Prioritize the health of your soul above external goods

Ask regularly whether you are attending to who you are becoming, not only to what you are acquiring.

Why it works

Socrates in the "Apology" is explicit: he spent his life asking people whether they care for their "soul" — their character, their values, their becoming — more than for money, reputation, or power. The mechanism is attention allocation: what you attend to grows; what you attend to regularly becomes constitutive of who you are. Regular character examination shifts attention from external metrics to internal qualities, which are the things Socrates argues actually matter.

How to do it

1. Weekly, ask: what kind of person am I becoming by how I am living this week?
2. Separate this from "how am I performing" and "what am I accumulating" — those are external metrics.
3. Name one quality you are cultivating and one you are letting slip.
4. Make one decision this week that reflects concern for the former rather than the latter.

Evidence

Character development and virtue-based well-being (eudaimonia) are associated with life satisfaction in positive psychology research. Regular reflection on character qualities is associated with greater character development over time. (observational)

Eudaimonic well-being is studied in positive psychology, though the concept is not identical to Socrates’ "care of the soul." The association is directionally consistent rather than a direct test of Socratic claims.

Common mistake

Treating "care of the soul" as a vague aspiration rather than a specific behavioral question: what did you actually do this week that reflects the character you want to have?