“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires.
Seek discipline and find your liberty.” Frank Herbert
Those who seek a result instead of focusing on the process to achieve it will inevitably be disappointed, because the reward will be hollow. It is the process, the journey, the becoming that is critical in that it shapes the person and makes them worthy of that which they seek.
The earned pleasure is greatest, the bought one cheap for there was no sacrifice of self.
Those who seek the trappings of success instead of the lessons and discipline thereof may have the house or car but then are trapped in the debt cycle to pay for them and the expectation of the next new shiny object and status symbol. Those that master their fundamentals, that approach life as an autotelic game where the goal is the mastery of play itself, who seek constantly to improve not for any external recognition but internal need for excellence, those are the ones that don’t need the validation of objects. By not desiring the accoutrements and ego boosts of the materialistic and social validation of success, they can focus and achieve more.
By mastering themselves and their desires, those with discipline become masters of the materialistic world. Those that seek to master the world though become the slaves of the world, being owned by things instead of owning them.
As Jocko Willink observed: discipline equals freedom. Earn your freedom, find liberty through your sacrifice of your desires and the discipline of self. Then you can have everything, for you need nothing.