A friend of mine back in central Ohio, a veteran cop and highly respected weapons-and-tactics instructor, passed along something this morning that I’m about to pass along to you. It’s a distinction thing, one of those contrasts that sheds bright light on how I, at this stage of my life, aspire to conduct myself. Paraphrasing:
“Some men are driven by motivation. Some are driven by discipline.“
When motivation fuels us, we wait — for reasons, for feelings, for The Right Moment. Essentially, being governed by motivation puts us at the effect of circumstances. We react. We defend.
We fall behind.
A disciplined man, on the other hand, waits for nothing. He’s driven to train, to learn, to execute and to act — whether he feels like it or not. Discipline is active. Discipline advances without consulting the stars.
Discipline gets shit done.
My best work is the product of discipline, not motivation. So is yours.
I heard something else within the last 24 hours that’s also worth sharing. It comes from a homesteader, a relatively young woman, explaining the reality of the life she’s chosen. Again, paraphrasing:
“I wake up every single morning committed to doing the hard things, the hard way.”
That’s not martyrdom or hair-shirt talk. I don’t believe she’s celebrating struggle for its own sake, either. Fundamentally, and by her example, she reveals the joys and rewards that can be found in difficulty — in work.
As a society, as a culture and as individuals, we’ve concluded that ease is the ultimate goal. Unless a thing can be done with less effort or in a shorter span of time, unless it can be had more cheaply or made with fewer hands, it’s not worth a damn.
Look at the whole concept of employment and “retirement.” We devote our able years to the pursuit of shedding actual work and assuming more responsibility — that’s the definition of “manager” — and when we’re done, we “retire” to a life of ease.
That’s the ideal, isn’t it? The easier our lives become, the more successful we are — right?
This homesteading woman debunks all that. By any measure, she’s thriving, not in spite of “doing the hard things, the hard way,” but because of it.
I get that.
While I don’t pretend to be living a particularly difficult life — nor, for that matter, are we truly homesteading — I understand what she’s driving at. This rustic Life on The Mountain is, in many ways, harder than anything I’ve ever done. And it’s wonderful.
Deb and I have taken the notion of what we ought to be doing at the combined age of 128 and turned it on its head. We’ve thrown back to a time when our culture assigned greater value to individual industry, independence, self-sufficiency and sovereignty — that is, Liberty.
The work is hard. The joy is real. The rewards are beyond measure.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB