 Here are four lessons from Stoicism on Discipline. Stoicism is an ancient Greek or Roman philosophy. The ideal for the Stoic, as with the Buddhist, is to show complete equanimity in the face of adversity. The four virtues of Stoicism are wisdom, justice, courage, temperance, and temperance is subdivided into self-control, discipline, and modesty. I really do think that with discipline everything else falls into place. So here are some lessons I've taken away which have helped me develop discipline in regards to my health and my general productivity and quality of life. The first is to find wise people to emulate. Seneca wrote that without a ruler to do it against you can't make crooked straight. We need to recognize the importance of having wise people in our lives which we can look up to for inspiration. These figures serve as models for ourselves to emulate. Pick carefully and choose someone who is living a good life, has good morals and is closer to the person who you wish to become. Watch what they do, listen to what they say, learn from them, and more importantly pay attention to what they don't do. What is motivating their actions, their ambitions, why are the consequences they experience happening? Ask yourself these questions constantly and don't choose just one person, choose many. Changing your mindset into one ahead of your own will build confidence and trust in yourself to stay on track and be self-disciplined. Apply this knowledge actively in your life and you will be rewarded. So the second is to review your day. These are referred to as evening retrospections or simply journaling. Ask yourself, what did I do well today? Where was my discipline and my self-control tested? Where did I do good? What did I do bad? Why did this occur? How can I improve? One of the best ways to become more disciplined is to scrutinize yourself, find your weak spot, be brutally honest when you're doing these writings. This will allow you to be more self-aware through every step of your day because you're trying to gather information for this daily evening retrospection. Use the information gathered from this self-awareness to formulate an honest articulation of constructive answers to the latter questions. The moment you find something which derailed you from your pursuits, recognize them, more importantly never regret them and most importantly never make the same mistakes moving forward. Marcus Aurelius once said that if you are distracted by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your estimate of it and this you have the power to revoke at any moment. Being distressed, being bothered by small things all the time is really bad for discipline obviously because you get out of that mindset of being focused on your goals. You have a goal, you're working and then thoughts and distress about something external meaning it's out of your control just comes into your mind and bothers you. The best thing you can do in this circumstance is apply Epictetus' Dichotomy of Control, a central concept through all of stoic philosophers and that's to simply reinforce yourself what can I control right now and what do I have no absolute no control over. So do you have a problem in your life? No, then don't worry. Do you have a problem in your life right now? Yes, can you do something about it? No, then don't worry. Can you do something about it? Yes, then don't worry. You see regardless of the situation we can always have equanimity we can always be satisfied in the present moment regardless of what's happening especially when it's something which is out of our control because there's nothing we can do about it. Number four is every day is a new life. So Seneca once said begin at once to live and count each separate day as a separate life. This has been a huge mantra for me. A bad day doesn't have to mean a bad week, a bad event or day doesn't have to mean a bad life. The point is the moment you wake up you have to remind yourself that today is a new life. You're still the same person and flesh but internally you can become something completely different. All previous actions from previous days are now out of your control and they serve you no good other than to drag you down like an anchor. You have to release the anchor when you wake up and move forward by opening your eyes and focusing on what's in front of you which essentially is living life. If you binged on your diet yesterday it doesn't mean you failed and now there's no point in continuing and so you continue binging indefinitely. As they say get back on the horse and continue moving forward despite what setbacks you've had. Thanks for watching. I just created a Patreon account so if you want to support my mission of wisdom and health then be sure to support the channel there. I'll see you guys next time.