Come to Yarmuk, present day Syria in the year 636 AD. The young Muslim Rashidun Caliphate was expanding and started to threaten the Byzantine empire.
Both armies consolidated their full strength and met on a small plain. A lot was to be decided in “the battle of the century“.
The Byzantines had every kind of advantage. They were more, better armed, had their legendary heavy cavalry and were very disciplined.
The Muslims had creativity and heart.
For 4 days the The Byzantines attacked and the Muslim situation was often desperate, there were moments where Muslim women from the camp grabbed arms and rushed to help.
On the 5th day, the Byzantines offered a truce to the still numerically inferior Muslim army. The legendary army leader Khalid ibn al-Walid smelled the fear of the opponent and declined.
On the 6-th day the Muslim army attacked the numerically superior enemy with virtually only infantry. Most cavalry was kept in reserve and used for a grand flanking maneuver. 8000 horsemen smashed into the Byzantine left wing.
What happened to discipline in this one critical moment? It vanished. In the end everyone dispersed and obliterated with few surviving.
The hardest thing in your life is change. If you could achieve growth every day, nothing would be impossible. But as we discussed in the inertia post, with change you’re always the underdog. You are the small army fighting against all odds. The only way to win is to have creativity and heart.
Discipline can only help you achieve the possible. Creativity can help you achieve the impossible. And with change you have to achieve the impossible.
Discipline can be the result, but never the reason for creating anything of true value. Rules cannot create. They can only govern what is already in existence.
Love and Freedom and their forms are the only creative forces in humans. And rules don’t add Love and decrease Freedom in the equation of creation.
Discipline can’t really create new motivation. Creativity is what creates new motivation.
In the big all-important picture of creating new motivation, discipline is admitting your losing trajectory but delaying the loss itself. It’s guaranteed anti-growth.
In the battle for personal growth, you’ll always be the underdog. But you’re also the commander. Make sure in the rare chances you get to actually change, press the temporary advantage home to an actual win, as big as possible. Commit everything and command like a winner.
Discipline is useless unless dealing with potential critical failures.
We don’t need discipline for anything that has the potential to be fun or rewarding.
How about work? Surely, surely there is a need for discipline at work?
Not at all (unless you’re a surgeon or the few other professions where errors are very critical).
I co-own a startup with a 50 million dollar valuation and no VC investors and it didn’t take any discipline whatsoever to get here. I was just having creative fun much of the time and the inevitable boring parts had the comforting feeling of making money in real time. I know money equals progress and freedom, so that’s an OK deal. I always had creativity or the feeling of progress. When one of those is present, you’re motivated and thus you don’t need discipline.
How do you get there? Here are a few guiding principles for this kind of freedom:
Be a hunter and build self-love
Don’t be afraid of being a bad person
Know what the building blocks of work are
Pick your industry well as they are not created equal
Learn to understand money and value and how they interchange
Fight Inertia, grab life’s chances
So where do you really maybe need discipline? I can only think of one area: Caring for your health.
So unless you have a must-have-discipline job, you’re safe from this menace of happiness.
You’re ready to steer your life and use your amazing human intelligence to structure it so love, freedom and creativity are your driving forces, not fear and rules.
