Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control

by Ryan Holiday

Think of the Queen pushing through her annus horribilis. Anne Frank in her attic for twenty-five months, cheerfully writing in her journal. Stephen Hawking, forty years in a wheelchair from ALS. Marcus Aurelius, plagued by a lifelong stomach ailment, then wars and floods and an actual plague, reminding himself that nothing was unendurable (and that the only thing that wasn’t, our mortality, eventually solves that problem for us). Think of the mothers who pushed through postpartum. Think of the people who fought through cancer, through bankruptcy, through humiliating failure. Think of the addicts who battled withdrawals to bounce back from rock bottom. Think of the people who clawed their way out of generational poverty. Think of the slaves who survived the worst of what humans can do to one another. They kept going. They didn’t quit. Still, as Maya Angelou wrote, still they rose. And in so doing, they ennobled and dignified their struggle with endurance and quiet fortitude.