Character

From Character, 1881

By Samuel Smiles

CHARACTER is one of the greatest motive powers in the world. In its noblest embodiments, it
exemplifies human nature in its highest forms, for it exhibits man at his best.

Men of genuine excellence in every station of life—men of industry, of integrity, of high

principle, of sterling honesty of purpose—command the spontaneous homage of mankind. It
is natural to believe in such men, to have confidence in them, and to imitate them. All that is
good in the world is upheld by them, and without their presence in it the world would not be
worth living in.

Although genius always commands admiration, character most secures respect. The former is
more the product of brain-power, the latter of heart-power; and in the long run it is the heart
that rules in life. Men of genius stand to society in the relation of its intellect as men of
character of its conscience.

Great men are always exceptional men; and greatness itself is but comparative. But each man
can act his part honestly and honorably, and to the best of his ability. He can use his gifts, and
not abuse them. He can strive to make the best of life. He can be true, just, honest, and faithful,
even in small things. In a word, he can do his duty in that sphere in which Providence has
placed him.

Commonplace though it may appear, this doing of one’s duty embodies the highest ideal of life
and character. There may be nothing heroic about it; but the common lot of men is not heroic.
And though the abiding sense of duty upholds man in his highest attitudes, it also equally
sustains him in the transaction of the ordinary affairs of every-day existence.

Intellectual culture has no necessary relation to purity or excellence of character. “A handful of

good life,” says George Herbert, “is worth a bushel of learning.” Not that learning is to be
despised, but that it must be allied to goodness. Intellectual capacity is sometimes found
associated with the meanest moral character—with abject servility to those in high places,
and arrogance to those of low estate. A man may be accomplished in art, literature, and
science, and yet, in honesty, virtue, truthfulness, and the spirit of duty, be entitled to take rank
after many a poor and illiterate peasant.

Still less has wealth any necessary connection with elevation of Character. A man may possess
only his industry, his frugality, his integrity, and yet stand high in the rank of true manhood.
The advice which Burns’s father gave him was the best:

“He bade me act a manly part, though I had ne’er a farthing, For without an honest manly
heart no man was worth regarding.”

Character is property. It is the noblest of possessions. It is an estate in the general good-will

and respect of men; and they who invest in it—though they may not become rich in this
world’s goods—will find their reward in esteem and reputation fairly and honorably won.

Simple honesty of purpose in a man goes a long way in life, if founded on a just estimate of
himself and a steady obedience to the rule he knows and feels to be right. It holds a man
straight, gives him strength and sustenance, and forms a mainspring of vigorous action.

But the purpose, besides being honest, must be inspired by sound principles, and pursued
with undeviating adherence to truth, integrity, and uprightness. Without principles, a man is
like a ship without rudder or compass, left to drift hither and thither with every wind that
blows.

It is because of this controlling power of character in life that we often see men exercise an
amount of influence apparently out of all proportion to their intellectual endowments. They
appear to act by means of some latent power, some reserved force, which acts secretly, by
mere presence. As Burke said of a powerful nobleman of the last century, “his virtues were his
means.” The secret is, that the aims of such men are felt to be pure and noble, and they act
upon others with a constraining power.

Character is formed by a variety of minute circumstances, more or less under the regulation
and control of the individual. Not a day passes without its discipline, whether for good or for
evil. There is no act, however trivial, but has its train of consequences.
Every action, every thought, every feeling, contributes to the education of the temper, the
habits, and understanding, and exercises an inevitable influence upon all the acts of our future
life. Thus character is undergoing constant change, for better or for worse—either being
elevated on the one hand, or degraded on the other.

The best sort of character cannot be formed without effort. There needs the exercise of
constant self-watchfulness, self-discipline, and self-control. There may be much faltering,
stumbling, and temporary defeat; difficulties and temptations manifold to be battled with and
overcome; but if the spirit be strong and the heart be upright, no one need despair of ultimate
success. The very effort to advance—to arrive at a higher standard of character than we have
reached—is inspiring and invigorating; and even though we may fall short of it, we cannot fail
to be improved by every honest effort made in an upward direction.

It is character which builds an existence out of circumstance. Our strength is measured by our
plastic power. From the same materials one man builds palaces, another hovels: one
warehouses, another villas. Bricks and mortar are mortar and bricks, until the architect can
make them something else. Thus it is that in the same family, in the same circumstances, one
man rears a stately edifice, while his brother, vacillating and incompetent, lives forever amid
ruins; the block of granite which was an obstacle on the pathway of the weak, becomes a
stepping-stone on the pathway of the strong.”

Although the force of example will always exercise great influence upon the formation of
character, the self-originating and sustaining force of one’s own spirit must be the main-stay.
This alone can hold up the life, and give individual independence and energy. “Unless man can
erect himself above himself,” said Daniel, a poet of the Elizabethan era, “how poor a thing is
man!” Without a certain degree of practical efficient force—compounded of will, which is the
root, and wisdom, which is the stem of character—life will be indefinite and purposeless—like
a body of stagnant water, instead of a running stream doing useful work and keeping the
machinery of a district in motion.

When the elements of character are brought into action by determinate will, and, influenced
by high purpose, man enters upon and courageously perseveres in the path of duty, at
whatever cost of worldly interest, he may be said to approach the summit of his being. He then
exhibits character in its most intrepid form, and embodies the highest idea of manliness.
 You May Be Strong . . . But Are You Tough?

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post written by Khaled Allen.

As a little boy, I was scrawny, weak, and prone to illness (much like a certain former
president). For a long time, I thought I was just doomed to be pathetic, until my dad took me
canoeing. In the mucky, hot, poorly maintained trails and portages of the Boundary Waters in
the north woods of Minnesota, I learned that I could be tough, scrappy, and indomitable. I took
a brutal pleasure in carrying the heaviest pack I could over long and steep portages, willing my
toothpick legs to take one step, then another, then another, until I saw the blue expanse of the
next lake peeking through the trees. That was all I had to work with: a willingness to push
myself harder than anyone else, to charge headlong into the roughest terrain, and to ignore
cold, rain, heat, bugs, and my own internal discomfort.

With the popularity of high-intensity workout programs, military-inspired training, and brutal
adventure races, mental toughness is in the spotlight. The gold standard of a hardcore athlete
is how much pain they can tolerate. But what about simple, plain old ruggedness? What does it
mean to be physically tough, as well as mentally tough? Is it enough to simply be strong, or is
there something more to it?

Strong But Weak

I will always remember the day I dropped in on a CrossFit class and went out for the warm-up
jog with no shoes on. One of the other guys there, massively strong and musclebound, was
shocked and asked me if it hurt or if I was scared of broken glass. I explained that I’d
toughened up my feet over the last few years and it didn’t bother me at all. If I was caught
shoeless in an emergency, the few seconds I needed to put on shoes could make the difference
between life and death. It didn’t matter how fast I could sprint if my feet were too tender to
handle the asphalt.

I see that reaction all the time: big guys with lots of muscles who wince as soon as the shoes
come off or who insist on wearing gloves whenever they lift weights. They are immensely
strong within their particular domain, but have very strict limits on their comfort zone. As
soon as they are forced out of it, their performance drops drastically.
Defining Toughness

Men in particular often confuse toughness with strength, thinking that being strong is
automatically the same as being tough, when in fact the two are distinct qualities. As Erwan Le
Corre, founder of MovNat, says, “Some people with great muscular strength may lack
toughness and easily crumble when circumstances become too challenging. On the other hand,
some people with no particularly great muscular strength may be very tough, i.e., capable of
overcoming stressful, difficult situations or environments.”

Toughness is the ability to perform well regardless of circumstances. That might mean
performing well when you are sick or injured, but it also might mean performing well when
your workout gear includes trees and rocks instead of pullup bars and barbells. “Toughness…
is the strength, or ability, to withstand adverse conditions,” according to Le Corre.

Being able to do that requires both mental and physical toughness. No amount of mental
toughness alone will keep you from freezing in cold temperatures, but if you’ve combined
mental training with cold tolerance conditioning, for example, then you’ll fare much better.

Toughness is a Skill

It is a myth that you’re either born tough or you’re not. The truth is, toughness, both mental
and physical, can and should be trained and cultivated, just like any other skill. There are
certain mental techniques that help you cultivate an indomitable will, patience, and the ability
to stay positive and focused no matter how bad things look. There are also certain training
techniques you can use to condition your body to withstand discomfort and tolerate
environments that would normally cause injury.

Mental Toughness

Mental toughness boils down to how you respond to stress. Do you start to panic and lose
control, or do you zero in on how you are going to overcome the difficulty?
Rachel Cosgrove, co-owner of Results Fitness and a regular contributor to Men’s Fitness,
stated in an article on mental toughness, “World-class endurance athletes respond to the
stress of a race with a reduction in brain-wave activity that’s similar to meditation. The
average person responds to race stress with an increase in brain-wave activity that borders on
panic.”

Similarly, the biggest determining factor in whether or not a candidate for the Navy SEALs
passes training is his ability to stay cool under stress and avoid falling into that fight-or-flight
response most of us drop into when we’re being shot at. Developing ways to counteract the
negative response to stress helps us stay in control of our bodies so that we can maintain the
high performance needed to do well in any situation. That is real mental toughness.

Another way to look at mental toughness is willpower. When everyone else has decided they
are too tired, you decide to keep going. In sports, this is called the second wind, when an
athlete determines that they don’t care about their fatigue and decides to push harder despite
it. When a football team is behind two touchdowns but picks up the effort anyway, determined
to win despite all signs to the contrary, that’s an example of willpower in action. They may still
lose, but they are much more likely to make a comeback with this approach.

So, how can you cultivate mental toughness?

Small Discomforts

One of the best ways to develop mental toughness is to accept small discomforts on a regular
basis. Take only cold showers or occasionally fast. In the book Willpower, Dr. Roy Baumeister
recounts the training regimen of famed endurance artist David Blaine. Before a stunt — some
of which have included being encased in ice for over 63 hours, being suspended over the
Thames in a clear plastic box for 44 days, and holding his breath for 17 minutes on live TV —
Blaine will start to make up little inconvenient routines for himself to maintain, simply to test
his willpower. These are usually small things, like touching every overhanging tree branch on
his walk to work, but they get his mind in the habit of exercising will, to do something when it
would be inconvenient or uncomfortable.

Examples of this include sticking to an inconvenient diet, living without a car, or shaving with
a straight razor.
There’s a lot to be said for simple acclimatization to discomfort as well. The little nicks and
bruises you get from training in wild environments can be hugely distracting when you’re just
getting started, but if you keep heading back out, you eventually find them little more than
useful feedback on positioning and technique.

Think Positive

Most of us have an internal monologue going on in our heads, telling our own story. How this
sounds depends on our view of ourselves and external stimuli. If you’ve always been good at
schoolwork, you might envision yourself as “smart,” but maybe not “strong” or “charming.”

The thing is, these definitions are mostly arbitrary. Anyone who works hard enough at
academics can do well in school, and anyone who trains hard enough can do well in sports.
Whether or not we are willing and able to push ourselves hard enough to do well often
depends on that internal story.

So, the simple solution is to only accept positive self-talk. This is a common tactic of the super-
successful, and is standard fare in such personal development classics as Dale Carnegie’s How
to Win Friends and Influence People, Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, and Stephen R.
Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

Have a Reason

One of the most powerful motivators in training and life is knowing why you cannot fail. Jack
Yee, who writes specifically about mental toughness and has been featured on T-Nation and
Mark’s Daily Apple, remembers his time at the famous Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach, where he
saw not only old school greats like Tom Platz, Lou Ferrigno, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, but
also a large number of promising amateurs, many of whom had more impressive physiques.
However, they rarely lasted long: after one defeat at a competition, they would give up. One
discouraging setback was enough to shatter their confidence.
The antidote is to remind yourself why you’re out there in the first place. A common trick I
used to use in my running when I was feeling defeated was to imagine that my girlfriend was
being threatened by kidnappers and if I didn’t get to her in time, they would kill her. Since my
motivation for exercising was to be useful to those I cared about, this worked for me. No
matter how beat up I felt, I would always run faster. Another trick for this is to use an iPhone
app called “Zombie, Run!” You perform missions related to outrunning zombies — another
great motivator!

Mental Toughness Training Summary

Allow (or seek out) small inconveniences and discomforts in your everyday life. Learn to
tolerate them.

Start to judge your internal monologue, rather than simply accepting it for what it is. Actually
listen to what you’re saying and decide if it’s a belief you want to let into your life.

When you’re feeling tired and talking yourself out of your workout, remind yourself why
you’re training. Weigh the importance of the inconvenience against the importance of the why
and get out there.

Physical Toughness

Compared to mental toughness, there is considerably less talk about physical toughness out
there, probably because it is wrapped up into strength and conditioning. But the truth is, being
physically tough is very different from being strong, fast, or powerful. Physical toughness
includes the ability to take abuse and keep functioning, to recover quickly, to adapt to difficult
terrain and contexts, and to tolerate adverse conditions without flagging.

Le Corre’s method of training, MovNat, emphasizes the value of developing a tough body by
training in environments that do not accommodate the trainee. Training outdoors, in adverse
(or simply not climate-controlled) conditions, is a core tenet of MovNat’s methods. Le Corre
says of physical toughness, “[it] is the ability of the body to withstand hardship, such as food
or sleep deprivation, harsh weather conditions such as cold, heat, rain, snow or humidity, and
difficult terrains (steep, rocky, slippery, radiating heat, dense vegetation etc.).” Click here for a
complete primer on MovNat.
Physical toughness boils down to the changes your body makes to make it more resilient. This
has the effect of unloading your willpower so that you can push yourself harder mentally,
since your threshold has effectively increased.

Thicker Skin

A very simple example of physical toughness — and one that is used as a euphemism for
toughness in general — is thick skin. Men who train hard in gyms rarely develop calluses
beyond those along the base of the fingers that are the result of the bar pinching the grip. Men
who train with tough objects, like stones, logs, or in nature tend to develop thick skin all over
their fingers and palms. The same goes for the feet. Accompanying this change is an alteration
in the sensitivity of the pain receptors in those areas. As you become accustomed to walking
barefoot, what used to be painful becomes a comfortable massage.

Exposure to the elements is the best way to develop this very real form of physical toughness.
Train barefoot with minimal clothing, with rough implements. Start with shorter durations
and forgiving surfaces so you don’t get to the point of actual injury, and increase the time and
ruggedness of the environment. You will learn to tell the difference between discomfort and
real pain. You’ll also learn how to be gentle when dealing with rock and dirt, but you’ll get
tougher as well.

Supple Joints

An oft overlooked form of toughness combines mobility, flexibility, and durability. Hard
training puts a lot of stress on the body, but this stress is multiplied when every movement
stretches a muscle close to its full range or pushes a joint near its limit. Flexible joints can
move farther without incurring stress on their support structures, reducing fatigue and the
wear and tear that adds up to leave you sore and whimpering on the ground.

To that end, give mobility training serious consideration in your workout routine. Not only will
it save you pain, it will allow you to absorb more punishment and do more reps without
feeling the effects, which makes you that much harder to bring down.
The Art of Manliness recently published an article on an excellent method to develop mobility:
self-myofascial release.

Hormonal and Adrenal Changes

Another example of physical toughness is harder to see. It consists of the metabolic and
hormonal changes that go along with hard training. These can manifest in better energy
management, so that you fatigue more slowly, and recover quicker, so that you can come back
hard with surprisingly little time to recuperate. When most people would be down for the
count, you’re back in the ring, having already caught your breath and cooled off.

The simplest way to train this kind of toughness is by limiting your rest between workouts or
exercises, sometimes even at the expense of your performance. Be careful, however: there is a
fine line between stimulating adaptation and overtraining, so remember that you need to give
your body time and resources to build itself up stronger than before. Eat well and sufficiently,
and get enough sleep. These habits will build up a store of resources you can lean on when
rest isn’t so easily available. Occasionally, apply an acute stress, like intermittent fasting, to
teach your body to adapt quickly and be efficient with energy, or train with little sleep. But in
general, you’ll be able to handle more if you’re well-rested and well-fed.

Another interesting technique I’ve recently been using to improve my cardiorespiratory

durability is nasal breathing. This involves restricting myself to only breathing through my
nostrils, even during hard workouts. The result is more efficient oxygen usage. This technique
causes me to regulate my pacing somewhat, but I’ve noticed that I don’t get out of breath
nearly as quickly, even when I switch to regular breathing for a particular workout.

Environmental Tolerance

A relatively rare form of physical toughness is environmental tolerance. The most well-known
variety is altitude acclimatization, in which athletes train at elevation and compete at sea level.
This is normally seen as a way to gain an advantage in sports, but adaptation to low oxygen is
also an example of physical durability, the ability to handle a difficult environment.
Another example is cold tolerance. The body will literally increase its ability to generate heat if
you habitually go without excessive clothing and expose yourself to acute cold shocks. Even in
the winter, it is possible to train with only a t-shirt and shorts. You’ll learn to distinguish
between the superficial sensation of cold on your skin and the deep chill that threatens
hypothermia. The first gives you feedback about your environment while the second is an
indicator of potential danger.

In addition to training with less clothing, I also only take cold showers, which has also
improved my ability to tolerate a wider range of temperatures without feeling real discomfort.
Of course, both of these are pretty uncomfortable at first, but over time, they become less so,
and you will find yourself becoming noticeably more hardy in general.

Physical Toughness Training Summary

Expose yourself to rough environments and forgo the usual protection, increasing the
intensity of exposure slowly over time.

Learn and implement mobility and self-maintenance exercises into your regular training
routine.

Train with less rest between sets or workouts, but take excellent care of yourself in the
meantime.

Train outside in all weather with as little protection as you can tolerate.

Conclusion

My favorite way to develop pure toughness, both physical and mental, what I call ruggedness,
is through outdoor training with minimal protection. Inspired by Erwan Le Corre and the
MovNat method of training to approach exercise the same way I approached camping as a kid,
I frequently train in a wild environment with nothing on but a pair of shorts, climbing trees,
hoisting and throwing rocks, scrambling up and over boulders, and running over gravel-
covered trails.

The constantly shifting terrain and objects challenge my body, but they also challenge my
patience and focus. When a relatively small rock becomes nearly impossible because of its
shape, it is frustrating. When I’m trying to sprint up a hill but keep slipping on loose sand, it is
frustrating. When a gnarly tree branch makes pull-ups into a twisted mockery of the pristine
movement I rock at the gym, it’s really frustrating. Slight pain from scratches or harsh ground
is a constant, and with no clothing, the cold is often an issue, especially if there’s snow.

Everything is harder, or rather, I should say everything is more complex. The result is that I
learn how to tolerate stress, both mental and physical, and how to adapt to make something
work despite the fact that the environment is not cooperating. I deal with it or fail. When I’m
out there, it doesn’t matter that I can deadlift 3x my bodyweight on a bar, because that doesn’t
change the fact that a rock is completely off-balance and seems to be actively trying to roll
onto my toes. And that doesn’t change the fact that I’m picking it up and carrying it up the
mountain anyway.

That is the definition of tough.

______________________________________________

Khaled Allen writes about the psychology and the realities of living up to your potential with
integrity at Warrior Spirit. He is also a MovNat trainer and a self-defense coach living in
Boulder, CO.