This post brings together areas of my life as disparate as Freemasonry, mountaineering, and learning a language. It attempts to bring together the cord that flows through them all and I believe is one of the central tenets of masculinity: discipline.

We are told that the most important thing that we should be doing as a red pill aware man is lift. Many reasons are given, all of which are valid. But one often overlooked is the routine that it provides. Routine is great in and of itself but how does it make us better men?

In Freemasonry we are taught the allusion of our journey in Lodge being like that of a rough block of stone being chipped away at and shaped until it is a perfect ashlar, ready to be used as a part of a building. But nowhere in the ritual does it explain how we should achieve this ourselves. Most people probably do not cite ritual, learning pages of obscure text to be delivered during a meeting by heart, as the principle reason for attending meetings. But as you progress through the offices on your way to being Master, you are given more and more to learn until you sit with all eyes on you, with a gavel in one hand, expected to conduct the proceedings. At one meeting I had around half and hour of speaking to do from memory as well as conduct the meeting. But why is this important?

Very few people can pick this up naturally. It takes months of learning and practice to be able to deliver this. And that requires discipline. Chipping away at the block of stone consistently day after day until those small changes that you don't notice at the time reveal something altogether different.

I hope that the parallel with going to the gym and lifting is obvious here, but in case it isn't, it is only after months, or years, of disciplined worship at the iron temple that you will notice the physique that you have always dreamt of reflected back at you in the mirror.

But isn't this just about good habits? No: habits are the crutch that give you the confidence to aquire discipline. If confidence is displayed ability then you are showing that you have the ability to turn up day after day, do your ten minutes on Duolingo but it is still just a habit. And habits have a nasty habit of going to shit when conditions are unfavourable.

So you want to climb Everest. Or run a marathon. Great, you know you need to train. But it is cold and raining outside and skipping one session won't hurt your performance will it? Maybe a small bit but if you don't have the discipline to counter a small discomfort now then how will you cope when you are in agony later. And this is the difference between having a habit and having discipline. Discipline gets you out of the door when habit isn't strong enough. Discipline keeps you going when you are working on something nobody else will ever know or care about. Because discipline is all about YOU. Would you train for months to climb a mountain that nobody has heard of just beacuse you want to do it? Are you willing to forgo months of fun by training instead of heading to the pub and then other's adulation when they say "where?" instead of "Everest, nice" to achieve a goal that is only yours?

Discipline is what you need if you want to be a man. The discipline to do what you need to do, even though your woman / mind / friends / enemies try to persuade or cajole you to stop, is the strength of mind needed to make the hard decisions that need to made once you leave boyhood behind.

And like anything in life, discipline is self affirming. The more you do it the more you get used to doing it and the more you will do it in future. And your discipline will then inspire confidence in others. But that is another post about leadership.

action -> habit -> confidence -> discipline

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. -Aristotle

Be better than excellent. Be disciplined.