Thank you so much for the perspective, Mafor.

Your take reminds me a lot of something that Naval Ravikant once said about how two unrelated statements can seem related simply due to the illusion of closeness.

If A leads to B, and B leads to C, does this mean A leads to C?

This can often be very misleading and I can see how my sentences could lead to that line of thought. Let’s break them down.

You will never change the world around you if you don’t master yourself.

By itself, the idea is simply that you can impact the world by being the best version of yourself. Trying to change your environment, when you are, yourself, lacking, can backfire and lead to a lot of pain.

As I read that, I can see how using the word “never” can trigger a lot of questions to verify the assertion. With reason. Some people can say they’ve changed the world without mastering themselves. But I am pretty confident that if we dissect the people who say ( and can back up) they’ve changed the world, we will be able to see levels of mastery in various degrees.

This is what now lends itself as the basis of the second sentence: Mastering yourself takes a lifetime of practice.

Success, here, is the process of improvement. It never really ends because once there’s life, there will be obstacles and overcoming them is how we grow, and learn, become better and - you guessed it - master ourselves.

I suppose where I was headed with the sentences was about living a life of improving oneself and having this process produce the effect of “change” in the world around us.

Thank you for making me reflect more deeply about this.