By Ryan Holiday, 2022.
Brief summary:
In every decision, we have two choices: vice or virtue. Will we choose to follow the passions of the flesh and seek after worldly pleasure, or will we choose the path wrought with hard work and dedication? Both offer happiness–one through artificial highs and the other through satisfaction at a job well done.
Choose to master yourself unless you’d prefer to be mastered by someone or something else. Every decision you make has consequences. You can choose to take a step closer to achieving self-mastery, or you can take a step back into the dark. Everyone has a higher and lower self, and these two selves are in constant conflict between each other. The can versus the should. The side that can focus, and the side that is easily distracted. The side that strives and reaches, the side that stoops and compromises. The side that seeks balance, the side that loves chaos and excess.
Yet we want the easy path. We watch billionaires with their expensive yachts, their beautiful families, and their extravagant vacations. We want to live like them, not knowing the other side of the coin. Holiday writes, “Still, there is a part of us that celebrates, perhaps envies, those who let themselves get away with more, who hold themselves to lower standards–the rock stars, the famous, the wicked. It seems easier. It seems like more fun. It might even be the way to get ahead. Is that right? No, it’s an illusion. Under closer inspection: no one has a harder time than the lazy. No one experiences more pain than the glutton. No success is shorter lived than the reckless or endlessly ambitious.”
Everything truly great requires discipline.
“The less you desire, the richer you are, the freer you are, the more powerful you are.”
Ryan Holiday, Discipline is Destiny
Key Ideas
Part I: The Body
We have three voices in our heads: the rational, the emotional, and the physical. Learn to start listening to the rational voice, without giving yourself completely over to the emotional or physical. You’ll want to eat lots of junk food after coming home from a long day of work. You’ll want to eat the cake instead of the vegetables. Yet sometimes we need to resist this emotional voice. No, we shouldn’t completely disregard it. Our feelings are valid and essential to who we are. Modern media glorifies being at the whim of your feelings and making decisions based on your mood. However, this is hindering your progress. Make a habit of listening to the rational voice in your head, while receiving input from your emotional and physical sides.
- Elite athletes have the same voice in their heads that all of us do. They just cultivate the strength–made a habit–of not listening to it. Once you start compromising, you’re compromised.
- “Meanwhile, we’re at home, burned out after a long day. we made dinner. we exercised, we put the kids to bed. We’re so exhausted it feels like all we can do is just veg out on the couch…when in fact, we need one final push of discipline: picking ourselves up and walking to the bedroom and passing out.”
- You’ll never know when your life will run out. Cherish the time you have by using it meaningfully and continually pushing yourself to grow in different areas and directions.
- “We owe it to ourselves, to our goals, to the game, to keep going. To keep pushing. To stay pure. To be tough. To conquer our bodies before they conquer us.”
- No one has ever drunk or eaten their way to happiness. The pleasure of excess is temporary, it never lasts. It feels good in the moment, but the decision is always regretted in the future.
- “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.”
- “The body is stupid and our temperament has to save it from itself. The body wants to eat until it is full…but ends up way past that point. The body wants to be numb…the body wants what is wants now…it can deal with the consequences later.”
- “I have taken more out of alcohol that alcohol has taken out of me.” This is a critical test to measure the impact of overconsumption in your life.
- “By the standard of pleasure, nothing is more pleasant than self-control and nothing is more painful than lack of self control. Nobody who has given themselves over to excess is having a good time. No one enslaved to their appetites are free.”
- “The ability to rise from the table before the point of hating yourself, before the meat sweats or the carb coma—this takes strength. recognizing that your choices have put you in a dangerous fog. this takes self-knowledge, self-control, and–if the people around you seem ready to keep the party going–no small amount of courage.”
- “Discipline isn’t 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 that is also heightens our enjoyment of things as well. Seek yourself, not distraction. Be happy, not hedonistic. Let the mind rule, not the body. Conquer pleasure, make yourself superior to pain.”
- “If greatness is our aim, if we want to be productive, courageous members of society, we need to take care of our bodies. You must fuel your fancy car.”
- “The body can’t be in charge. Neither can the habit. We must be the boss.”
- Holiday writes this in expression of being a slave to our poor habits: “Slavery was a deeply inefficient and inferior economic system. why would you choose to be one?”
- Consistency is key. Show up everyday, even when your tired, when you don’t have to, if you have an excuse, if you’re busy, and if you won’t get recognized.
- Decide who you want to be, and then do that work.
- The decisions we make today and always are being recored, daily, silently and not so silently, in who we are, what we look like, how we feel.”
- “Discipline is how we free ourselves. Tt’s the key that unlocks our chains. Tt’s how we save ourselves”
- Stop waiting to live your life. Stop setting goals and never chasing them. “‘The one thing all fools have in common,’ Seneca wrote, ‘is that they’re always getting ready to life.’ They tell themselves they just need to get somethings in place first, that they’re just not feeling it yet, that they’ll get after… …What exactly? Exactly nothing. They never get to it. We never do. You’ll need to be smarter than that, more disciplined than that.”
Part II: The Mind
True self-control is not only how we treat our bodies, but also how we think, feel, and comport ourselves. Train yourself to have complete control over your impulses. Have the self-control to not scream when you see a bug or flinch when you expect pain.
- “A weak mind must be constantly entertained and stimulated. A strong mind can occupy itself and can be still and vigilant in moments that demand it.”
- “Rein your impulses now; don’t let yourself get jerked like a puppet.”
- “Ordinary people don’t become legends. People who give into their weakest impulses and continually give into their lower selves will stay average.”
- “What about you? Where is your discipline? Your poise and grace under pressure? You’re tired? You’re in an impossible situation? Get out of here.”
- “Say no more often. Every time you say yes, you’re saying no to something else.”
- Perfectionism is a vice. Getting caught up in making things perfect prevent you from making progress at all. You become paralyzed by the fear of failure, leading to inaction. “Another way to spell perfectionism is p-a-r-a-l-y-s-i-s.”
- “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 is filled with people who just needed to do something first. The time to do it is now. The time to get started is now. Start with the hardest part…If your standards are so high that you give up when you fall short of them, then actually you don’t have high standards. You have excuses.”
- Don’t wait to live your life. Stop telling yourself you’ll start tomorrow, you’ll do the thing once your life is in order. “You could be good now. Instead you chose tomorrow.”
- Don’t numb yourself with external substances. “Pope John Paul II was right to remind us that part of temperance is about avoiding the impulse to deprive ourselves of “consciousness by the use of drugs.” Our rational faculties can torture us, but they are also a gift. We ought not dull their power or mess, unnecessarily, with our chemistry.” Find a way to live with the pain. Struggle with it, and heal a little more each day.
- “Our rational mind is in charge. Our training. Our teaching. Our talent. Our temperament. They are our guide. They take the lead. Not our passions. Not the momentary mild madness.”
- “The process of getting better, that’s his drug.” Become addicted to hard work.
- Everyone is given the same 24 hours in a day. What are you going to make of it? How do the ultra-successful spend their time? Why are they where they are and you where you are? Be are of the passage of time. Respect it.
- “You have wasted so much time. But life has given you a second chance. At least for now. Because you have today. You have the present moment. How will you spend it? What will you make of it?”
- “Don’t cheat your gift of potential. The gift of opportunity. The gift of life.”
- “Know thyself physically and mentally. Don’t consume anything in excess. We work hard, we think hard, we hold hard to high standards. If we do this consistently, we will be happy and productive.”
Part III: The Soul
The soul is the core of true discipline, where integrity and courage live. It takes strength to stay authentic and to resist the pressures of conformity. Ryan Holiday writes, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” Mastering the soul is a journey toward living with purpose, where each choice aligns us more closely with our highest self.
- “To remain oneself in a world that pushes for conformity takes courage. It takes courage as well as temperance to be restrained in a world of excess, where we attack and mock those who don’t indulge in the pleasures we have rationalized and the passions we have excused in ourselves.”
- “The only person you get to be truly hard on is you. It will take every once of your self-control to enforce that–not because it’s hard to be hard on yourself, but because it’s so hard to let people get away with things you’d never allow in yourself.”
- “Conquering the world is almost easy after we have conquered ourselves.”
- When embarking on your self-discipline journey, don’t beat yourself up for every failed attempt. Everyone makes mistakes, and you need to cultivate the strength to get back on track and start again. “Don’t beat yourself up, build yourself up.”
- “Self-discipline has never been about punishment or deprivation. It is about becoming the best that you are capable of becoming.”
