Think back to someone you looked up to when you were younger. A teacher, an older colleague, a grandparent, a friend's parent. What you admired probably wasn't their job title. It was how they handled things: the patience, the steadiness, the way they could admit a mistake without making a scene.

Confucius treated that kind of admiration as an invitation. In Robert Eno's translation of the Analects: "When you see a worthy, think of becoming equal to him; when you see an unworthy person, survey yourself within" (4.17).

The trouble is that this kind of change is hard to see from the inside. Plutarch wrote a whole essay on the problem, How a Man May Become Aware of His Progress in Virtue. In it, he challenged the Stoic distinction between the perfectly wise person and everyone else. He argued that gradual improvements in character could be recognized in everyday life, often in small, unglamorous ways.

Here are eight of those quieter signs, drawn from Plutarch and others. None of them is proof, and most people will recognize some and not others. But they can be worth noticing.

1. You recognize your mistakes more clearly

This one can feel like the opposite of progress. In one letter, Seneca tells a friend that he feels himself being "not only reformed, but transformed." He doesn't claim to be finished. Instead, he points to a different sign: he can now see faults in himself that he hadn't recognized before. Just as a sick person who realizes they're unwell has taken a first step toward recovery, seeing a fault clearly is part of changing it (Letter 6.1, Richard Gummere's translation).

Recognizing a mistake isn't the same as punishing yourself for it. The useful version sounds more like "I interrupted her again. I'd like to stop doing that" than "I'm hopeless."

2. You put the qualities you admire into practice

Plutarch tells a story about the Athenian general Themistocles, who said the trophy of his fellow Athenian Miltiades "would not suffer him to sleep." Everyone in Athens praised Miltiades, but Themistocles wanted to match him (section 14, Frank Cole Babbitt's translation). For Plutarch, admiration that never moves us to act suggests we haven't progressed very far.

In everyday terms, it's the difference between thinking "I wish I were as patient as my grandmother" and trying her approach the next time someone tests your patience.

3. The right choice takes a little less effort

Aristotle argued that character is built through practice: "we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts" (Nicomachean Ethics 2.1, W. D. Ross's translation).

He also offered a way to tell how far the practice has gone. "We must take as a sign of states of character the pleasure or pain that ensues on acts," he wrote (2.3). For Aristotle, character involves learning to take pleasure in good actions. In everyday life, finding a good habit less of a struggle can be encouraging, though difficulty alone doesn't tell you how much progress you've made.

You might notice this in small things. Apologizing first used to feel unbearable. Now it's merely uncomfortable. That shift is worth noticing.

4. Criticism stings, but you can still hear it

Plutarch compared people to patients. Someone with a sore tooth goes straight to a person who can treat it, he says, while someone in a frenzy may drive the physician away. In the same way, being able to hear about your mistakes, admit them rather than hide them, and accept help in correcting them is "no slight indication of progress" (section 11).

That doesn't mean accepting every criticism. Some feedback is unfair or badly delivered. The sign is being able to weigh it, perhaps after the sting fades, rather than rejecting it automatically.

5. Your reactions have less control over what you do

Plutarch suggests comparing our emotions with how they used to be, "to see whether the desires and fears and angry passions which we experience to-day are less intense" (section 13).

In everyday life, a related change may be easier to spot. You may still feel irritation just as strongly, but you're becoming better at choosing what happens next. That might look like noticing the urge to send a sharp reply and deciding to wait, or letting a frustration pass without taking it out on someone nearby.

6. Other people's progress feels less threatening

In the same passage, Plutarch asks whether we are now "more inclined to feel shame than fear, to be emulous rather than envious" (section 13).

A colleague's honesty in admitting a mistake, a friend's discipline or a sibling's generosity can be something to appreciate on its own terms, rather than a verdict on where you fall short. Confucius's advice fits here too: seeing a worthy person is an invitation, not a scorecard. It won't always feel that way. But if it does more often than it used to, that's worth noticing.

7. You can change your mind without feeling defeated

The Daoist classic Zhuangzi mentions a statesman named Chü Poh Yü who, at sixty, "changed his opinions. What he had previously regarded as right, he now came to regard as wrong" (ch. 25, Herbert Giles's translation).

The passage then questions whether his new judgments might also prove mistaken: "But who shall say whether the right of to-day may not be as wrong as the wrong of the previous fifty-nine years?" The passage raises a skeptical question about our confidence in our own judgments. One modern application is humility. Changing your view in light of better information doesn't have to feel like losing. And holding your current views a little more lightly leaves room to keep learning.

8. You take small acts of goodness seriously

The Dhammapada has a verse about this. In Acharya Buddharakkhita's translation: "Think not lightly of good, saying, 'It will not come to me.' Drop by drop is the water pot filled. Likewise, the wise man, gathering it little by little, fills himself with good" (verse 122).

Plutarch ends his essay on a similar note. He describes someone who no longer settles for the excuses "What difference does this make?" and "This way now; better next time," but "gives heed to each separate thing."

That could look like returning the shopping cart, replying to the message you said you would, or keeping a small promise to yourself. These acts rarely attract attention, but they give patience, consideration and reliability a place in everyday life.

Growth isn't a straight line

None of these signs is a test to pass. Stress, grief, illness or a bad month can make anyone more reactive or less patient for a while. That doesn't erase the progress underneath.

It also helps to remember that the people you admired weren't finished either. You probably saw them at their best, or at a time in their lives when certain things came more easily. And becoming someone you admire doesn't mean becoming a copy of them. It usually means growing into the qualities you admired, in your own way.

Mencius had a warning for people in a hurry. He told of a farmer from the state of Song "who was grieved that his growing corn was not longer, and so he pulled it up," then went home and announced he had been "helping the corn to grow long." His son ran out to look and "found the corn all withered" (Mencius 2A.2, James Legge's translation). Mencius also criticized the opposite mistake: people who "do not weed their corn." What he recommends instead is patient, consistent care.

One place to start

Think of one person you admire and one specific quality of theirs. Then look for a single, small chance this week to practice it.

You may not notice the change immediately. Sometimes it becomes clearer when you look back at how you handled similar situations before.