Everything That Most People Believe About Self-Discipline is Wrong

Why Ryan Holiday believes that the ideas of self-discipline, self-mastery, and self-control are ripe for a complete overhaul

December 01, 2022

“At the core of this idea of self-mastery is an instinctive reaction against anything that masters us. Who can be free when they have lost, as one addiction specialist put it, ‘the freedom to abstain?’”

-Ryan Holiday, Discipline is Destiny

The entire concept of self-discipline is due for a total reframe. One of the biggest reasons why conquering laziness, apathy, and vice is so hard for so many people is because they're thinking about self-discipline in entirely the wrong way.

It's not a punishment; it's a gift. By reigning in your worst impulses, you're giving yourself the freedom to max out your life.

Being controlled by externals - whether they be addictions, compulsions, or faulty programming - is no way to go through life. I mean, what kind of life is it if you're able to be dragged about by every impulse, distraction, or temptation that presents itself to your consciousness?

How good does getting drunk really feel when you realize you don't have the power not to?

How fun is social media when the number of likes you get on a post can dictate whether you have a good day or a bad day?

A lack of freedom is horrifying, and the world is often just one great big giant distraction trying to pull your attention and your focus away from your destiny. Every chance the world gets, it will try to pull you away from what matters to you, and you can either make your dreams a reality or be recruited to work on someone else's.

Self-discipline offers us an escape from all that, a way out of the confusion and the pessimism and the hopelessness, and it's a gift that we can give ourselves.

Not tomorrow or next week, but right here, today.

But most people don't think about self-discipline this way. They think of it as more like self-deprivation. In reality, discipline actually represents an incredible opportunity to make our time here on this earth every bit as magical as it could be.

There's a saying I love that goes: "Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life." Amazing! It means that if you keep taking the easy way in life, you're not going to like where you end up.

However, if you make the hard choices - if you make some intelligent sacrifices and some tough decisions - you can open yourself up to receive something much greater in the end.

Constraints and limits make everything else possible. For example, the letters in the alphabet need to be arranged in such a way that they have meaning. You can't just type random strings of letters and create art. Grammar, style, and syntax are structures, and constraints that make great works of literature possible in the first place.

In exactly the same way, strict workout regimens create something much more beautiful later on.

Restricting your TV viewing now can give you the freedom to sell your business idea for millions later.

Not getting drunk every weekend can make it possible for you to have a deeper connection with the people you love and care about the most. You have to give up to get.

Another important reframe is that self-discipline is synonymous with self-love. You're not disciplining yourself because you hate yourself - exactly the opposite! You're setting limits because you love yourself, you want the best for yourself, and you're willing to do what it takes to show that you love and value your future self.

You're treating yourself like a really terrific friend, someone you're actually responsible for helping. Like someone you want to see succeed.

Thus, self-discipline is ultimately a positive force; it's certainly not the enemy that it's often made out to be. "Need" itself, addiction - entanglement as such - these are your real enemies.

I'll give the final word here to Ryan Holiday, who explains what it is that we're really quitting:

“In some ways, the habit itself is less important than what we’re really quitting, which is dependency. What the Buddhists call tanha. The thirst. The craving. Maybe with time, you can go back to recreational usage – of whatever it is – yet even to do that, you’re first going to have to quit the habituation. It’s not the sex or the likes or the drink. It’s the need. And it’s this need that is the source of suffering.”

Today’s article was taken from a larger breakdown of Ryan Holiday’s book (12,500+ words) that I just published today on the Stairway to Wisdom. It’s free to read the whole thing. I hope it helps you!

I’m also going to be writing more than 1 article a week here for The Competitive Advantage, to really stay in touch with you guys and help you out with your biggest challenges.

So let me know what you’re having trouble with, what you’re trying to achieve, etc., and I’ll do my best to publish articles that will help!

All the best,

Matt K