Know thyself

When I was in college, my roommate and I used to listen to Love Line with Adam Corolla and Dr. Drew. People would call the radio show and talk about their relationship problems or sometimes just problems with life in general. Adam was the average Joe who was very unpolitically correct and unforgiving in his analysis of someone's problems while Dr. Drew took a more fatherly, clinical approach. As a result, Adam usually ended up being the humor behind most of the show and we came to expect that of him. Drew, meanwhile, served as the coagulant that kept the show from falling apart as a result of Adam's verbal shenanigans.

Every so often, Adam did provide us with a gem of insight though. After hearing countless stories of relationship and family problems, the advice given was usually the same... go to a psychiatrist/psychologist and get help. This was always good advice, but it left us wondering how much help a professional could provide after the damage was already done.

Adam suggested that everyone should get a psychological profile of themselves done early in life. Obtain an unbiased evaluation of your strengths, weakness, tendencies, and other relevant personality traits. While it won't be an infallible measuring stick, it could certainly be useful to identify what our strengths are and how we can best use them, as well as our weaknesses, and how we can improve upon them. Knowing these things could help callers to navigate around many of the disasters that they shared with us and possibly prevent the disaster entirely. It reminds me of a line in a Rod Stewart song that goes, "I wish that I knew what I know now when I was younger." Time travel may not exist, but knowing thyself would prevent a lot of people from wishing that it did.