Discipline Is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control

In a world of distraction, focusing is a superpower.

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).

discipline means being disciplined in all things, especially little things.

You don’t have to always be amazing. You do always have to show up. What matters is sticking around for the next at bat.

We must master ourselves unless we'd prefer to be mastered by someone or something else.

The less you desire, the richer you are, the freer you are, the more powerful you are.

I ceaselessly chant the refrain,” Montaigne said, “anything you can do another day can be done now.

why are we so damn unhappy? Because we mistake liberty for license. Freedom, as Eisenhower famously said, is actually only the “opportunity for self-discipline.

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!

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

freedom is the opportunity for self-discipline.

Would you have a great empire? Rule over yourself. Publilius Syrus

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.

As they say, another way to spell “perfectionism” is p-a-r-a-l-y-s-i-s.

Most happy people don’t need you to know how happy they are—they aren’t thinking about you at all.

The fact is, the body keeps score.

Now is the time. Because now is the only time you have.

Only you will know what you need to practice from morning until night, what to repeat ten thousand times.

The one thing all fools have in common, Seneca wrote, is that they’re always getting ready to live. They tell themselves they just need to get some things in place first, that they’re just not feeling it yet, that they’ll get to it 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. “I ceaselessly chant the refrain,” Montaigne said, “anything you can do another day can be done now.

Show me a man who isn’t a slave,” Seneca demanded, pointing out that even slave owners were chained to the responsibilities of the institution of slavery. “One is a slave to sex, another to money, another to ambition; all are slaves to hope or fear.” The first step, he said, was to pull yourself out of the ignorance of your dependency, whatever it happens to be. Then you need to get clean—get clean from your mistress, from your addiction to work, from your lust for power, whatever. In the modern era, we might be hooked on cigarettes or soda, likes on social media, or watching cable news. It doesn’t matter whether it’s socially acceptable or not, what matters is whether it’s good for you. Eisenhower’s habit was killing him, as so many of ours are too—slowly, imperceptibly.

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.

But that’s what the greats do, they don’t just show up, they do more than practice, they do the work.

Failing to realize your full potential is a terrible punishment.

A man must swallow a toad every morning if he wishes to be sure of finding nothing still more disgusting before the day is over.” Shortened and often credited to Mark Twain,[*] the idea is that if we eat the frog at the beginning of the day, it will be next to impossible for the day to get any worse. A more applicable interpretation of this idea was expressed by the poet and pacifist William Stafford’s daily rule: “Do the hard things first.

As the novelist Gustave Flaubert commands: Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

What race are you running? Who are you trying to beat? And is it for the best?

Technology, access, success, power, privilege—this is only a blessing when accompanied by the second of the cardinal virtues: self-restraint.

Be the adult in a world of emotional children.

I’ll get serious about this tomorrow or, I’ll focus on it later, “what you’re really saying is, ‘Today I’ll be shameless, immature, and base; others will have the power to distress me.’

Rarely does a person who competes with his head as well as his body come out second. Pete Carril