Sometimes we have the best intentions and push ourselves into becoming the best version of ourselves. We look in the mirror and say, “Today is the day I take a good look at myself and make the necessary changes in my character to become who I know I can be.” For many of us, we try, but it’s not long before we find ourselves slipping back into those character flaws that prevent our improvement.  I came across a painting called “Ian Usmovets Stopping an Angry Bull” by the 19th-century Russian painter Evgraf Semenovich Sorokin. This painting, for me, is a visual representation of certain aspects of personal improvement. ‘Ian Usmovets Stopping an Angry Bull’ Sorokin depicted the Russian folk hero Ian Usmovets—the large muscular figure standing to the right of the composition.  As the story goes, Usmovets helped defeat the Pechenegs, thought to be a Turkic people, in 992. The …