Discipline Is Destiny by Ryan Holiday

Well curated and really well written set of stories about discipline. Do not expect advice or how to’s but if you are looking for inspiration this is the book to read. I personally picked up a few stories/quotes that I find myself repeating quite often, although I am not really a quote person.

Freedom, as Eisenhower famously said, is actually only the “opportunity for self-discipline.”

Freedom requires discipline. Discipline gives us freedom. Freedom and greatness. Your destiny is there. Will you grab the reins?

If we don’t dominate ourselves physically, who and what does dominate? Outside forces. Laziness. Adversity. Entropy. Atrophy.

To whom much is given, much is expected.

The more a man is,” the editor Maxwell Perkins had inscribed on his mantel, “the less he wants.”

Outer order, inner calm.

Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.

We’re fit to tackle the big problems only if we do the little things right first.

festina lente. That is, to make haste slowly.

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.

Stafford’s daily rule: “Do the hard things first.” Don’t wait. Don’t tell yourself you’ll warm up to it. Don’t tell yourself you’ll get this other stuff out of the way and then . . . No. Do it now. Do it first. That’s called prioritization. Get it over with. That’s called self-care.

“by the standard of pleasure, nothing is more pleasant than self-control and . . . nothing is more painful than lack of self-control.”

Discipline is not a punishment, it’s a way to avoid punishment.

“Fuck-you money” is a chimera. You never get it. Nobody does. Poor people have poor-people problems and rich people have rich-people problems because people always have problems. You’re always going to be subject to the necessity of self-discipline. Or at least, you’ll never be immune from the consequence of ignoring it.

It has been said that Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback in history—the youngest and the oldest to win a Super Bowl—isn’t obsessed with winning. That’s not what he focuses on. He’s obsessed with improving the accuracy of his touchdown passes in the fourth quarter. He’s obsessed with getting a little bit faster at releasing the football.

This is the wonderful thing about doing your best. It insulates you, ever so slightly, from outcomes as well as ego. It’s not that you don’t care about results. It’s that you have a kind of trump card. Your success doesn’t go to your head because you know you’re capable of more. Your failures don’t destroy you because you are sure there wasn’t anything more you could have done.

Although Marcus was of good character, he knew that character was something that needs to be constantly worked on, constantly improved.

The leader puts others before themselves. The leader takes the hit. Everything else is just semantics and titles.

Such is the paradox of success. Precisely when we think we’ve earned the right to relax our discipline is exactly when we need it most.