“If I were to speak truthfully when people asked me how I was doing, I would tell them: ‘It doesn’t matter how I’m doing.’ Because that’s the truth. It doesn’t matter if I feel good or bad or excited or bored or happy or sad. It doesn’t matter. I am going to do what I am supposed to do.”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom (Page 105)
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“People ask where discipline comes from. I tell them it comes from within. But there is a level deeper. Discipline comes from The Truth. The Truth is the framework of discipline. And if you lie to yourself, you will not find discipline. If you lie to yourself, you will not be disciplined.”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom (Page 99)
“There is no love in the future. Love can exist only in the present moment. A man who does not manifest love in the present does not love at all.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 215)
“When the suffering of another creature causes you to feel pain, do not submit to the initial desire to flee from the suffering one, but on the contrary, come closer, as close as you can to him who suffers, and try to help him.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 214)
“Sure: Life is tough. But it gets a lot easier when you are laughing at it. So. Despite the suffering. In fact: To spite the suffering; to spite the hardships; to spite the challenges—laugh at them all. They can’t stand it when you do. And they all get easier. Yes: Laugh at them all. Laughter wins.”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom (Page 89)
“By picking their own punishments, children become more internally driven to avoid them. By choosing their own rewards, children become more intrinsically motivated to achieve them. Let your kids take a greater role in raising themselves.”
Bruce Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families
“A recent wave of research shows that children who eat dinner with their families are less likely to drink, smoke, do drugs, get pregnant, commit suicide, and develop eating disorders. Additional research found that children who enjoy family meals have larger vocabularies, better manners, healthier diets, and higher self-esteem.”
Bruce Feiler, The Secrets of Happy Families
“It isn’t that you wake up one day and decide that’s it: I am going to be weak. No. It is a slow incremental process. It chips away at our will—it chips away at our discipline. We sleep in a little later. We miss a workout, then another. We start to eat what we shouldn’t eat and drink what we shouldn’t drink. And, without realizing it—one day, you wake up and you have become something that you never would have allowed. Instead of strong—you are weak. Instead of disciplined—you are disorganized and lost. Instead of moving forward and progressing—you are moving backward and decaying.”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom (Page 72)
“It wasn’t in a war. It wasn’t in a battle. It isn’t in a melee of fire and destruction that most of us succumb to weakness. We are taken apart, slowly. Convinced to take an easier path. Enticed by comfort. Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.”
Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom (Page 72)
“The clearest and simplest notions are almost always concealed by sophisticated meditations.”
Marcus Tullius Cicero, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 213)
“Very often the simplest and least educated people can easily and unconsciously understand the meaning of life while the most scholarly people lack this ability, because they have been too educated to understand the simple things that are basic to all people.”
Leo Tolstoy, A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 213)