Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control (The Stoic Virtues Series)

by Ryan Holiday

Self-discipline—the virtue of temperance—is even more important, the ability to keep your ass in line. The ability . . . . . . to work hard

. . . to say no . . . to practice good habits and set boundaries . . . to train and to prepare . . . to ignore temptations and provocations . . . to keep your emotions in check . . . to endure painful difficulties.

Temperance is not deprivation but command of oneself physically, mentally, spiritually—demanding the best of oneself, even when no one is looking, even when allowed less. It takes courage to live this way—not just because it’s hard, but because it sets you apart.

This is not about six-pack abs or the avoidance of all that feels good, but instead about developing the fortitude required for the path we have chosen. It’s about being able to go the distance, and steering clear of the blind alleys and mirages along the way. If we don’t dominate ourselves physically, who and what does dominate? Outside forces. Laziness. Adversity. Entropy. Atrophy. We do the work, today and always, because it’s what we’re here for. And we know that while it might seem easy to take it easy and more pleasurable to indulge our pleasure centers, in the long run, it is a far more painful route.

When you love the work, you don’t cheat it or the demands it asks of you. You respect even the most trivial aspects of the pursuit—he

You have to do your best while you still have a chance. Life is short. You never know when the game, when your body, will be taken away from you. Don’t waste it!

Show up . . . . . . when you’re tired . . . when you don’t have to . . . even if you have an excuse . . . even if you’re busy . . . even if you won’t get recognized for it . . . even if it’s been kicking your ass lately. Once something is done, you can build on it. Once you get started, momentum can grow. When you show up, you can get lucky.

We don’t rise to the occasion, we fall to the level of our training.

When you are not practicing, refining, working—somewhere, someone else is . . . and when you meet them, they will beat you.

Always and forever, the reward is the work. It is a joy itself. It is torture and also heaven—sweaty, wonderful salvation.

We don’t get anywhere in this life without work. But we can get somewhere magical when we do the kind of work that doesn’t even feel like work. When we follow the excitement that gets us into the harness, that gets us out in the fields, when we follow the urge to get moving and get at it. Decide who you want to be, the Stoics command us, and then do that work.

Nobody does their best in their bathrobe . . . which is why we ought to take a shower and get ready in the morning, even if we’re not going to leave the house. Shine your shoes . . . until you are the one glowing.

While the world is unpredictable, one thing we do control is how we take care of ourselves. Making our bed, tucking in our shirt, running a comb through our hair, these are little things we can always do, practices that instill order and cleanliness in a messy situation.

But most of us spend our lives building up walls between us and anything unpleasant . . . not understanding how dependent this makes us. The whole point of success, we feel, is to never have to struggle, to have not only what we need but everything we want on demand: hot water. Nice clothes. Food—of the finest ingredients, cooked by the best restaurants . . . delivered to our door in minutes—at the slightest pang of hunger.

We take the easy way, because it’s there. Who would possibly choose to be cold? What’s the point of being hot if you can turn on the AC? Why would you needlessly carry heavy things you can get someone to pick up for you? Who walks when they could drive? A person who understands the value of discipline. A person who is comfortable being uncomfortable. Go run a marathon. Sleep on the ground. Lift something heavy. Do the manual labor yourself. Jump in the cold lake.

Success breeds softness. It also breeds fear: We become addicted to our creature comforts. And then we become afraid of losing them.

By seeking out discomfort, we toughen ourselves up. If we’re not going to live an utterly Spartan existence day to day then we better at least practice toughness regularly enough that we’re not afraid of it.

All self-discipline begins with the body, but it doesn’t just magically happen.

And so the best of us become the best by undergoing the same challenges, by forcing our bodies to change and adapt.

“Make yourself do unpleasant things so as to gain the upper hand of your soul.”

The person who has the upper hand of their soul, the person who can go without, the person who does not fear change or discomfort or a reversal of fortune? This person is harder to kill and harder to defeat. They are also happier, more well-balanced, and in better shape.

When we are committed, when we are driven, when we want to win, self-discipline most often takes the form of getting up earlier and getting more work done. But sometimes, the harder choice, the greater exercise in restraint, is to rest. It’s to manage the load instead of throw it on your shoulders (or knees) without thinking.

To last, to be great, you have to understand how to rest. Not just rest, but relax, too, have fun too. (After all, what kind of success is it if you can never lay it down?)

That’s what it takes: sacrifices. Pushing through frustrations. Pushing through criticisms and loneliness. Pushing through pain.

Does endurance always conquer? Of course not, but nobody wins by throwing in the towel. Nobody wins with weakness. We will taste pain on this journey, that’s a fact. We will be given a million opportunities to stop, and a million reasons why that’s okay. But we can’t. And it’s not. We keep going.

We put our butt in the chair. We will not be deterred.

“People pay for what they do,” writer James Baldwin wrote, “and still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it simply: by the lives they lead.” The fact is, the body keeps score. The decisions we make today and always are being recorded, daily, silently and not so silently, in who we are, what we look like, how we feel.

We have to understand: Self-discipline is not keeping things exactly as they are with an iron grip. It’s not resistance to any and everything. Nor would much discipline be required in a world that always stayed the same. Temperance is also the ability to adjust, to

make good of any situation, to find the opportunity to grow and improve in any situation. And to be able to do this with equanimity and poise,

No one lasts very long if they are afraid of change, and few are able to change if they are afraid of feedback or making mistakes.

No matter what it is that we do, we will have to cultivate, beyond hustle and hard work, the discipline of patience. It may well be that this soft skill challenges us more than the hours in the chair or the years of grinding. When your instinct is to go, when you really want to get after it, waiting . . . well, the waiting is the hardest part.

We can’t abandon a pursuit because we despair of perfecting it. Not trying because you’re not sure you can win, you’re not sure whether everyone will love it, there’s a word for that too: cowardice.

We have to be brave enough to soldier on. To give it a shot. To take our turn. To step into the arena, even though we might well lose. We have to be strong enough to do this too.

Don’t wait. Don’t tell yourself you’ll warm up to it. Don’t tell yourself you’ll get this other stuff out of the way and then . . . No. Do it now. Do it first. That’s called prioritization. Get it over with. That’s called self-care.

“anything you can do another day can be done now.”

We’re all going to mess up. We’ll show up to a life-changing opportunity unprepared. We’ll fall off our diet or our sobriety. We’ll lose our temper and embarrass ourselves. We’ll make mistakes. We’ll be beaten. That’s the thing about discipline: It never fails us, but sometimes we fail it. But will that be the end of it? Is that who we are now? Or can we get back up? Losing is not always up to us . . . but being a loser is. Being a quitter is. Saying, “Ah, what the hell, does it even matter?” That’s on us. Throwing in the towel on a fight we’ve clearly lost is one thing, throwing in the towel on fighting, on your standards, from that point forward? Now you’ve been more than beaten, you’ve been defeated. Don’t be frustrated that you’re not constitutionally calm or perfect. Because no one is, and no one is expecting you to be!

your standards are so high that you give up when you fall short of them, then actually you don’t have high standards. What you have are excuses.

That’s what being a pro is about: treating winning or losing as a chance to get right back to it. To come back to your groove and stay

in it—because that’s where you’re happiest, most in control, most connected.

Discipline is not a punishment, it’s a way to avoid punishment. We do it because we love ourselves, we value ourselves and what we do. And we find, conveniently enough, that it also heightens our enjoyment of things as well. Indeed, the person content with less, who can enjoy a small pot of cheese as if it were a culinary bounty, is much more easily satisfied and much better able to find good in all situations. Seek yourself, not distraction. Be happy, not hedonistic. Let the mind rule, not the body. Conquer pleasure, make yourself superior to pain.

We have to remember: Someone else’s lack of self-control is not a justification for abandoning our own. Nor is it a good look or a recipe for success and achievement.

You can’t afford for a moment of ego or excitement costing yourself (and your teammates) a championship. You can’t afford for an impulse decision to undermine your training. You can’t afford to let passion block out the calm and mild light.

Take a minute to think about how you spent the last year, the last month, the last week, the last day. Think about how much of it was wasted, how much of it was half-assed, how much of it was spent in reaction to things out of your control. And even if you have decent results to show for this time, still, you could have done better. We all could have.

As long as a man is trying as hard as he can to do what he thinks to be right, he is a success, regardless of the outcome.”

You always control whether you give your best or not. No one can stop you from that. You don’t have to end up number one in your class. Or win everything, every time. In fact, not winning is not particularly important. What does matter is that you gave everything, because anything less is to cheat the gift.

We work hard, we think hard, we hold hard to high standards. If we do this consistently, we will be happy and productive. And in

those rare instances when we fail, which we will, we will be all right. Not only because we’ll know, in our hearts, that we did our best, but because we have the strength and character to endure setbacks on our journey. We’ll have the determination and the balance to get back up and keep going.

Your body, your mind, your spirit will have to align so that you might discover that you are capable of more than you thought possible. You will also be asked to give . . . more than you have ever had to give (or give up) before.

second we stop trying to get better is the moment we start gradually getting worse.