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

by Ryan Holiday

What you don’t ship, what you’re too afraid or strict to release, to try, is, by definition, a failure. It doesn’t matter the cause, whether it was from procrastination or perfectionism, the result is the same. You didn’t do 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.

Perfect is not just the enemy of the good, as they say, but it’s the enemy of everything that might come after. If you get stuck, your potential does too. This is why finishing is itself an achievement, an act of monumental discipline that must happen.

To paraphrase the Stoics: You could be good now. Instead you chose tomorrow. To procrastinate is to be entitled. It is arrogant. It assumes there will be a later. It assumes you’ll have the discipline to get to it later (despite not having the discipline now). The graveyard of lost potential, we might say, is filled with people who just needed to do something else first.

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.

The great home run hitter Sadaharu Oh used to say that for an athlete, losing just meant the opportunity to come back tomorrow and try to do better. The same was true for winning too.

That’s the irony of our obsession with talking so positively about “passion” these days. The ancients had precisely the opposite view of the word. The passions were considered very dangerous. Something to beware of. Because even when they were positive—which they often were not—they tended to lead us astray. To hijack our minds or our bodies, and sometimes both. We codify this even into our legal system, referring to crimes of passion.

If you cannot rein in your impulses now, if you can be jerked like a puppet today, how do you think it will go when you reach the level you aspire to? When you have power, when you have people willing to make excuses for you, when you have resources? And, too, when the margin for error is also much smaller? People who are doing less important things than you can get away with not being in control. You can’t.

The key is to slow things down. Think things through. Try not to be driven by forces you don’t understand or control. Just as an addict looks for the warning signs of a craving, we must look for insertion points for our self-discipline before we get carried away. Whether it’s anxiety or aggression, lust for a person or a thing, a celebration or an overwhelming uncertainty, we must step in and pull the emergency brake before the urge to act on those emotions picks up so much steam that it crashes us into a wall.

Because we’re in charge. Our training. Our teaching. Our talent. Our (good!) temperament. They are our guide. They take the lead. Not our passions. Not the momentary mild (or not so mild) madness.

To be imprecise with language, to fall prey to what they now call “semantic creep”—exaggerating and misusing important words until they have no meaning—this is the mark of not just a sloppy thinker but a bad temperament. When you talk, it should matter. When you say something, it should mean something.

Remember: Free speech is a right, not an obligation. Two ears, one mouth, Zeno would remind his students. Respect that ratio properly.

For much of history, Alexander was the cautionary tale for unfettered ambition. Sure, he was brilliant. Sure, he accomplished incredible things. But where did it leave him? Empty. Alone. Unhappy.

The poet Juvenal remarked that the whole world had not been big enough to contain Alexander . . . but in the end, a coffin was sufficient.

There is a considerable amount of self-discipline required to quit bad habits, particularly the more gluttonous ones. But of all the addictions in the world, the most intoxicating and the hardest to control is ambition. Because unlike drinking, society rewards it. We look up to the successful. We don’t ask them what they are doing or why they are doing it, we only ask them how they do it. We conveniently ignore how little satisfaction their accomplishments bring them, how miserable most of them are, and how miserable they tend to make everyone around them in turn.

while “Marius commanded armies, ambition commanded Marius.”

Marius and Napoleon and Alexander were powerful . . . but ultimately powerless. Because they couldn’t stop. Because there was never enough. They lusted for control over millions, because they lacked control over themselves.

We don’t need accomplishments to feel good or to be good enough. What do we need? The truth: not much! Some food and water. Work that we can challenge ourselves with. A calm mind in the midst of adversity. Sleep. A solid routine. A cause we are committed to. Something we’re getting better at. Everything else is extra. Or worse, as history has shown countless times, the source of our painful downfall.

It doesn’t matter who you are. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. Nobody is as good as they could be. Nobody is perfect.

Everybody can improve. There are few self-fulfilling prophecies more important or more dangerous than this. If you think you have room to grow, you do and you will. If you think you’re as good as you can be . . . you’re right. You won’t get any better.

The Japanese word for this is kaizen. Continual improvement. Always finding something to work on, to make a little progress on. Never being satisfied, always looking to grow.

It takes discipline not to insist on doing everything yourself. Especially when you know how to do many of those things well. Especially when you have high standards about how they should be done. Even if you enjoy doing them—whether that’s mowing your own lawn, writing your speeches, making your own schedule, or answering your own phone.

Often, the best way to manage the load is to share the load. Woe is the person who wears themselves out on trivial matters and then, when the big moments come, is out of energy. Woe is the person (and the people around them) who is so mentally exhausted and strung out because they’ve taken everything upon themselves that now, when things go wrong, there’s no slack or cushion to absorb the additional stress.

The insecure are unable to do this. They fear being criticized. They fear letting people see behind the scenes. Tyrants are unable to do this. Egotists are unable to do this too. The cheap are unable to do this. They want it all for themselves. They aren’t strong enough to bear being anything but the center, the exclusive, the sole source of achievement.

You have to find people who are good at things and empower them to help you. You have to be strong enough to hand over the keys, to relinquish control, to develop a system—an organization—that is bigger than just us. If you want to keep the main thing the main thing, maybe you need to hire someone who can be a buffer for you—someone who says “No” for you.

This will not be cheap, and it would be ignorant and arrogant to insist otherwise, but the value is virtually incalculable, because it affords you the most expensive thing in the world: time.

We are all given the same twenty-four hours each day, just as each basketball team is given twenty-four seconds per possession on the court. To not be aware of it? To not respect it? To not know how to use and manage it? It is not just sloppy, it’s stupid.

No one can take time or life for granted . . . as it runs out for all of us.

Routine is an essential tool in the management of time and the suppression of those negative forces of distraction, procrastination, and laziness.

The person who wakes up whenever, wakes up and does whatever, orders their day however? This is a person who will never have enough time, who will always be behind.

Perhaps it was a rule articulated by Cato’s great-grandfather that helped Cato love and support his brother despite their different approaches to life. “I am prepared to forgive everybody’s mistakes,” Cato the Elder said, “except my own.” Ben Franklin, many generations later, would put forth an even better rule: “Search others for their virtues, thyself for thy vices.” Or as Marcus Aurelius put it, Tolerant with others, strict with yourself.

Credit them for trying. Credit them for context. Forgive. Forget. Help them get better, if they’re open to the help. Not everyone has trained like you have. Not everyone has the knowledge you have. Not everyone has the willpower or the commitment you have. Not everyone signed up for this kind of life either!

Success does not free you from self-control, as we have said. It does not free you from hard work or consequences either. Now you will have to help others carry their loads too. And you will do this gladly, because when you accepted the rewards you also accepted the responsibility.

The more you’ve done, the higher the standard you must hold yourself to. The more you have, the more selfless you must be. Not for the sake of optics, but because it is the right thing to do. Because that’s what you signed up for when you took the responsibility.