Book Review: Discipline is Destiny

Stoicism, an indifference to pleasure or pain. Existing in this way sounds almost inhospitable to the soul; how could our fleshy, warm bodies survive within the dreary, glacial chambers of detachment? Summoned by my intrigue in stoicism, Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control by Ryan Holiday fell into my lap. Nothing could prepare me for the mind-bending, soul-twisting wisdom that awaited me.

As I ripen from the tangles of young adulthood, I've realized that a huge aspect of maturation is separation from self. Whether it is separating from our egos, desires, attachments, or expectations, growing up means growing out of these peripheral ways of being. As we get older, the compass of our life should be guided by principles and virtues that stretch beyond ourselves. When we become deeply self-interested, we create this barrier between us and what actually matters, especially when that excessive self-interest turns against us. 

When we go out of our own way to ensure that everything is easy, we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to grow. As I reflected on this idea, it made me realize that so much of our lives are spent mitigating risks in an attempt to always feel comfortable and safe. Our relentless search to "feel good" might actually be doing us more harm. The truth is that life is hard, it has always been hard, and there is no doubt in my mind that it will continue to be hard, but what if instead of numbing ourselves from this truth, we ran towards it? There is something kind of magical in embracing difficulty, and treating it the same as you would treat anything else. 

Sometimes, to get the things that we want, we must trudge through the mud. Many of us might look at the mud and turn back before we even step in. Some of us might dig our heels into the mud, only to give up after a few steps. A Stoic might detach themselves from the idea of the mud being anything but mud, and through discipline, trudge forward until they had reached the end. All of this to say that our power lies within us. It doesn't matter if the mud is difficult to walk through. There is no point in waiting for the right time of day to walk through the mud, nor does it make sense to obsess over how to best walk through the mud. It's just mud, and it will be mud whether you walk through it or not - you just have to decide whether you have the discipline to walk through it at all. It won't be pretty; you may fall and make a fool of yourself, you'll be stained with particles and mush, you may even be the only one in the mud while everyone else watches, but can you live with yourself without having tried at all?

I am flawed in that I have assumed that the purpose of life is to be happy, but is happiness really all that there is? Easily attained happiness and comfort feel fleeting. There must be more to existence than just wanting to feel good. What would happen to us if we sought discomfort, intentionally doing the hard things before we tried doing anything else? What if choosing to do the hard things makes us more resilient and powerful? Stoicism isn't about having no desires, it's about not letting your desires control you.

Some quotes that deeply resonated with me:

• "Sometimes it's having the strength to not do the thing you want to do more than anything else in this world."
  
• "To procrastinate is to be entitled. It is arrogant. It assumes there will be a later...the graveyard of lost potential , we might say, is filled with people who just needed to do something else first."
  
• "Make yourself do unpleasant things so as to gain the upper hand of your soul."
  
• "We move the goalposts so the game doesn't get boring and, more important, so it never ends."
  
• "People who are doing less important things than you can get away with not being in control. You can't."
  
• "We choose the hard way...because in the long run, it's actually the only way.​"