Ryan Holiday

And I think they think that that somehow exempts them from like anyone getting to tell them what to do.

And that's like, there's this line from Seneca where he says, no one is fit to rule who is not first ruler of themselves.

And so they think like, I think they think that being in charge, running a big business is like, it's awesome because nobody's bossing you around.

But it's actually, no, you have to be the boss of yourself.

You have to boss yourself around.

And you don't have the benefit of anyone checking in with you and going like, hey, did you make sure to do that thing?

Like, hey, did you get up early?

Did you stay up late?

Did you work harder than you want to work?

And so there is this, I think, glamorization of working for yourself, being the boss, being the leader.

And what people are forgetting is it's actually forcing you to do

the job you were doing before and your boss's job, but just of yourself.

There's two sides of the idea of discipline.

So discipline isn't just, I work harder, I sleep less, I push my boundaries more.

It's also the restraint to go, this is what we're doing this year, no more and no less, right?

Or these are the hours that I operate in.

These are my priorities.

One of the things you find when you have, like we opened this bookstore a couple of years ago, the first thing people do is like, are you going to open another one?

No, the discipline to say the project was to do one thing and that this is what success on that thing is like.

Now, it's not the end of my ambition.