effective when we've gotten really clear about what it is that we actually care about.

This imbalance,

This underuse of prudence almost always shows up in our boundaries.

Our boundaries tend to become porous.

We say yes out of a place of pressure.

We overextend ourselves to avoid disappointing others.

We take on responsibilities that aren't even ours,

Because we're moving too fast to check in with what we actually have the space for.

Without this pause,

Without this capacity to slow down and let everything catch up to us,

A lot of us tend to default into appeasement.

We abandon ourselves in the name of being helpful or agreeable or easy.

And the problem,

As I'm sure many of us have discovered,

Is that it's not sustainable.

We get burned out.

We get tired.

We get disconnected.

We're already disconnected from ourselves.

That's why we're acting out of alignment.

But as a result,

We also become really disconnected from those around us,

Because we don't have a cohesive whole to connect to other people.

When we slow down,

When we reconnect with the wisdom that is underneath all the noise,

We can better connect to what thoughts are ours,

What beliefs,

What values are ours,

And which ones we've adopted from our environment or from our family,

And then decide which ones we want to keep.

We can better check in with how things feel within ourselves,

Within our hearts,

Within our bodies.

And we're better able to be clear and thoughtful and informed about the boundaries that we need to have in our lives to make sure that we're showing up as the person that we really want to be in the world.

On the other hand,

When prudence is overused,

It can become excessive caution.

We might overthink every decision,

Fearing mistakes so much that we stop ourselves from moving forward.

We might second guess our instincts,

Analyzing every possible outcome or delaying action until conditions feel perfect.

You know,

I've talked a little bit about my own tendencies towards perfectionism.

And I can't remember at this point,

If I've talked about it in this way,

But I definitely did that with this series,

Where I mean,

To put something out there that's talking about what it means to be a good person.

And to know my own true humanity on that journey.

I just had a tremendous amount,

I've had a tremendous amount of caution in terms of how much of me I let come through on this.

Because on the one hand,

You know,

I just want it to be a curriculum,

I want it to be something where it's structured,

And it's informed by the research and all of that.

And then on the other hand,

I recognize that I'm a person talking.

And I know that when I am learning and trying to grow,

It's so much easier when I can have the courage to look at my own humanity,

Because the person who's teaching me is doing that.

So yeah,

Not to get,

You know,

Terribly meta about it,

But for this series,

It was a big thing for me figuring out what is my balance of prudence in terms of impact through sharing things about myself,

While also humility is a really big thing for me,

Like I'll talk about that in the episode,

But it's something that like,

Just hits me to my core.

And so I always want to lead with that.

And so it's like this weird thing of like,

Do I share anything about myself?

Because that feels weird.

But also,

Like,

Do I not and then like,

Give the impression that I'm just some like enlightened voice in the ether?

Like that's horrifying.

That's just not true.

What I discovered is that I was going to learn by just starting and then trusting myself to find my footing.

And having faith in the process of listening to my mind and listening to my heart and listening to my body,

And engaging in practices that allow for me to keep them in a sort of alignment,

So that I can tell when things don't feel right.

Overused prudence might sound something like,

What if I make the wrong choice?

Or I'll wait until I'm fully ready.

Or I just need more information.

Or and this one is going to get some of us.

I'll wait until I'm not scared to engage in this.

And you know that that I think speaks to the relationship between bravery and prudence,

Where I think it takes a certain level of bravery to stay grounded in your own values and not engage in behaviors.

But also to not overuse prudence,

We have to pull from our bravery and be able to say I'm going to do it and I'm going to do it imperfectly.

I'm going to do it and I'm going to do it afraid and do it anyway.

It can be really easy to say,

Oh,

I'm just not going to do that.

I'm just not the kind of person who does stuff like that.

I'm you know,

I'm prudent.

When really,

That's just a form of avoidance.

Nobody else can know that for us.

Nobody can know are you not engaging in certain aspects of life because it's based in your values?

Or are you not engaging in it,

Hiding behind the idea of values because you're afraid?

Or because you're logic in your way out of it?

No one can know that except for you.

And maybe those closest to you.

And maybe you're a therapist who you know,

Sees you and can compassionately and lovingly reflect things back to you.

You know,

And even then they don't really know all they can do is say,

I wonder,

Can't help but wonder if this might be true.

In terms of boundaries,

Overused prudence often creates a tremendous amount of rigidity and boundaries.

So we might withdraw too quickly.

We could be declining opportunities,

Not because they're wrong for us,

But because we're afraid of the risk,

Or we're afraid of the vulnerability,

Or we're afraid of the imperfection that it might illustrate we all have,

It turns out.

In this place,

Our boundaries become so tight that nothing new can enter.

Not growth,

Not connection,

And maybe not even joy.

So as always,

The sweet spot for all of this lies in the middle.

How can we be thoughtful,

But not fearful?

And if fearful,

How can we be thoughtful about that fear and ask if it's logical?

Sometimes when prudence leans too far in either direction,

Whether we rush ahead without reflection,

Or hesitate endlessly out of fear,

We begin to feel an inner split.

Psychologists call this cognitive dissonance,

Which is the discomfort that arises when our choices and values and desires are out of alignment.

And if you're like,

Hannah,

This has got to be the 14th time that you used the word alignment and discernment.

It's true,

That's true.

I'm going to keep using those words because those are the key words.

If I were writing a research paper on prudence,

In the keyword section under the abstract,

It would be like alignment,

Discernment.

So I'm just going to keep on keeping on.

When we underuse prudence,

This dissonance might sound like regret or self-reproach.

It could be something like,

Man,

I wish I knew better.

We may act from impulse only to feel unsettled afterwards,

Aware that our behavior didn't match what our wiser self wanted for us.

I have definitely done that.

I have had to reckon with the cognitive dissonance of engaging in ways that I,

If you would ask me,

Would you ever do this?

I would be like,

Of course not.

And then life happens and we realize that just because we're good at pointing at the kind of person we want to be doesn't mean that we're there yet.

And that can be really,

Really,

Really uncomfortable.

When we overuse prudence,

The dissonance can feel more like stagnation or guilt for not acting.

We feel the pull towards movement,

But our fear of imperfection keeps us standing still.

In both cases,

We experience the same underlying tension,

Which is the feeling of being out of sync with ourselves.

Balanced prudence helps bring those notes back into harmony.

It invites us to let our choices reflect what we really value and trust ourselves and our own process of growth more than the outcome.

What I mean by this is I'm not going to tell you that if you slow down perfectly and you take the time to meditate and to check in with yourself and to honor the body and to do things even if you're scared,

But because it feels like the right thing,

That everything's going to always work out.

That's not what I'm promising you.

What I can say is that what will happen is genuine growth,

Not growth from a place of ideas,

Not growth from a place of avoiding mistakes,

But growth from being really honest both with ourselves and in how we engage with the world about where we actually are,

And then sitting with the discomfort that may follow so that it can refine us and become an embodied sense of wisdom that gets us to think differently and behave differently next time.

Prudence is what invites us to cultivate inner spaciousness,

To create a pause between impulse and action.

That pause is where wisdom lives.

Practically,

Practicing prudence looks like checking in with your body before saying yes or no,

Asking is this decision rooted in fear or in love,

Considering both immediate feelings and long-term consequences,

And allowing silence to reveal what hurried thinking can't.

A lot of this comes down to our ability to trust ourselves and knowing that discernment doesn't always require endless analysis.

I said it before and I'll say it again.

It's about listening to both our intuition and our reason,

Allowing them to work together as partners rather than opposites.

When we live with prudence,

We cultivate peace of mind,

The sense that our choices,

Even the imperfect ones,

Were made with care and with clarity and with heart.

And it's that that allows for us to have a clear relationship with ourselves.

Before we move into the affirmations,

We'll pause for a brief blessing.

May we be blessed with the wisdom to pause,

Reflect,

And choose with care,

And the patience to act in ways that both honor our values and our responsibilities.

May we trust with discernment,

Listening deeply to what is needed in each moment,

And move forward with steadiness rather than haste.

As we navigate our choices,

May we remember that prudence is not restraint from fear,

But clarity born of presence.

A way of honoring truth,

Protecting what matters,

And tending to the future with love.

Let our decisions bring harmony,

Our foresight bring stability,

And our care bring quiet strength to a world that longs for thoughtful compassion.

I will read each statement twice,

Pausing in between to give you a chance to repeat them out loud to yourself,

And I do recommend saying them out loud.

The statements that are easy to embrace,

Savor them,

Appreciate them,

Stand like a mountain in their truth.

And then the statements that feel not so good,

That feel uncomfortable or foreign,

Go ahead and say them anyway.

This is where we are doing the work,

Rewiring those neural networks.

This is also where we gain insight into unhealed wounds,

Limiting beliefs,

And ingrained biases and judgments toward ourselves or toward a particular way of being.

It's great material for journaling or discussing with a counselor or trusted friend,

Maybe even someone doing the series with you.

Whether you're just waking up,

Walking your dog,

On your commute,

Or getting ready for bed,

I hope these affirmations serve your deepest,

Greatest,

Highest self.

And with that,

Let's get started.

I am prudent.

I am prudent.

I pause and choose my responses with care.

I pause and choose my responses with care.

I am openhearted without overextending myself.

I am openhearted without overextending myself.

I trust myself to make thoughtful,

Grounded decisions.

I trust myself to make thoughtful,

Grounded decisions.

I act with both courage and discernment.

I act with both courage and discernment.

I listen to my inner wisdom before I act.

I listen to my inner wisdom before I act.

I listen to my inner wisdom before I act.

I move with intention and release urgency.

I move with intention and release urgency.

I release the need for perfection before taking action.

I release the need for perfection before taking action.

I act in alignment with my values.

I act in alignment with my values.

I act in alignment with my values.

My no is as sacred as my yes.

My no is as sacred as my yes.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.

I trust that when I act from alignment,

The next step will reveal itself.