Ryan Holiday

As Musonius Rufus reminds us, that ‘by the standards of pleasure, nothing is more pleasant than self-control and . . . nothing is more painful than lack of self-control.’ Nobody who has given themselves over to excess is having a good time. No one enslaved by their appetites is free.

To have an impulse and to resist it, to sit with it and examine it, to let it pass by like a bad smell—this is how we develop spiritual strength. This is how we become who we want to be in this world.

Failure sucks. Deal with it. With dignity and self-respect.

Aristotle described virtue as a kind of craft, something to pursue just as one pursues mastery of any profession or skill. ‘We become builders by building and we become harpists by playing the harp,’ he writes. ‘Similarly, then, we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.’

What we’re willing to give— that full measure of our devotion, to the effort, to a stranger, to what must be done—that’s what takes us higher. That’s what transforms us from brave to heroic. Maybe for a moment, maybe to just one person, maybe to be enshrined in the history books for all time.

If Perception and Action were the disciplines of the mind and the body, then Will is the discipline of the heart and soul.

Self-discipline is pointless without courage, and, of course, the defining characteristic of courage is self-discipline—steeling yourself for what must be done.

Can you trust yourself enough to stand alone? Can you stoically endure the criticism of the questioning to persist in what you know is right? Even at great cost? A leader who cannot do this . . . well, they’re not a leader. They’re a follower.

No one is talking glass-half-full-style platitudes here. This must be a complete flip. Seeing through the negative, past its underside, and into its corollary: the positive.

Find out why you’re after what you’re after. Ignore those who mess with your pace. Let them covet what you have, not the other way around. Because that’s independence. That’s contentment.

Almost all great leaders, great athletes, great philosophers, have been tough. They’ve been able to endure. That’s what it takes: sacrifices. Pushing through frustrations. Pushing through criticisms and loneliness. Pushing through pain.

Don’t you deserve to flourish? Wouldn’t you like to be great of soul, filled with confidence, and invincible to external events? ... Then practice your philosophy.

Having an end in mind is no guarantee that you’ll reach it—no Stoic would tolerate that assumption—but not having an end in mind is a guarantee you won’t.

If solitude is the school of genius, as the historian Edward Gibbon put it, then the crowded, busy world is the purgatory of the idiot.

The process is about finishing. Finishing games. Finishing workouts. Finishing film sessions. Finishing drives. Finishing reps. Finishing plays. Finishing blocks. Finishing the smallest task you have right in front of you and finishing it well.

Strength is the ability to maintain a hold of oneself. It’s being the person who never gets mad, who cannot be rattled, because they are in control of their passions—rather than controlled by their passions.

That space between your ears—that’s yours. You don’t just have to control what gets in, you also have to control what goes on in there. You have to protect it from yourself, from your own thoughts. Not with sheer force, but rather with a kind of gentle, persistent sweeping. Be the librarian who says, ‘Shhh!’ to the rowdy kids, or tells the jerk on his phone to please take it outside. Because the mind is an important and sacred place. Keep it clean and clear.

There’s a saying in Latin Vires acquirit eundo (We gather strength as we go). That’s how it works. That’s our motto.

Ego doesn’t allow for proper incubation either. To become what we ultimately hope to become often takes long periods of obscurity, of sitting and wrestling with some topic or paradox. Humility is what keeps us there, concerned that we don’t know enough and that we must continue to study. Ego rushes to the end, rationalizes that patience is for losers (wrongly seeing it as a weakness), and assumes we’re good enough to give our talents a go in the world.

We like to think we can have an extraordinary life by making ordinary decisions, but it’s not true. It’s actually all the ordinary decisions—the safe ones, recommended by every expert, criticized by no one—that make us incredibly vulnerable in times of chaos and crisis.

There’s no need to sweat this or feel rushed. No need to get upset or despair. You’re not going anywhere—you’re not going to be counted out. You’re in this for the long haul.

The belief that an individual can make a difference is the first step. The next is understanding that you can be that person.

Our ambition should not be to win, then, but to play with our full effort.

We’re afraid to lose and fail because we think it says something about us. It doesn’t. Success didn’t either. All that failure says is that there is a chance to improve and better understand yourself.

It’s the easiest thing in the world to respond to intemperance with intemperance. We must remember: Someone else’s lack of self-control is not a justification for abandoning our won. Nor is it a good look or a recipe for success and achievement.

We have to do the kind of thinking that 99 percent of the population is just not doing, and we have to stop doing the destructive thinking that they spend 99 percent of their time doing.

Passion typically masks a weakness. Its breathlessness and impetuousness and franticness are poor substitutes for discipline, for mastery, for strength and perseverance.

There is no stillness for the person who cannot appreciate things as they are, particularly when that person has objectively done so much. The creep of more, more, more is like a hydra. Satisfy one—lop it off the bucket list—and two more grow in its place.

Life is hard. Fortune is fickle. We can’t afford to be weak. We can’t afford to be fragile. We must strengthen our bodies as the physical vessel for our minds and spirit, subject to the capriciousness of the physical world.

Be original. Be yourself. To be anything else is to be a coward. Don’t let the opinions of cowards influence what you think or do. The future depends on it.

If there’s a central message of Stoic thought, it’s this: impulses of all kinds are going to come, and your work is to control them, like bringing a dog to heel. Put more simply: think before you act. Ask: Who is in control here? What principles are guiding me?

The world hurls at us so many hurricanes. Those who have decided to go through existence as an island are the most exposed and the most ravaged by the storms and whirlwinds.

What fear does is deprive you of your power by making you think you don’t have any. If you don’t believe you can do something, it’s not only unlikely that you can do it, it’s guaranteed that you won’t even try. Which is why we need more people to break out of this mentality.

The phrase “This happened and this is bad” is actually two impressions. The first—”This happened”—is objective. The second—”it is bad”—is subjective.

Remember, there’s no greatness in the future. Or clarity. Or insight. Or happiness. Or peace. There is only this moment.