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Freedom, as Eisenhower famously said, is actually only the “opportunity for self-discipline.”
We must keep ourselves in check or risk ruin. Or imbalance. Or dysfunction. Or dependency.
We must master ourselves unless we’d prefer to be mastered by someone or something else.
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.
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!
Worn by the waste of time— Comfortless, nameless, hopeless save In the dark prospect of the yawning grave. . . .
Temperament is everything. Our head and our heart combine to form a kind of command system that rules our lives. Millions of years of evolution have combined to give us these gifts. Will we command them as tools? Or will we let them languish, allowing ourselves instead to be jerked around like puppets? You decide.
Plenty of people are “masters” of their universe while lacking the most important power there is . . . power over their own minds, power over their own actions and choices.
An ordinary person could get away with a little rhetorical flourish . . . but you aren’t a Queen if you’re ordinary. The difficulty of that balance! You are unlike anyone, but you have to be relatable to everyone! You have to be approachable at the same time as being above reproach.
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.
Greatness is not just what one does, but also what one refuses to do. It’s how one bears the constraints of their world or their profession, it’s what we’re able to do within limitations—creatively, consciously, calmly.
No one can say yes to their destiny without saying no to what is clearly someone else’s. No one can achieve their main thing without the discipline to make it the main thing.
We don’t refrain from excess because it’s a sin. We are self-disciplined because we want to avoid a hellish existence right here while we’re alive—a hell of our own making.
“An expert on speaking also knows when not to do so.”
Beware the fury of the patient man.
When your choices turn you into someone who has to worry about money, then you are not rich . . . no matter how much you make.
Think about it: Most people don’t even show up. Of the people who do, most don’t really push themselves. So to show up and be disciplined about daily improvement? You are the rarest of the rare.
Now is the time. Because now is the only time you have.
Understand: Most of the people doing important work are people you’ve never heard of—they want it that way. Most happy people don’t need you to know how happy they are—they aren’t thinking about you at all. Everyone is going through something, but some people choose not to vomit their issues on everyone else. The strongest people are self-contained. They keep themselves in check. They keep their business where it belongs . . . their business.
Not only was Antoninus notoriously indifferent to superficial honors, he actively avoided them.
Equanimity.
They were human beings. And they were not perfect. But if they were perfect, they would not give us hope. We love them because they tried. Because they course corrected in failure, because they were humble in victory, because they did the work and got the results.
Grace under pressure looks beautiful, but it is a function of magisterial self-control and will. Of course the person is scared. They are tired. They are provoked. But they manage to subsume all that. They rise above it.
Stoicism is not about punishing yourself. It’s a firm school, for sure, but as Seneca wrote, “In fact no philosophical school is kindlier and gentler, nor more loving of humankind and more attentive to our common good to the degree that its very purpose is to be useful, bring assistance, and consider the interests not only of itself . . . but of all people.”
Looking at the opportunities before him in the mild light of calm philosophy, Washington chose the path of Cincinnatus, back to Mount Vernon. He wanted quiet time alone. He wanted to humble himself with hard labor. He was observing the separation of civilian and military power. He was putting the country above himself.
What matters isn’t the title. It isn’t the power. It isn’t the wealth. It isn’t the control. That greatness isn’t what you have. It’s who you choose to become. Or who you choose to remain.
Whoever makes his journey to a tyrant’s court. Becomes his slave, although he went there a free man.
It cost him everything. As it does for all of us, when we compromise, when we relax our discipline, when we make “exceptions” and do what is expedient instead of what we know is right.
some things, like our principles, cannot change . . . but everything else? We have to be strong enough to adjust and adapt . . . lest we end up angry, bitter, and impossible to work with.
Plenty of people have been buried in coffins of their own making. Before their time too. Because they couldn’t understand that “the way they’d always done things” wasn’t working anymore. Or that “the way they were raised” wasn’t acceptable anymore. We must cultivate the capacity for change, for flexibility and adaptability. Continuously, constantly. Changing the little things day to day, as the Queen did, to preserve and protect the big things. It’s not always fun. It’s not always easy. But what’s the alternative? Dying? Self-control is not a life sentence. It is a way of living. Flexibility
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Precisely when we think we’ve earned the right to relax our discipline is exactly when we need it most.
The gift of his strictness, of his self-containment, was tranquility—amid both success and adversity.
It’s at the height of our powers that we need the clearest mind. We can’t be blinded by substances or a sense of superiority.
