Indefinite attitudes to the future explain what’s most dysfunctional in our world today. Process trumps substance: when people lack concrete plans to carry out, they use formal rules to assemble a portfolio of various options . . . A definite view, by contrast, favors firm convictions. Instead of pursuing many-sided mediocrity and calling it “wellroundedness,” a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it.

[A definite statement] is an active, conscious, aggressive, mental movement and in such degree as it embodies an idea — and there is no longer anything in our minds which denies the idea — it will take form, because it now becomes a part of the low and order of the Universe in which we live.

Be definite in everything you do and never leave unfinished thoughts in the mind. Form the habit of reaching definite decisions on all subjects.

a definite person determines the one best thing to do and then does it. Instead of working tirelessly to make herself indistinguishable, she strives to be great at something substantive — to be a monopoly of one.

"In the Jōdō Shin School, they use the expression "determined faith." I think there is a time when one settles down in faith and never doubts anymore. What does this mean? According to our common sense, we firmly believe that our own thought is absolutely correct and the only measure of all things. But instead we settle ourselves in this faith, and never doubt that our thoughts are nothing more than secretions from our brain, which cannot be a yardstick. Instead of thinking that our thoughts are true, we can actually let go of our thoughts. In that world we see everything as the reality of life, which is reforming the self. This is determined faith. When we see reality after reforming the self, the world that is seen through our thoughts is an illusory world."

So the free being, as self-determined and taken in his whole contents, is definite in both senses of the word: he defines himself, and thus has the definiteness of unpredestination; he defines his empirically real world of things, and thus adds to himself a field of action having the definiteness of predestination, — in a manner arms himself with it, inasmuch as he transcends and controls it.

There are several different frameworks one could use to get a handle on the indeterminate vs. determinate question. The math version is calculus vs. statistics. In a determinate world, calculus dominates. You can calculate specific things precisely and deterministically. When you send a rocket to the moon, you have to calculate precisely where it is at all times. It’s not like some iterative startup where you launch the rocket and figure things out step by step. Do you make it to the moon? To Jupiter? Do you just get lost in space? There were lots of companies in the ’90s that had launch parties but no landing parties. “But the indeterminate future is somehow one in which probability and statistics are the dominant modality for making sense of the world. Bell curves and random walks define what the future is going to look like. The standard pedagogical argument is that high schools should get rid of calculus and replace it with statistics, which is really important and actually useful. There has been a powerful shift toward the idea that statistical ways of thinking are going to drive the future.” — PETER THIEL

Determinism, in the strict sense, is self-contradictory. For if man’s mental processes—specifically, his attempts at reasoning—are not free, if they are determined by environment and heredity, then there is no means of claiming that theory x is true and y is false—since man can have no way of knowing that his mental processes might not be conditioned to force him to believe that x is logical, when in fact it is not.

Although the dominant view, determinism was extremely limiting and negative. If a person had a lot of problems, those problems could only be explained by their past. And sadly, the main objective of psychology was simply to explain the problems, not solve them.

Being strong-willed is not enough, however. You also have to be hard on yourself. Someone who was strong-willed but self-indulgent would not be called determined. Determination implies your willfulness is balanced by discipline.

The person who moves with definiteness recognizes the difference between temporary defeat and failure. When plans fail he substitutes others but he does not change his purpose. He perseveres.

The “determinist” swears that if we knew everything we should also be able to deduce and foretell the conduct of every man in every circumstance, and that is obvious enough. But the expression “know everything” means nothing.

Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement

Determination is the conscious decision to relentlessly pursue your divine destiny.