So I'll hear people say
"If you believe it,
then you can achieve it!"
And the problem with that is they're leaving out
the most important part of the equation.
and that part is
work.
Action.
Actually doing something.
That's what you have to do
to achieve anything.
Yeah you gotta believe it,
but you better get the work done.
When you're a kid
you're all potential.
It's chaotic potential,
it can manifest itself in any number of ways.
And you maybe you don't want to give that up,
so you're like Peter Pan;
you wanna be a kid forever because
you don't wanna give up the potential.
And you look out in the world and
all you see are Captain Hook's
you know, who've lost a hand,
who are chased by death
because that's the clock in the crocodile.,
it's already got a taste of him
he's terrified by death and he's a tyrant.
"Well, I don't wanna grow up to be that
so I won't be disciplined at all.
Well, that's no good
because the way the potential transforms itself
into actuality is through discipline.
They say, "well, I don't know what to do?"
It's like, "that's okay."
Nobody does.
Go do something.
Do the best thing that you can think of,
put the best plan you have into practice.
It's not gonna be perfect, and it will change along the way,
but it will change partly because
you become disciplined pursuing the path,
and as you become disciplined, you become wiser.
And as you become wiser, you become able
to formulate better and better plans.
What does it take to really make the changes starting tomorrow?
It also takes more than enthusiasm.
I know we're hearing a lot about enthusiasm these days,
but see, that just won't do the job.
So you can get all excited about lifting 200 pounds
till you get to the gym,
and then you need a new excitement.
And the new excitement is called discipline.
Major step to human progress, discipline.
If there's one thing to get excited over, that's it.
Get excited over your ability to make
yourself do the necessary things.
It's a commitment.
It's not a feeling.
Commitments don't have nothing to do with your feelings.
You do it because you're supposed to.
It's a lifestyle.
It's that hitting that f*cking snooze button
in the f*cking morning
and not making your bed
and not cleaning your house
you don't hitting the snooze button.
You get up.
Don't wanna go run?
You go run.
You don't wanna go swim? You go swim.
You don't wanna make your bed? you make your bed.
You don't wanna clean your house? You clean your house.
You don't wanna study? You f*cking study.
That's how you start to callous your mind.
It's gonna suck.
It's not gonna be fun.
Do something that sucks
every single day of your life.
That's how you grow.
You will never have a greater or lesser dominion
than that over yourself…
the height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery;
the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment.
…And this law is the expression of eternal justice.
He who cannot establish dominion over himself
will have no dominion over others.
Imagine you only got a hundred.
You only have a hundred thousand dollars to go buy a house,
and so you go by, you go look at this house,
and it's like, Jesus, this house, man.
It's like it needs a lot of work.
It's like, well, that's all you've got.
Are you gonna pretend that the house is okay the way it is?
Or are you gonna look for where it's rotten and where the
plumbing doesn't work and where the stove doesn't work
You have to go and look and see
where everything needs to be fixed.
And that's like, that is harsh man.
But, and then in order to do that properly, someone has
to have taught you
it's, look, you aren't your problems.
Well, you are.
You're most fundamentally that which,
if it confronts its problems can solve them.
And that's the hero myth in a nutshell, by the way,
the hero is the person who confronts horrible, chaotic
potential and tams it and makes something of it, right?
That's the, that's the fundamental human story.
But the problem is, is that you have to face
what you don't want to face in order to fix it.
And so you look at all the things about yourself that
need to be burned off, that need to be dispensed with,
and that, man, especially at the beginning,
especially if you're screwed up, that may be like 95% of you
Just has to go up in flames and it's painful.
Even some of that stuff that you have to
burn off doesn't want to die,
and it'll scream in agony while you're burning it off.
It's not pleasant.
But if you know that you're the thing that can
transcend your problems, most fundamentally,
if you know you're the thing that if it faces the problems can transcend them
then you have the faith that would enable you to take stock of who you are.
The chief task in life is simply this:
to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself
which are externals not under my control,
and which have to do with the choices I actually control.
Where then do I look for good and evil?
Not to uncontrollable externals,
but within myself to the choices that are my own...
Remember that among the things over which we have complete control are the goals we set for ourselves.
I think that when a Stoic concerns himself with things over which he has some but not complete control,
such as winning a tennis match,
he will be very careful about the goals he sets for himself.
In particular, he will be careful to set internal rather than external goals.
Thus, his goal in playing tennis will not be to win a match (something external, over which he has only partial control)
but to play to the best of his ability in the match (something internal, over which he has complete control).
By choosing this goal, he will spare himself frustration or disappointment
should he lose the match:
Since it was not his goal to win the match,
he will not have failed to attain his goal, as long as he played his best.
His tranquility will not be disrupted.
The disciplined mind conquers all obstacles and achieves greatness,
for it remains steadfast in the pursuit of virtue, undeterred by distractions or temptations.
Discipline is the bridge between dreams and reality, turning aspirations into accomplishments.
It is the compass that guides us through the storms of life, keeping us on the path of righteousness.
By mastering our desires and impulses,
we harness the power to shape our destiny.
Discipline is the foundation of character, the forge where resilience and strength are honed.
It is through disciplined action that we transform ourselves,
inch by inch, into the best version of who we can be.
This is from 12 Rules for Life.
Rule four is compare yourself to who you were
yesterday, not to who someone else is today.
Because you need to be, you need to
have, uh, a hierarchy of improvement.
You need to, to be aiming some for something,
and that means you're gonna be lesser than people
who've always already attained along that dimension.
And that can give rise to envy.
So the question is, who should
you defeat in the final analysis?
And the answer is, you should defeat your former self.
You should be constantly trying to do that.
And you're the right control for yourself
too, because you're the one who's had
all your advantages and disadvantages.
And so if you want to compete fairly with
someone, then you should be competing with you.
And it is the case.
And this is what we were talking about too with
regards to the self-improvement of the fighter,
is, well, if you're improving yourself, then what
you are doing is competing with your lesser self.
And then you might also ask, well, what is that lesser self?
And that lesser self would be resentful and bitter and
And aggressive and vengeance
seeking and all of those things that go
along with having a negative moral character.
And those are things that interfere with your
ability to progress as you move forward through life.
So it's very necessary to understand that this is why
You know, I've been stressing this idea of
personal responsibilities, like, well, personal responsibility
is to compete with yourself is to
be slightly better than yourself the next day.
And it better in some way that you can actually manage.
And that's humility.
It's right.
Like, well, I'm a flawed person
and I've got all my problems.
Could I be as good as person X?
It's like not the right question.
The right question is, could you be slightly
better tomorrow than your currently flawed self?
And the answer to that is
if you have enough humility to set the bar properly low.
Then you could be better tomorrow than you are today.
Because what you also have to do is you have to say,
well, here's all my flaws and my insufficiencies and
the best that someone that flawed and insufficient
could do to improve and actually do it is this.
And that's not worth going out in the
street and celebrating with placards.
It's like, well, this is why I tell people to clean the room.
It's not gonna brag to someone that you did that, but
someone as insufficient as you might be able to manage it.
And that means you actually are on the pathway to
self-improvement and you're transcending your former self.
And you might say, well, what's the right way
of being in the world if there is such a thing?
And it's not acting according to a set of rules,
it's attempting continually to transcend
the flawed thing that you currently are.
And what's so interesting about that
is that the meaning in life is to be found in that pursuit.
So I've been laying that out in these discussions too,
because it's say, well, the fundamental issue is that
life is tragic and difficult, very tragic and difficult
for everyone, and it's also tainted by malevolence because
no matter how things are tragic and difficult, but there's
always some stupid thing that you could do or someone else
could do that could make it even worse than it has to be.
And so that's life.
And you need an antidote to that because that can
embitter you constant contact with that, just the tragedy.
But the tragedy combined with betrayal and malevolence.
That makes it even worse, especially if it's self-induced.
So you need something to set against that
so you don't get bitter and resentful.
Well, what do you set against that?
Doing something worthwhile By your own definition say
you need some reason to get the hell outta bed on a
terrible day because you've got something good to do.
Well, what's the best thing you can do?
Transcend your current wretched and miserable self.
There's meaning to be found in that and
real and that's, that's a meaning
that's associated with responsibility.
One of the things that I've been trying
to lay out clearly is that life is hard.
It's tainted by malevolence and
betrayal that can make you bitter.
You need a meaning to offset that.
Where's the meaning to be found?
Not in rights, not in impulsive
pleasure, but in responsibility.
You take responsibility for yourself,
so you take care of yourself.
If you're good at it, you can.
You have some excess left over
to take care of your damn family.
If you're good at both of those, then you have some
excess left over to take care of your community.
Those are heavy burdens.
You pick up the burdens you find that's meaningful.
The best way to pick up the burden is to continually improve
yourself, and that's where the meaning is to be found.
And so that meaning is in the continual self-transcendence.
That's letting your old self die and the new self be reborn.