Discipline Now…Freedom Later | Pain Is Self-Inflicted Harm

At a critical moment in The Odyssey, Odysseus tied himself to the mast of his ship because he knew he wouldn’t be able to resist steering the ship toward the beautiful sound of the Sirens. In temporarily giving up his freedom, Odysseus became the first person ever to hear the Sirens without fatally crashing into the rocks surrounding the island where they lived.📕 Ryan Holiday's new book "Discipline Is Destiny" is available for pre-order now! We’ve put together a bunch of cool preorder bonuses—among them is a signed and numbered page from the original manuscript of the book. You can learn more about those and how to receive them over at Dailystoic.com/preorder. ✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info. 📢 Share | ⚙️ Manage Subscription

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Ryan Holiday?

  Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Each day, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, illustrated with stories from history, current events, and literature to help you be better at what you do. And at the beginning of the week, we try to do a deeper dive, setting a kind of Stoic intention for the week, something to meditate on, something to think on, something to leave you with, to journal about, whatever it is you happen to be doing. So let's get into it.

• 0:43Ryan Holiday?

  Discipline now, freedom later.

• 0:48Ryan Holiday?

  At a critical moment in the Odyssey, Odysseus ties himself to the mast of his ship because he knew he wouldn't be able to resist steering the ship towards the beautiful sound of the sirens. In temporarily giving up his freedom, Odysseus became the first person ever to hear the sirens without fatally crashing into the rocks surrounding the island where they lived. We've all experienced versions of this. The drama of the sirens plays out every day. We stay late at the office a few days in a row, and later, when we're on vacation, we're happy we did. We say no to happy hour drinks, and later, when we wake up fresh and clear-headed to get a jump on the day, we're happy we did. We pass on the dessert menu, and later, when we achieve our fitness goals

• 1:33Ryan Holiday?

  sooner than expected, we're happy we did. The famous line from Musonius Rufus was that "labor passes quickly, but the fruit of the labor endures." It's the same with discipline. The vigilance is temporary, but the fruit of that vigilance can be enjoyed long after the sacrifice has been forgotten. We think the good life is being able to have what we want when we want it. We think that we should get everything that we want, that everything should come readily, come easily, come in plenty. No one should be so unlucky. Freedom, Dwight Eisenhower famously said, is better defined as the opportunity for self-discipline.

• 2:17Ryan Holiday?

  The great Tennessee Williams wrote that, "Once you apprehend the emptiness of a life without struggle, you are equipped with the basic means of salvation." Life requires trade-off. It demands that you know how to work hard and trust that it will be worth it. It demands that you delay gratification and know that the reward is worth the wait. It needs you to be disciplined and self-controlled now, so that you can be free, or in Odysseus' case, alive, to fulfill your destiny later. And this is why I think discipline is so important, why I've just spent the last two years working on this book about it. You know, I'm here celebrating that moment. Now, it's out in two days.

• 2:59Ryan Holiday?

  But a lot of discipline went into writing that book, a lot of delayed gratification, of course, as anyone who's worked on a big project knows. The idea of the book is that, I'm saying discipline is destiny, I'm saying that discipline is going to determine what you're capable of being and who you are capable of being. I think self-control is the most powerful power that there is. And the Stoics believe we have this destiny, but we can't reach it without that critical virtue of temperance or self-discipline. There's basically one day left to preorder the new book, Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control. There's a bunch of awesome bonuses. You can get signed copies, you can get signed manuscript pages from the extra book, you

• 3:43Ryan Holiday?

  can get bonus chapters, a playlist from writing the book, a Q&A with me, lots of awesome stuff. I would love to have you do it. If you could support me, that would mean so much. Go to DailyStoic.com/preorder. You can pick the book up in any format from any retailer. Go to DailyStoic.com/preorder to get the info, give me the receipt, I'll give you the bonuses, all that jazz. Discipline is Destiny: The Power of Self-Control is out tomorrow. If you could preorder it, that would mean so much to me. DailyStoic.com/preorder.

• 4:19Ryan Holiday?

  Panic is self-inflicted harm. And this is from this week's entry in the Daily Stoic Journal, "366 Days of Writing and Reflection on the Art of Living," by yours truly and my co-writer and translator, Stephen Hanselman. I actually do this journal every single day. There's a question in the morning, a question in the afternoon, then there's these sort of weekly meditations. As Epictetus says, "Every day and night, we keep thoughts like this at hand. Write them, read them aloud, and talk to yourself and others about them." You can check out the Daily Stoic Journal anywhere books are sold and also get a signed personalized copy from me in the Daily Stoic store at store.dailystoic.com. Name one situation that is improved by panicking. Go ahead.

• 5:03Ryan Holiday?

  Like, seriously, can you think of something where panicking makes it better? Seneca used often about the problem of panic, both in his letters and his essays. The problem with panic is that it creates danger and it limits our ability to function effectively, prevents us from finding success and seeing objectively, and worse, it makes us weaker over time because we've never truly faced the danger that we're worried about. We're always running away and then we're weaker as a result. So spend some time today meditating on scary things that might make you panic. Think about them in advance. Think about what's so overwhelming about them. Come to understand them. Get familiar with them. One of the chapters I have in Courage is Calling is I talk about this dictum that Napoleon had for his generals.

• 5:47Ryan Holiday?

  He said, "Ask yourself three times a day, what would I do if the enemy appeared on my left or my right or at the center?" Obviously, the idea here wasn't to create anxiety. It was precisely to prevent panic. By thinking about what scares us in advance, by familiarizing ourself with it, Napoleon was saying, we can respond to it. We can have a plan. A general who has a plan, who has an understanding, who has contingencies, who has backup plans and backup plans for the backup plans, and they understand that no plan survives contact with the enemy, that's the general who can endure things. That's the general who's less afraid. Fear makes us worse. Familiarity makes us less afraid. But we have three quick quotes from Seneca today. For even peace itself will supply more reason for worry.

• 6:30Ryan Holiday?

  Not even safe circumstances will bring you confidence. Once your mind has been shocked, once it gets in the habit of blind panic, it can't provide for its own safety. For it doesn't really avoid danger, it just runs away. And yet we are exposed to greater danger with our backs turned. There's another great quote I have in the book from Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut. He says, remember, it's always possible to make a problem worse. Panic does that. Worry does that. Fear does that. Makes us worse. Seneca says, we're actually more in danger as we're running away than when we face our problems. Then he says, success comes to the lowly and to the poorly talented. But the special characteristic of a great person is to triumph over the disasters and panics of human life.

• 7:13Ryan Holiday?

  And then he says, the unprepared are panic stricken by the smallest things. Another quote I have from Seneca, Encourage His Calling, that I really love. He says, the only inexcusable thing for an officer to say is, I did not think that could happen. So you can't panic just because it's a surprise, just because it came out of nowhere, just because it's a black swan. In fact, your whole job is to be prepared for exactly this. Your whole job is, how do you perform under pressure? How do you perform when the enemy is up close? How do you perform when other people are running away? When other people are scared? This is why courage is so important. We have to see panic and fear as something that makes us worse. It's a competitive disadvantage. It's not that we, we never have fear.

• 7:56Ryan Holiday?

  It's that we have the fear, we are alert to what it's trying to tell us. And we try to get to work breaking it down. We try to get to work preparing for it. We try to get to work anticipating it. We try to get to work putting ourselves in a position where if it does happen, and it probably will happen, we'll be able to respond. We'll know what we can do. We'll have something. And that's, you know, as, as Napoleon was saying, what would you do if they were on your left? What would you do in your front? What would you do if they were over here? What would you do if all of these things happened at the same time? That's what confidence and courage gives you. And I hope you spend some time journaling about panic and fear this week. I hope it makes you better, stronger and braver.

• 8:42Ryan Holiday?

  Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it, and I'll see you next episode.