I used to think discipline was a character trait, like height or eye colour. Some people had it. I did not. That story is comfortable, and it is rubbish.

The Stoics did not treat discipline as willpower. They treated it as a set of five trainable skills that get stronger with reps and weaker with neglect. In this episode I walk through each one, using some of the best lines Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, Seneca and Musonius Rufus wrote on the subject.

The five moves: decide before the moment arrives, do before you discuss, guard what you let in, train in small frictions, and pause before you react. Each one is something you can practise starting tonight.

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