[Music] You have been deceived. Ever since you learned to walk, you were taught that discipline was just a matter of willpower, of trying harder when you felt lazy, of waking up early and making lists, as if the simple act of organizing the surface would solve the rot that exists in the foundations. But the truth is brutal.
Discipline is not about random effort nor about waking up with magical motivation every day. Discipline is war, internal war. And in this war, either you govern your mind like a prince governs his army, or you will be crushed by your own weaknesses.
Most people live like decaying cities, invaded by impulses, sabotaged by their own disorder, easy victims of the first temptation that appears. They do not realize that without strategic discipline there is no freedom, no strength, no victory. Those who do not impose order on themselves are constantly enslaved by chaos.
Nicolo Makaveli, one of the most misunderstood thinkers in history, knew this better than anyone. While many talk about being positive or believing in oneself, Machaveli looked at human nature with the surgical coldness of someone who knows that the world does not reward the well-intentioned. It rewards the disciplined.
It rewards those who, even under pressure, even surrounded by disorder, can maintain control. For Machaveli, discipline was not a moral choice or a beautiful ideal. It was a matter of survival.
Without discipline, both the king and the peasant were doomed to the same fate, ruin. And here is the crulest part. The moment you fail to govern yourself, you hand over the keys to your own destiny, to someone else, to another force, to any impulse that blows stronger than your weak will.
Life, like a throne, is never empty. Either you occupy your place with absolute dominion, or you will be governed. If you think discipline is waking up early only on the days you feel motivated, forget it.
If you think that wanting is enough to stay firm, forget it. This video is not for those seeking comfortable advice. This video is for those who are ready to take on the brutal responsibility of shaping themselves like a craftsman shapes a sword.
True discipline requires constant vigilance, strategic planning, relentless self-control. It demands that you build an internal fortress where luck has no power, where chaos finds no gaps. Today, you will understand why Machaveli treated discipline as a state secret, a non-negotiable foundation of power.
And if you have enough courage to apply what you will learn here, you will never be the same again. Machaveli did not write to console fools. He wrote to train strategists to arm the minds of those willing to face the harsh reality of power.
When we consider discipline from a Machavevelian perspective, we must forget any childish idea of willpower based on motivation. For Machaveli, discipline is structure. It is strategy.
It is survival. Without it, even the most promising of men becomes easy prey for the forces he cannot control. In the prince, Machaveli states, "For just as the good order of the militias is the origin of good order in the states, discipline is what enables a city or an army to withstand adversities.
" He makes it clear, without discipline, neither cities nor armies nor individuals can endure. External order, the stability of a state, the strength of a government is merely a reflection of internal order. There is no lasting conquest for those who are slaves to their impulses.
There is no real authority for those who do not govern themselves. What Machaveli saw with a clarity that still frightens is that discipline is not an accessory for times of peace. It is a permanent armor.
Discipline for him is the element that keeps a ruler steady in the face of the temptation to act out of anger, fear or vanity. It is the ability to maintain strategy even when everything around cries out for impulsive decisions. An undisiplined prince, Machaveli said, is more dangerous to himself than any external enemy because his ruin will not come only from adversaries.
It will come from the very internal gaps he refused to seal. Acting without calculation, moving without preparation, reacting without reflection. These are the sure paths to downfall.
Discipline, therefore, is not something practiced when convenient. It must be cultivated as a rigorous habit like the constant maintenance of a wall that protects against inevitable decay. Machaveli saw human beings as inherently vulnerable to the corruption of desire, pride, and fear.
Only through relentless vigilance over oneself would it be possible to resist this force of self-destruction. And do not think this applied only to rulers. Every individual who wishes to be master of their destiny must apply this same mental discipline.
If you do not govern your mind, it will be governed by circumstances, emotions, and external impulses. And those who are governed by others, for Machaveli, are already politically dead. They just have not yet fallen.
But Machaveli's thought goes even deeper. He compares the human spirit to a battlefield where discipline is the only line between triumph and annihilation. It is precisely this metaphor of the internal war and how it must be fought with the discipline of a true commander that we will explore in the next part.
Imagine an army marching to war without training, without strategy, without obedience to orders. What do you see? An announced slaughter, an inevitable massacre.
No spontaneous bravery can save soldiers who do not know how to resist panic. who cannot endure fatigue, who do not master their own instincts in the face of terror. For Machaveli, this was exactly what condemned mercenary armies and fragile states, the absence of true discipline.
In his discourses on the first decade of Libby, Machaveli writes, "The orders of a wise captain are not obeyed by undisiplined soldiers. " This statement is more than a military observation. It is a profound psychological principle.
If your mind is like an undisiplined army, no conscious command of yours will have effect. You can make resolutions, set goals, promise changes. But if your thoughts, emotions, and impulses are not trained to obey, they will desert at the first challenge.
You will find yourself sabotaging your own decisions, betraying your own ambitions. Military discipline for Machaveli was the essence of victory, allowing the few to overcome the many, the weak to surpass the strong. A small but disciplined army was infinitely superior to an undisiplined crowd.
The same applies to your internal world. A few well-trained thoughts are more powerful than thousands of conflicting desires. Real power does not lie in the quantity of ideas you have, but in the mastery you exercise over them.
Now reflect with brutal honesty. How many times have you failed? Not due to a lack of talent, but due to a lack of control.
How many promises made to yourself have you broken? Not due to a lack of ability, but by allowing fatigue, fear, or doubt to take command. Just as a foolish general loses battles before even fighting, you lose the war of life the moment you abandon mental discipline.
Military discipline is waking up every day with the same determination no matter how you feel. It is obeying your strategies, not your fleeting emotions. It is acting even when the body aches, even when the soul falters.
Because victory belongs only to those who do not retreat in the face of the harshness of the path. Machaveli knew that battles are not won merely by brute force but by relentless order, constant vigilance and preparation that anticipates the unforeseen. The same applies to your mind.
The modern world glorifies feelings and despises discipline. And that is exactly why so many live defeated, always seeking blame outside themselves. But now you know, if you want to master your life, you will have to be the general of your own inner army.
Train your mind as Machaveli would train his troops without mercy, without excuses, without concessions. Because in the battlefield of existence, in discipline is a slow death sentence. And if discipline is what builds Veru, that inner strength capable of shaping one's own destiny, then we need to understand how Machaveli opposed Veru and Fortuna, skill and luck, discipline and chaos.
This is what we will explore in the next part. How to conquer luck through the relentless building of your virtu. If this content is making sense to you, click the subscribe button and subscribe to the channel.
Thank you for your support. In Machaveli's brutal and unadorned view, fate is not a just entity that rewards the good and punishes the bad. Fate is a blind, relentless force like a flood that sweeps away the unprepared and destroys poorly protected cities.
And here is the truth that few have the courage to face. If you are not strong enough to govern your life, chance will govern for you. And luck for Machaveli is a fickle mistress.
She smiles upon the bold but scorns the weak. In the prince, Machaveli writes, "Fortune is like one of those impetuous rivers that when they become enraged, flood the fields, topple trees and buildings, lift the earth from one side and deposit it on another. Each one flees from them.
All yield to their fury, unable to resist. But although they are thus furious, this does not prevent men in times of calm from taking precautions with dikes and barriers. This metaphor is powerful and should resonate within you as a war alert.
The world is unpredictable, violent, indifferent to your dreams and empty promises. Those who expect luck to smile upon them without preparation are condemning themselves to ruin. Only those who build internal dikes, a disciplined mind, an unbreakable will can withstand when the storm comes.
And this is where Veru comes in. One of the deepest concepts of Machavevelian thought. Veru is not virtue in the moral sense.
Vertu is internal power. It is the ability to adapt, to act with strength, intelligence, and resilience in the face of adversity. It is to act strategically shaping circumstances rather than being shaped by them.
Veru is discipline in action. It is the expression of your ability to stand firm when everything crumbles to create opportunities where others see only despair to resist the childish impulse to blame luck for your own failures. For Machaveli, great men do not depend on luck.
They challenge it, bend it, use it as a tool, never as an excuse. They build their own dikes before the flood. They cultivate discipline before the crisis demands strength they do not have.
They train their minds for war while others still sleep, cradled by the illusion that everything will turn out in the end. Now look at your life with brutal honesty. How many times have you waited for circumstances to improve on their own?
How many times have you hidden behind the excuse that the moment was not right? Fortune for Machaveli is unpredictable, but it is not invincible. Those who depend solely on it are doomed.
Those who cultivate virtu win. But how to turn this philosophy into practice? How to stop being a play thing of luck and become a builder of one's own destiny?
This is exactly what we will reveal in the next part. The great modern illusion about discipline and why most fail miserably in trying to achieve it. Today, the word discipline has been hijacked.
It has been turned into a shelf product wrapped in self-help slogans and sold as an easy trick. To discipline oneself, they say, is to create automatic habits. It's about using apps, planners, colorful spreadsheets, as if humanity's oldest battle, the mastery over oneself, could be won with reminders on a phone and motivational quotes.
This modern view is a grotesque farce. Machaveli, if he were alive today, would laugh at this naivity. He knew that true discipline is not comfortable.
It is not easy. It is not something you install in your life like software. Discipline is pain.
It is a declared war against everything weak, lazy, and cowardly within you. You fail because you have been conditioned to seek shortcuts. You have been trained to believe that if you find the right habit, your life will align like magic.
But real discipline does not arise from comfort. It is born from confrontation. It is not about waking up inspired to act.
It is about acting even when your body cries out for rest even when your mind tries to negotiate surrender. Machaveli taught us that those who wait for the perfect moment are already defeated. Preparation must be done during calm, not when the storm has already arrived.
Discipline must be built on monotonous days, in silent moments, in the invisible battles we fight away from the world's eyes. It is in what no one sees that true power is forged. But the modern mindset treats failure as something normal, as part of a process.
You are taught to forgive yourself too much, to reward yourself for every micro victory as if life were a self-esteem competition and not a matter of real survival. And while you anesthetize yourself with excuses, your potential rots inside you. Modern discipline is emotional.
It depends on mood, motivation, environment. The discipline that Machaveli describes is structural. It ignores mood.
It despises motivation. It imposes itself as a mental fortress made of stone, not emotion. Those who wait to feel ready, who wait for the perfect alignment of the stars to act, live like cattle being led to slaughter, waiting for someone to decide their fate.
If you want to build the discipline that forges empires, you will have to do what most never do. Abandon the need to feel comfortable. Accept that pain is part of it.
Embrace the hardness as part of the forging. Transform your mind into a training ground where weaknesses are not tolerated but eliminated. And if you have understood the gravity of what we are discussing so far, then you are ready for the next step.
How to build step by step a brutal and strategic routine based on Machaveli's principles. A routine capable of making your discipline unbreakable. That is what we will build in the next part.
It's time to abandon empty theories. If you want to win, you need to turn discipline into brutal daily inflexible practice. It's not enough to understand the importance of discipline as a concept.
You need to build a structure so solid that neither your laziness nor your fear nor your doubt have room to survive. Machaveli taught that the wise prince anticipates disasters. He builds defenses before he needs them.
You must do the same with your mind. Establish your internal war strategies before the battle begins. If you wake up every day waiting to see how you feel to act, you have already lost.
Your victory or defeat will be decided in the early hours of the morning, long before the world even realizes you are in the game. Here is the method. One, constant vigilance.
Daily self-observation. Every day, without exception, you must observe your own thoughts and behaviors as a general inspects his army before battle. Ask yourself, where am I leaving gaps?
At what moment are my emotions taking command? If you allow a small habit of laziness, an innocent excuse, or a silly distraction to settle in, know this. These are the cracks through which failure will invade your fortress.
Imagine your mind as a castle. Every act of laziness is a stone removed from the wall. Every procrastination is a catapult aimed at your own walls.
Constant vigilance means acting like the commander who even in times of peace inspects his defenses every day, corrects flaws immediately, and punishes without mercy any sign of decay. Two, clear strategy routines that eliminate the need for decision. You need to understand a brutal truth.
Your brain, if given the option, will always choose the path of least resistance. Every decision requires energy. Every doubt consumes willpower.
Machaveli taught that in times of uncertainty, those who hesitate die. Therefore, building discipline starts by eliminating as many daily decisions as possible. Rigid routines are not a prison.
They are true freedom. You must establish fixed times to wake up, work, study, train, and adhere to them as a soldier follows orders on the battlefield. Practical example, if you wait to decide whether to train after a tiring day at work, guess what?
You won't train. Your brain will sabotage you. Now, if you turn training into a non-negotiable commitment, fitting it into your day as part of your identity, there is no room for internal negotiation.
Training happens. Period. Three.
Relentless reinforcement. Real consequences for failures. In the real world, actions have consequences.
In war, a mistake is not a detail. It is the difference between life and death. You must create consequences for your own actions.
If you fail to follow your routines, there must be an immediate, tangible, painful price for your mind to understand that failing is not an acceptable option. Practical example. Establish a public commitment.
If you fail to follow your routine, you must donate money to a cause you despise. You must tell your friends that you failed. You must carry the weight of shame and loss.
And more importantly, you must understand that discipline is not just about rewards, but mainly about avoiding ruin. Comparison to fix the idea. Think of a soldier in training.
He does not choose whether to run 5 km in the rain because he is motivated. He runs because there is a chain of command. Because he knows that failure means punishment, shame, expulsion.
Your mind must work the same way. It obeys because it is right, not because it is comfortable. This is the truth that few accept.
Building real discipline is putting chains on yourself before life puts shackles on you. It is making hardness a daily ritual. It is waking up every day and without feeling sorry for yourself, marching towards your goal with the coldness of a relentless commander.
Now that you know what you need to do, a deeper question arises. Why, despite knowing all this, do so many people continue to sabotage their own lives? It is this silent sabotage, this war against oneself, that we will expose and destroy in the next part.
If what you're hearing resonates with you, you'll find real value in my ebook, Beyond the Shadow. It breaks down Yung's core ideas and gives you tools to understand yourself more deeply. Link is in the pinned comment.
If you have made it this far, you need to understand one thing. Knowledge without action is cowardice. Many will hear these words, feel the cutting truth within them, and yet will return to their lives of excuses, procrastination, and self-sabotage.
They will go back to being subjects of their own impulses, slaves to their own weakness, begging for crumbs of luck while cursing fate. But some, few, will make the choice that transforms ordinary men into commanders of their own destiny. The choice to stop being governed and start governing.
the choice to build true discipline not as an ornament for good days but as an unbreakable mechanism that sustains your entire existence. Machaveli taught us that governing a state without discipline is a sure invitation to disorder and collapse. Now you know that governing your life without discipline is exactly the same.
Your mind is your territory. Your habits are your troops. Your decisions are your strategies of war.
You will be the prince or you will be the prisoner. There is no middle ground. There never was.
Perhaps you think you still have time. That you can start tomorrow or next week or when things get better. But Machaveli warned us the prince who waits for the perfect moment to act will be destroyed by the first tide of misfortune.
The moment is now. While you have strength, while you can still raise the walls of your inner fortress, discipline yourself not for pleasure, not for approval, not for aesthetics. Discipline yourself because your life depends on it, because your freedom depends on it, because your greatness demands it.
And now I want to hear from you. In the comments, write, "I choose to be my own prince. " Write this as a public commitment.
Let this be recorded as the first conscious act of discipline in your new journey. It's not for me, it's for you. So that you remember that the first step to mastering the world is mastering yourself.
And more importantly, don't stop here. Continue your transformation. The next video is vital to further strengthen your mind so that every decision you make from now on is a firm step towards total mastery over yourself.
Watch, reflect, evolve. You are still just beginning to forge yourself.
