Whether it’s a sunny day when you expected rain or finding a twenty dollar bill that you had forgotten about, it’s always appreciated when life feels a little lucky.

But luck isn’t always easy to find. Like a spotlight randomly shining down from the heavens, it feels elusive and temporary. Gamblers get on a hot streak, tennis players find momentum, but then, as suddenly as it started, it ends. Maddeningly, when we can’t find it, it feels like everyone around us has it in spades. When we see someone doing well in life, we often grumble that ‘they just lucked into it.’

Scott Adams is a moderately rich and famous guy who attributes a lot of his success to luck. But rather than shrug his shoulders and leave his next move up to fate, he thinks it’s possible to make luck for yourself. He says one of the best career decisions he made was to move from Wyndham, New York (pop. 2000), to the San Francisco Bay Area. His exposure to luck got a bit bigger. His career advice follows the same formula: “The most useful thing you can do is stay in the game” or “every skill you acquire doubles your odds of success.”

But try telling that advice to someone growing up in a war torn country. They might have Scott’s same intelligence and ambition, but no green card. They might be a world class programmer but were forced to work in a factory or never had the money to buy their first computer. Everything from paradigm-shifting scientific theories to the recipe for Coca-Cola can be attributed to chance, luck and being in the right place at the right time.

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Accepting the influential role of luck in our lives should not prevent you from building resilience like the Stoics or increasing your chance of landing a high paying job like Scott Adams. But it should force you to be more compassionate, more humble and grateful that you’re awake, alive and that’s about as lucky as it gets.

We’ve read the success stories. A disciplined person gets more done. A disciplined person doesn’t get distracted. A disciplined person is reliable, trustworthy and over a lifetime, can achieve incredible things.

Discipline is clearly valuable to our health, our work and the people around us.

Thanks to Joe Rogan, discipline also has a sort of cultural gravity these days, surrounded by cold plunge pools and grueling endurance events.

When I see the word discipline, I think punishment. My mind associates the concept with school detention, fines and a vague feeling of shame. I’m doing something “bad” that needs to be given up, or else. There is also the sense of renunciation, or repression, giving up something that I might actually like to do.

But is there another way to think about discipline? 

Instead of an extreme act (breath-holding) or sacrifice (sobriety), could discipline be simply not-doing stuff I don’t want to do?

Let me explain.

A phone on your desk can be irresistible for a few reasons. It’s something you’ve likely developed a habit around. It’s rewarding. It’s easy to do, and what more, there’s a clear environmental stimulus; you can literally see it out of the corner of your eye.

Let’s say, for the next hour while I’m working, I don’t want to pick up my phone, unless it’s ringing. Simple enough? No value judgments please, this is just something simple that I would like to not-do. 

I fail. At the end of the hour, I have picked up my phone three times.

I did something I didn’t want to do.

What happened?

We can look at my failure not to do something as a spectrum

1. I didn’t want to pick up your phone, and I don’t.
2. I notice myself glancing at my phone or even reaching for it, but stop myself.
3. I notice I’ve picked my phone up. Interestingly, I have a strong urge to continue scrolling. Not too long ago, I didn’t want to do this.
4. I pick up my phone say something like “what’s the harm…”

Here’s a few other examples non-intended doing from my own life:

• Tapping my phone to wake it from sleep
• Hitting snooze on my alarm
• Rushing chores like brushing my teeth
• Fidgeting while I’m in a meeting
• Stopping swimming before I hit the wall
• Peeking in the fridge when I walk past it

If we are doing these things we don’t want to do, it’s fair to say that it should be well in our power to not-do them. And not like a priest or monk might deny themselves something for the rest of their lives. No one wants to do that, or should want that. We simply want to make reasonable decisions that don’t make our lives worst. Essentially, we want to do what we want.

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This idea of pausing and placing down your phone sounds simple enough, but it’s basically the opposite of what we all generally do. There is value in doing things that satisfy our basic needs and wants, like a few minutes of reading the news or a sip of coke. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but to only seek pleasure or utility is self-defeating, as we’ve all discovered a few hours into a Netflix binge. 

Author Iain McGilchrist blames our culture. He says that when a civilization is at its height, it encourages values that transcend those of pure utility. Rome or Ancient Greece “inculcated a spirit of self-denial…a certain degree of bravery, courage, humility… moral consideration of the value of others.” This is reflected clearly in philosopher Max Shelers’ pyramid of values. 

So until mankind collectively transcends our addiction to TikTok and sugar, see if you can catch yourself doing something you didn’t want to do.

A puppet is free as long as he loves his strings.

Sam Harris

I was nearing the end of my bike ride when I arrived at an intersection. I needed to make a choice. I briefly considered turning left, which would involve a little more climbing and returning the way I came, or right, a downhill ride to the coast, which would be more scenic. I chose to go right. As I coasted home, I wondered if I had been in control of my choice. I couldn’t prove it. I couldn’t even explain why, or exactly when, I had started to deliberate about left over right in the first place.

There’s smart people laying out persuasive arguments that we indeed have no choice, but it’s a confounding, unsettling concept to wrestle with. That’s why I decided (or did I?) to talk about it with someone else. The following (lightly edited) conversation touches on free will and related topics like dreams, consciousness, ego, suicide, law and religion. 

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S: Free will has been encoded into every philosophical approach, even religion. Our whole legal system hangs off of it. The idea that you had a choice to kill or not and therefore you choose heaven or hell or freedom or the gallows all by yourself. Capitalism depends on the idea that you have the choice of excelling in life and if you don’t you fail.

J: I think choices still happen, and choices have consequences that could really impact our lives and others.

S: How? If there is no free will how do we have choices? If my choice was determined, how could anything different have taken place? 

J: Even if your choice was determined, there’s still a consequence to it. It’s impossible for us to know how our hand actually moves or a thought appears in our head. A decision to choose something might as well have come out of a black box. But I think we can hold our hand back from striking someone. I believe in determinism, but also that we must take responsibility for our actions.

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S: How far do we have to work our way up the tree of life to get to animals that do have free will? Dinosaurs had tiny, tiny brains, do we have to wait for mammals? When did it turn up in humans? Did it just appear one day?

J: I think free will must be bundled together with our feeling of self-consciousness. We have this impression, for some reason, that we are in control of our destiny. This idea actually causes a lot of suffering. We get extremely upset when the cascade of events from the beginning of time (which couldn’t really be anything different), does not behave or create an outcome that we are happy with. I would guess that most animals don’t really suffer problems like existential angst or anxiety like we do. I think we are the only animals that think they have free will.

S: The notion of free-will must have popped into existence at the same moment of self-consciousness. Otherwise wouldn’t you feel trapped in a body doing stuff you feel you have no control over? “I have no idea what’s going to happen next! Will I attack the wooly mammoth or run away? Who knows? Hold on this is going to be scary!

J: I think that’s a likely explanation. It’s developed at some point fairly recently in the scheme of things. Along with the ability to see yourself as a separate person to other stuff. Here’s a thought experiment. Imagine if you have had no control over your life until this very moment. You get to wave a magic wand that gives you the power of agency and the power to make choices freely. What do you think of that? How do you feel?

S: I think that might have happened! One day, an early man got the sensation he could choose between two options and that he was in charge of that choice. That required self-consciousness. As a child you didn’t have the notion of self-consciousness for some time after you are born. It happened to you! The moment the thought “I am thinking something” comes into your head it includes the idea (or illusion) that you have some control. “I chose to think this and in a moment I will think of other things and I am doing this”. Without free will there is no “I”.

J: At some point in our lives we started to identify with an “I thought” (“I am thinking, I am free.”) and boom. Free will. It’s like the notion of free-will comes bundled with self-consciousness. It’s like the same software package. There is a parallel here with dreaming. In a regular dream, we are dead certain that a monster is chasing us and we are going to die. It feels so real, that we never question it, unless we recognize that we are dreaming. 

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S: If we truly don’t have free-will… now what?

J: Let’s say there’s a farmer, working in the fields. He’s never heard of free will. Robert Sapolsky rocks up and explains to him that he has no control over what he is doing, and science proves this without a doubt. What does he do? Does he lose his mind? Lie down? For his whole life, and before Robert showed up, the farmer had never heard of this idea and was doing his job perfectly fine. I wonder, that if the idea of free will or the self as an illusion makes you miserable, maybe it is better not to think about it.

S: I’m sure many people do kill themselves faced with this knowledge but our survival instincts are too powerful. Sam Harris believe embracing the notion of no free will makes life better. Camus argued that life is ultimately pointless and suicide seems reasonable yet the answer is to find some meaning to your futile endeavor. Maybe accepting the lack of free will helps. Life is pointless, but you don’t or can’t choose to search for some sort of meaning as you slide towards the void. You have to accept it.

J: Suicide is like the ultimate resistance to fate. When you commit suicide you’ve gone so far away from accepting your fate you’ve used your “free will” in the most extreme, final way you can to resist life.

A decision, an action, are infallible omens of what we shall do another time, not for any vague, mystic, astrological reason but because they result from an automatic reaction that will repeat itself.

Cesare Pavese

Wherever we are at. Old. Young. Happy. Sad. If we are breathing, we are making choices. Which thing should we pick? Which way should we go? What should we eat for dinner? People around us keep doing stuff, triggering us and demanding us to take action. Stimulus sets off a response. We are bound up together in this cascading stream of events. We can drag our feet. We can complain. We can give up. We can delegate.

But the question of what do next keeps blinking on the screen of life.

And how exactly should we respond?

Our habits can change for lots of reasons. We can work on them consicoulsly, or we can simply grow out of them with age. But generally, a compulsive reaction means we really can’t act in a different way. It’s rigid and fixed. If we are terrified of the colour black, or we are obsessed with colour pink, our shopping selections will narrow down a lot. Our likes and dislikes are so familiar to us that it’s hard for us to step back and consider that they dominate how we make decisions. If you applied that preference for pink to someone who is not fussed about any particular colour, it would suddenly sound insane. “You’re saying I have to pick pink stuff for the rest of my life?” But that’s the condition under which many of our choices are made.

The Stoics recognized a long time before modern science that “there are no separate events” and that the present moment is the inevitable outcome of fate. When we act compulsively, it’s likely that what we want to happen will clash against what is actually happening. I mean, what are the chances that fate would match our (usually maladjusted) preferences? Hippolytus illustrates this resistance with a simple comparison: “When a dog is tied to a cart, if it wants to follow it is pulled and follows, making its spontaneous act coincide with necessity, but if it does not want to follow it will be compelled in any case. So, it is with men too: even if they do not want to, they will be compelled in any case to follow what is destined.” No matter how challenging the present is, it couldn’t possibly be any other way. Relax.

Actions have consequences. A decision made compulsively, like when you are immersed in anger or when you are triggered by some old memory, could have a real impact on your life. If I’m trying to lose weight, my habitual rush to the fridge for more food when I’m bored or lonely does not help me. Compulsively reaching for your phone when you are riding, causes your friend behind you to crash.

Epictetus said that “if your choices are beautiful,” he said, “so too will you be.” I’m not sure about beautiful, but I’d rather respond (or face a response) that has been considered calmly rather than blindly. And luckily, we don’t have to go through life constantly triggered by everything. In a very small, poorly lit gap between stimulus and response, we can find space to choose more reasonably, fairly and objectively.

Here’s what that response might look like:

Accepting

The sensation in your legs during a hard climb and the rain that has started are both things that the Stoics would say are out of your direct control. You might really suffer. But that suffering is yours to deal with. It’s an “interior matter.”¹ Rather than freak out, your response should recognizes this fact.

Equanimous

You’re riding your bike and suddenly a big truck swerves in front of you, cutting you off. You feel a surge of anger. That’s natural and normal, but what do you do next? Equanimity recognizes that the event that has just happened is neither good nor bad. Blaming, judging or acting as that emotion will not help us a tiny bit. From this position, instead we can pick a response that’s “well founded”² and do what’s required, to the best of our abilities. Equanimity helps us do this.

Flexible

You’ve said to yourself you are going for a run ‘no matter what’. But just as you’re lacing up, you get a phone call that a family member is getting rushed to the hospital. What do you do? The answer is obvious, but we often remain fixed and unwilling to change our minds. As much as possible we need to be able to stop, reconsider and reverse or change course. If we made the decision in the first place, we should feel empowered to change it. Epictetus gently reminded a man dead-set on killing himself that he had the ability to do something different: “Good thing someone else didn’t make that decision.”³

Responsible

If you are concerned about the impact of your action, that’s great, it means you are making a considered choice. All your actions have some consequence, so simply recognizing this fact means thats some level of responsibility is now visible to you too. Depending on the size of our decision, we could be impacting our own wellbeing, the people close to us, our community, the world, or all of the above. 

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Whether we like it or not, we are involved in life. And the question of what to do next is always confronting us. This doesn’t need to be a bad thing. With a little effort, we should aim make calm, considered choices rather than letting habit do the job for us. 

1. Johnson, Robert. Inner Gold ↩︎
2. Epictetus. Of Human Freedom ↩︎
3. Epictetus. Of Human Freedom ↩︎