Discipline defines the hero

“Every action is a vote for the person you want to become.”

You could choose to change your life today—or at the very least aim yourself upward. You could find joy in the small sacrifices you make every day to reach your "potential", knowing you are becoming something more. In this way, sacrifice is a means of transformation, with the transformation being proportional to the sacrifice.

Once it is established that sacrifice is transformative, the next question is: "What are you transformed into?". In order to answer that question, clarity needs to be established around what sacrifice means and its connection to discipline.

To sacrifice is to perform the act of giving up something highly valued for the sake of something else considered to have a greater value.

And to discipline is to perform the practice of training one's self to obey rules or a code of behavior.

Before you can properly sacrifice, you must identify a code of behavior and establish principles , - in simpler terms, a why for your actions. Whether you know it or not, the why is essentially, “because I believe I could be something more than I currently am”. The principle derived from that why is "Do not let who you are stop you from becoming who you could be".

Don’t let who you are stop you from being what you could be

Jordan Peterson

Sacrifice, or more concretely, discipline, is what creates the Hero. By discipling yourself , you are becoming the hero in your own story instead of the villain, whose actions lead to more resentment and rage.

The archetypal hero's action is to save something of great value by putting themselves in danger (potentially sacrificing themselves). You activate the hero archetype in yourself by willingly sacrificing what you know to be of lesser value in exchange for what is more valuable.

In doing that, you give up a piece of yourself(a psychological piece) for an attempt to create unify(in yourself and the world).

You make the decision to give up the known world—your daily life—for a better potential unknown world. And maybe you fail; maybe it was too difficult for you . Nonetheless, you are transformed by your courage, because the ability to sacrifice is the definition of maturity. But maybe you succeed, and upon realizing this, you realize that who you are now is better than who you once were. In this way, the original decision wasn't a sacrifice - it was trading in two apples for four - and now the world is a new to you. You have evolved, you do not have the same fears and now have a better eye. This reminds me of the T.S. Eliot quote about adventure, "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."

Adventure produces character and your character determines how you see the world. This is because who you are, partially determines what you aim at and what you aim at determines what you see.

Now instead of attributing your life to who you are now, you decide to commit your life to who you are becoming —the hero's journey. You commit yourself to the voluntary confrontation of chaos when it manifests itself in your life(and in yourself).

If you can commit to the hero's journey, you'll find that as time progresses, you will become more of a hero. First, you will save yourself, and then you will have to learn to fight for your community. You will encounter malevolent forces, but you will not be deterred. In time, you will learn to efficiently stand up for the state. You will go from slaying lizards to slaying dragons, and the world will be a better place for it. But more importantly, on a personal level, you will have had an adventure, and your life will have meant something.

Choose to discipline yourself

In good faith

Kene Ezeaputa