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

by Ryan Holiday

One aim: to help you choose . . . Courage, bravery, fortitude, honor, sacrifice . . . Temperance, self-control, moderation, composure, balance . . . Justice, fairness, service, fellowship, goodness, kindness . . . Wisdom, knowledge, education, truth, self-reflection, peace . . . These are the key to a life of honor, of glory, of excellence in every sense.

Freedom, as Eisenhower famously said, is actually only the “opportunity for self-discipline.” Unless we’d rather be adrift, vulnerable, disordered, disconnected, we are responsible for ourselves.

We must keep ourselves in check or risk ruin. Or imbalance. Or dysfunction. Or dependency.

In this sense, we’re all in the same boat: The fortunate as well as the unfortunate must figure out how to manage their emotions, abstain from what should be abstained from, choose what standards to observe. We must master ourselves unless we’d prefer to be mastered by someone or something else.

Self-discipline is giving everything you have . . . and knowing what to hold back. Is there some contradiction in this? No, only balance. Some things we resist, some things we pursue; in all things, we proceed with moderation, intentionally, reasonably, without being consumed or carried away.

He came to find that the best way to lead was not by force or fiat, but through persuasion, through compromise, through patience, by controlling his temper, and, most of all, by example.

To whom much is given, much is expected.

He knew that getting comfortable was the enemy, and that success is an endless series of invitations to get comfortable. It’s easy to be disciplined when you have nothing. What about when you have everything? What about when you’re so talented that you can get away with not giving everything?

never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense”—now,

The body, you must understand, is a metaphor. It’s a training ground, a proving ground for the mind and the soul.

Wake up. Show up. Be present. Give it everything you’ve got.

The less you desire, the richer you are, the freer you are, the more powerful you are. It’s that simple.

“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost,”

For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost.

festina lente. That is, to make haste slowly.

Energy plus moderation. Measured exertion. Eagerness, with control.

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

For a samurai, there was no such thing as pretty good. If a pretty good swordsman met a better fighter . . . he would die. It’s like the basketball Hall of Famer Bill Bradley’s observation: When you are not practicing, refining, working—somewhere, someone else is . . . and when you meet them, they will beat you. Or kill you.

And yet what emerges from this practice is the opposite of those three feelings. Energy. Strength. Confidence.

Decide who you want to be, the Stoics command us, and then do that work.

Success breeds softness. It also breeds fear: We become addicted to our creature comforts. And then we become afraid of losing them. Seneca was no Cato day to day, but he knew from his practice, that he could be if he had to.

We must practice temperance now, in times of plenty, because none of us know what the future holds—only that plenty never lasts.

Steinbeck referred to this as the “indiscipline of overwork,” reminding himself that it was “the falsest of economies.”

The most surefire way to make yourself more fragile, to cut your career short, is to be undisciplined about rest and recovery, to push yourself too hard, too fast, to overtrain and to pursue the false economy of overwork. Manage the load.

Fortitudine vincimus. By endurance we conquer. Fittingly, this was the name of his ship as well: the Endurance.

the body keeps score.

In addiction circles, they use the acronym HALT—Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired—as a helpful warning rubric for the signs and triggers for a relapse. We have to be careful, we have to be in control, or we risk losing it all.

Those who tell themselves they are free to do anything will, inevitably, be chained to something.

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.

“There can be no doubt,” she said, “that criticism is good for people and institutions that are part of public life. No institution—City, Monarchy, whatever—should expect to be free from the scrutiny of those who give it their loyalty and support, not to mention those who don’t.”

in the calm light of mild philosophy.”

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.

William Stafford’s daily rule: “Do the hard things first.”

The one thing all fools have in common, Seneca wrote, is that they’re always getting ready to live.

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

“If you concentrate your jab and move around this guy, you can be the first one to regain the crown. You can do it. Your friend, Archie Moore.”

Losing is not always up to us . . . but being a loser is. Being a quitter is.

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?

That’s what being a pro is about: treating winning or losing as a chance to get right back to it.

That’s the thing about both pain and pleasure: They’re felt in the body, but they affect the mind and the mood—

Our rational faculties (as well as our bodies) can torture us, but they are also a gift. We ought not dull their power or mess, unnecessarily, with our chemistry.

Doing the work? The work is getting through life sober. Go on a trip? Go to therapy! Struggle with it. Heal a little bit each day, get a little better each day.

Anyone or anything that offers you an escape should be viewed with caution and anything that promises euphoria is liable to give you real pain.

it is sober reasoning, searching out the motives of every choice and avoidance, and banishing those beliefs through which the greatest disturbances take possession of the soul.”

“Remember to conduct yourself in life as if at a banquet,” Epictetus said. “As something being passed around comes to you, reach out your hand and take a moderate helping. Does it pass you by? Don’t stop it. It hasn’t yet come? Don’t burn in desire for it, but wait until it arrives in front of you. Act this way with children, a spouse, toward position, with wealth—one day it will make you worthy of a banquet with the gods.”[*]

English poet John Dryden: 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.

kaizen. Continual improvement. Always finding something to work on, to make a little progress on. Never being satisfied, always looking to grow.

These are cautionary tales. The people we ought to admire are quiet. Dignified. Reserved. Serious. Professional. Respectful of themselves and others.

Aequanimitas. Equanimity. Now it was Marcus’s turn to live up to the crown, to live up to the example Antoninus had set for him. Equanimity would be the perfect watchword.