The Art of Manliness - Manvotionals: Timeless Wisdom and Advice on Living the 7 Manly Virtues (26 page)

CHAPTER SIX
DISCIPLINE

E
very man has a latent power within him. Author Sam Keen called this energy our “fire in the belly.” Plato called it
thumos
, or manly spiritedness. Thumos is a man’s life force, the engine of soul which inspires bold, courageous action and the pursuit of glory.

Plato believed that thumos was just one of the three parts of a man’s psyche, the other two being his reason and his appetites. In the
Phaedrus
, Plato used the symbol of a chariot to explain the interplay of forces in this tripartite view of the soul. The chariot is pulled by two winged horses, one white, the other dark. The white horse, willing, strong, and handsome, represents a man’s thumos, or noble ambition. The dark horse, obstinate, lumbering, and deformed, represents man’s bodily appetites. Guiding these horses is the Charioteer, symbolizing reason and intellect. Reason is tasked with guiding and disciplining the two disparate steeds. When the white horse is directed towards honorable aims, it serves as the ally of the Charioteer. Together they force the stubborn black horse to fall into line and pull the chariot into the heavens. Without Reason holding tightly the reins, the two horses would move in opposite directions or not at all. In other words, harnessing one’s passions through
discipline
is the only way for a man to move forward in life and reach his full potential.

Discipline. It’s not a very popular word these days. It may bring to mind punishment—getting disciplined by one’s parents or teachers. And in a culture that venerates instant gratification, quick fixes, and a “do whatever you
feel
like” attitude, discipline is often seen as constraining and cruel. But the truest discipline comes from within and is a man’s chief source of power. While it may seem like a paradox, only by placing constraints and limits on ourselves can we truly become free and thus progress as men.

Many young men today grow up thinking that greatness can come without sacrifice and discipline. They want an impressive physique without having to dedicate hours to disciplined diet and exercise. They want to amass riches without having to discipline themselves with a monthly budget. They want stellar grades without disciplined, focused study. But as several selections in this book proclaim, “There is no royal road to success!” Discipline is the price we must pay to obtain our deepest desires and become our best selves.

When you take a step back, discipline is the linchpin virtue that makes acquiring the other manly virtues possible. Developing courage requires a man to have the discipline to step outside his comfort zone on a regular basis. Becoming industrious requires the discipline to get up and work, even when your mind and body tell you to stay on the couch. Developing the virtue of resolution requires the mental and sometimes physical discipline needed to keep going despite the overwhelming odds against you.

Our goal as men should be to become like the Charioteer in Plato’s allegory: reining in our appetites, guiding our spiritedness, and disciplining ourselves on the path to godlike greatness.

The selections in this chapter, while thoroughly engaging and insightful, are longer and meatier than the rest. This is by design; reading them is an excellent first step in developing your discipline!

F
ROM
S
ELF
-C
ONTROL
, I
TS
K
INGSHIP AND
M
AJESTY
, 1905
By William George Jordan

Every step in the progress of the world has been a new “control.” It has been escaping from the tyranny of a fact, to the understanding and mastery of that fact. For ages man looked in terror at the lightning flash; today he has begun to understand it as electricity, a force he has mastered and made his slave. The million phases of electrical invention are but manifestations of our control over a great force. But the greatest of all “control” is self-control.

At each moment of man’s life he is either a King or a slave. As he surrenders to a wrong appetite, to any human weakness; as he falls prostrate in hopeless subjection to any condition, to any environment, to any failure, he is a slave. As he day by day crushes out human weakness, masters opposing elements within him, and day by day re-creates a new self from the sin and folly of his past—then he is a King. He is a King ruling with wisdom over himself. Alexander conquered the whole world except—Alexander. Emperor of the earth, he was the servile slave of his own passions.

Any man may attain self-control if he only will. He must not expect to gain it save by long continued payment of price, in small progressive expenditures of energy. Nature is a thorough believer in the installment plan in her relations with the individual. No man is so poor that he cannot
begin
to pay for what he wants, and every small, individual payment that he makes, Nature stores and accumulates for him as a reserve fund in his hour of need.

With Nature, the mental, the physical or the moral energy he expends daily in right doing is all stored for him and transmuted into strength.

It is only the progressive installment plan Nature recognizes. No man can make a habit in a moment or break it in a moment. It is a matter of development, of growth. But at any moment man may
begin
to make or begin to break any habit. This view of the growth of character should be a mighty stimulus to the man who sincerely desires and determines to live nearer to the limit of his possibilities.

Self-control may be developed in precisely the same manner as we tone up a weak muscle—by little exercises day by day. Let us each day do, as mere exercises of discipline in moral gymnastics, a few acts that are disagreeable to us, the doing of which will help us in instant action in our hour of need. The exercises may be very simple—dropping for a time an intensely interesting book at the most thrilling page of the story; jumping out of bed at the first moment of waking; walking home when one is perfectly able to do so, but when the temptation is to take a car; talking to some disagreeable person and trying to make the conversation pleasant. These daily exercises in moral discipline will have a wondrous tonic effect on man’s whole moral nature.

The individual can attain self-control in great things only through self-control in little things. He must study himself to discover what is the weak point in his armor, what is the element within him that ever keeps him from his fullest success. This is the characteristic upon which he should begin his exercise in self-control. Is it selfishness, vanity, cowardice, morbidness, temper, laziness, worry, mind-wandering, lack of purpose?—whatever form human weakness assumes in the masquerade of life he must discover. He must then live each day as if his whole existence were telescoped down to the single day before him. With no useless regret for the past, no useless worry for the future, he should live that day as if it were his only day—the only day left for him to assert all that is best in him, the only day left for him to conquer all that is worst in him. He should master the weak element within him at each slight manifestation from moment to moment. Each moment then must be a victory for it or for him. Will he be King, or will he be slave?—the answer rests with him.

F
ROM
S
ELF
-K
NOWLEDGE AND
S
ELF-DISCIPLINE
, 1916
By Basil William Maturin

We do not endure [self-discipline] merely for its own sake, but for what lies beyond it. And we bear those acts of self-denial and self-restraint because we feel and know full well that through such acts alone can we regain the mastery over all our misused powers and learn to use them with a vigour and a joy such as we have never known before.

It is as though one who had a great talent for music but had no technical training, and consequently could never produce the best results of his art, were to put himself under a great master. The first lessons he will have to learn will be, for the most part, to correct his mistakes, not to do this and not to do that; it will seem to him that he has lost all his former freedom of expression, that he is held back by all sorts of technical rules, that whenever he seeks to let himself go he is checked and hampered. And it is no doubt true. But he will soon begin to realise that as he learns more and suffers in the learning, possibilities of utterance reveal themselves which he has never dreamed of. He knows, he feels, that he is on the right path, and as the channels are prepared and the barriers against the old bad methods more firmly fixed, he feels the mighty tide of his genius rise and swell, he hears the shout of the gathering waters as they sweep before them every obstacle and pour forth in a mad torrent of glorious sound. All those days of restraint and suffering are crowned with the joy of the full and perfect expression of his art. The restraint and discipline he knew full well in those seemingly unfruitful days were but the means to an end. The end is always before him, and the end is positive expression. The dying to his old untrained and bad methods is but the birth throes of a larger and richer action.