Discipline is Destiny
By: Ryan Holiday
5 out of 5
This is Ryan Holiday’s 2nd entry in his 4-part Virtue Series: Courage, Discipline, Justice, Wisdom.
This book legitimately changed my life! It’s one of those books that lay out truths that seem rather obvious but are hard to put into words and action. As George Orwell said, “The best books... are those that tell you what you know already”. I can’t recommend this book enough!
Holiday does an amazing job articulating the connection between small, consistent steps and ultimately achieving your end goal. I found the inspirational aspect of the book to be in the simplicity of the examples. It hits on the “if they can do it, I can do it” mentality. We’re inundated with these ideas and desires for immediate success and instant gratification, Holiday pushes back on that. I found this book to be a welcomed retreat into a world where the beauty is not in the success, but in the striving, in the little victories.
But this is not just a rah-rah type of book! As Holiday does, he warns his readers that this path of discipline will not be easy, but it will be rewarding. Life is a constant question of what you “can” do versus what you “should” do, and that question is, often, self-evident but requires courage to continually choose. This book helps to illustrate what can happen when we choose to stay disciplined.
I like to partner each of my books with a notecard to take down important quotes, ideas, or examples. This book took me through 2 whole notecards because there is so much to glean from it. It’s one of those books that should be re-read annually.
