The Savage Discipline

Copyright © 2023 Jesse Travis Scott

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

Matador

Unit E2 Airfield Business Park,

Harrison Road, Market Harborough,

Leicestershire. LE16 7UL

Tel: 0116 2792299

Email: [email protected]

Web: www.troubador.co.uk/matador

Twitter: @matadorbooks

ISBN 978 1805145 844

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Matador is an imprint of Troubador Publishing Ltd

To all the trials and tribulations, wins, losses, and draws (you know who you are) – We can always do better, improve, learn from our mistakes, and persevere.

Contents

Introduction

The struggle is great, the task divine – to gain mastery, freedom, happiness, and tranquility.

- Epictetus

Thank you for purchasing, and (hopefully) reading this book, a culmination of decades of learning and study, using myself as a guinea pig in determining what works and what doesn’t. My reasons for writing this book are simple, to share my knowledge and learnings. Seeing as we’re all stardust partaking in this ultimate human experience, what works for me might just work for you or someone else too. If not, that’s valuable too, as now you know what not to do! The sharing of knowledge and experience is one of our primary human responsibilities, passing on what we know in the hope others can learn and build upon it along the way.

The methods herein have helped me to achieve a successful and healthy lifestyle. I was born to a working middle-class family in a small Canadian city, not part of the one-percent, but luckier than most and given plenty of advantages to work with. I didn’t complete high school or university but didn’t let that hold me back – as you’ll come to see in this book, I’m not a big believer in excuses.

In the ensuing years I have held half a dozen positions at NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation www.nato.int), receiving numerous medals and commendations, while climbing through four civilian ranks in an eighteen month span. Post-NATO, I held senior leadership roles at two global Fortune 500 companies with annual revenues in excess of $25 billion. In between, I’ve been lucky enough to join two startups who achieved the lauded ‘unicorn’ status, with valuations exceeding $1 billion before being publicly listed on the stock market. I play multiple instruments, have written hundreds of poems, songs, two novels and numerous short stories to date. I train my body 4-6 days per week and despite having crossed into the over-forty threshold, I can keep up with, and outdo most in the so-called prime of life twenties.

This concept and framework for this book came to me in a 45-minute blast just after 5am on a Monday morning, as I lay in awake in bed collecting my thoughts. I jotted down twenty-some chapter ideas with point form notes against them. When I reflected on my thoughts a little later in the day, I gave myself a deadline and committed to completing a first draft of the book-to-be in sixty days. I hit that target, and the book you’re reading is the result of those efforts.

Throughout my life I’d always fantasized about having a mentor or guru of some sort. In my mind, this guru was a wise old individual, experienced in the ways and wiles of life to help guide my decisions and choices. A Doc Emmett Brown to my Marty McFly. In hindsight I suppose I was looking for a form of assurance and a backup, perhaps even someone I could blame when things went wrong. I suspect this is something or someone everyone longs for – a form of guidance to ensure they’re making the right choices for themselves personally and the world at large. The reality is no single individual could guide you in such a manner because no matter how alike we all are, being built from the same stuff, we’re all inherently different. Through the course of our learnings and experiences in life, along with the choices we make, we become ever more unique. We’re an amalgamation of those base genetics and experiences which no one has had previously and no one will again.

So, what can we do to help ensure we make the right choices? We can approach life not only with a childlike curiosity and experimental mindset but also with the right amount of self-discipline to learn from our mistakes and continue to improve, fostering good habits and ridding ourselves of the bad as we make our own journeys through life. Such a life will involve many phases, some good, some bad, some easy, some hard, and numerous mentors and individuals you’ll learn from – both living and deceased. From these we take pieces of knowledge here, bits of inspiration there, all the while gaining wisdom and experience to approach and deal with the situations that confront us a little better each time.

About This Book

It is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives, but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. – Charles Darwin, Origin of Species (1859)

The pages that follow contain knowledge and insights accumulated over years of living, trial and error, scraping away and finding bits and pieces of information and nuggets of wisdom along the way. Not every single thing will work for everyone, and many won’t work forever. The one all-encompassing facet I hope to impart within these texts is that adaptability and dynamism are key. There’s a significant difference between knowing vs. trusting vs. believing – you need to find what works for you at any given time, but not make it dogma.

Reassess, reevaluate and keep pushing and pulling and switching things up. Keep your mind and body guessing, learning, renewing, and fresh – make it fun and challenge yourself. Never be afraid to change your mind or style of doing something. Despite the claims politicians love to hurl at their opponents, changing one’s mind or opinion does not make them a hypocrite or wishy-washy, it signifies learning and growth.

This book collects and harnesses strategies and tactics humanity throughout the ages has bequeathed from parent to child, elder to initiate, and teacher to student. Choice aspects harvested and distilled into easy to understand principles which can be applied to modern living, enabling optimization of the mind and body, assisting you in navigating both the challenges and pleasures experienced throughout your life journey.

The title, The Savage Discipline, is significant in that the bulk of these principles are inherent to the human experience, naturally complementing how our biochemistry and psychology are designed and have evolved. In that sense, it is savage, raw, or wild. Similar to the grasses and plants that will inevitably poke their way through modern buildings and concrete, this is our nature and it will eventually triumph. Savage has a dual meaning – it can be viewed as something completely free, unleashed or untethered but also a derogatory term for cultures and ways which we neglected to understand. In that throwing away valuable learning opportunities, ancient, forgotten, and misunderstood methods. Methods which are dynamic and powerful, enabling us not only to survive but to thrive and circumvent obstacles.

The noble savage concept fits here. Many of the methods and concepts in this book aim to restore and align the mind and body with ways that were once automatic, ingrained, and natural, but due to the ever-increasing complexity of modern life have become neglected or forgotten.

The word Discipline may at first seem contrary to that which is savage or wild. Still, when you consider how much our lives and society have deviated from the world in which we evolved to thrive, along with the distractions and obstacles we unwittingly put in the way of our optimal selves, you’ll see where the discipline aspect comes into play. We require discipline, diligence, strength, and courage of conviction to keep ourselves not just healthy, but at our best.

Should you choose to follow some of the methods detailed in this book, I ask you to be prepared to make an effort; the path to change and growth isn’t often an easy one. The Internet and media are awash with many gentle messages of understanding, espousing the benefits of self-love, being easy on yourself, and giving yourself a break. I’m not trying to take away from these – they’re important, and there is a time and place for them. But there’s also a time and place for self-discipline, hard work, effort, and diligence. Depending on you as an individual, I suspect the concepts and methods in this book will lean more towards the latter end of the spectrum. By not working diligently and striving to be the best version of yourself, the only person you’re cheating is yourself.

Chapter One

Morning

Everyone has some kind of morning routine, even if it consists of being jarred awake by an alarm, smashing the snooze button three or four times, making a mad dash to the shower, running out the door and grabbing a takeout coffee somewhere along a rushed commute to the office. A morning like that makes my head spin, yet that’s how it goes for many of us.

The worst part about the morning described above is that you’ve gotten your day off to a terrible start. It’s like a sprinter having her feet misaligned in the starting block, not hearing the starting gun, and having a shoelace come untied yet still recovering and winning the race. Sure, it could happen, but the odds are against you and you’re definitely not setting yourself up to win. The morning is where your day starts, and developing a method that puts you at your best is one of the first things you should do. Once you’ve got your routine down everything else will seem that much easier and take a little less effort. You’ll start the day in control and you can