Is Abstinence The Secret Of Greatness?

Recently I listened to a Mike Tyson interview during which he confessed he had to refrain from having sex for 5 years in order to perform best in boxing. He said that chastity was one the reasons why he became a champion. Besides, I read Mohandas Gandhi’s biography in which he explained that he stopped having sex successfully at the age of 33. This also was the reason he could deepen his spiritual practice and become the great political leader he became.

What kind of lesson we can learn from those two men?

Maybe that we cannot obtain what we want in life in we don’t pay the price. Or said another way is that the third law of Newton is confirmed also here: any action has an equal and opposite reaction.

To succeed we need to have the willingness to sacrifice something, to be frugal and for some people to be ready to sacrifice the pleasure of sex.

Nonetheless, a sacrifice isn’t only pain, it’s pain with the awareness of the possible future benefits/rewards of making the sacrifice. That’s why it implies a higher degree of consciousness or knowledge. When we shape our life around the idea of abnegation which is self-control, we are pretty sure to head to success.

The sad truth is that we’re told the opposite i.e we can have everything we want without sacrifice and contribution. Advertisement, medias and people around us are persuaded that they can do whatever they want at no cost: our desires are instrumentalized to make us believe in wrong principles, spend money and divert us from the right path. So, this is why it’s important to turn off the mobile phones or computers so we can clear our mind and focus on what we want to achieve in our life.