Comments on: Self Discipline is Overrated

By: gracekay

gracekay — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 16:17:41 +0000

:wink: hi celes,

I think you nailed it on the head. Its about a desire to do something rather than just mentally following or driving yourself because it’s expected.
If we cultivate the why and focus on that, we won’t need to think self discipline – it will come naturally.
Modern society has failed by removing desire and want from ambition – too many just push themselves because that’s supposedly self-discipline
thanks for bringing out a different perspective

By: Nathalie

Nathalie — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 16:06:26 +0000

Finally, an article to shed light on my lack of self-discipline!

But seriously, I have always felt, or known rather, that I lack self-discipline in most every aspect of my life. For example, getting up early is always a HUGE task for me as I love sleeping late and sleeping long. But if I’m meeting my boyfriend in the morning, getting up is not a hassle at all because it is something I look forward too. :wink: And that is the whole point if this, right? Aligning my desires to what is expected of me.

So thanks much for this post! And yeah, I’ll be including this site in my Blogroll. More power Miss Celes!

By: alexis

alexis — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 21:19:30 +0000

I think self discipline is something that is good to have, it’s something that makes you feel optimistic about life if you use it the right way, but as long a you have a lack of self-discipline in life, you’re not really free: you can’t do what you really want to do :Self-discipline helps us discover many new horizons in life.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 01:47:39 +0000

Hey Celes,
Love this article. I agree whole-heartedly. I find it more important to focus on the what and the why before trying to accomplish a task as it adds motivation that “just doing it” can’t bring.

Great Post!
Ryan

By: Celes

Celes — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 17:35:18 +0000

Jeroen@ Thanks for sharing the article! The ‘desire’ my article covers refers to mental/psychological wants and not lower-order survival needs. In the context of this article, I will assume that the ‘desire’ of the kids were psychological ones and not because of hunger.

We can look at psychological desires in two groups – the deep-seated, inner desires and the short-term, temporary desires. That’s something I did not clearly call out in the article.

Deep-seated, inner desires are what lead us to set higher vision/goals and become higher/better individuals. The short-term desires are as what the name says – they give us temporary, short-term gains, but really set us back against our larger goals in the bigger picture. The desires we should tap into are the inner desires.

We can deal with short-term desires via 2 methods – the self discipline route which we are familiar with, or by aligning with our real desires which this article talks about. Further, proper explanation of this will probably take a full article – I will look into having a follow-up article to this. Thanks for the comment!

Joe@ Thanks for your comment! It’s different from the traditional understanding of self discipline because there is no inner resistance or ‘disciplining’ to speak of as you perform the task. You are tapping into your desires to get you moving on the task. Instead of acting against your emotions, you are moving along with it.

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:07:22 +0000

So you’re using a discipline (the 4 points including eleciting desires etc) to get you to do something beneficial.

How is this not self-discipline?!

You’re just framing self-discipline in a positive context and using NLP techniques to help you bring fulfillment to the process.

By: Jeroen Van Goey

Jeroen Van Goey — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 15:28:02 +0000

AROUND 1970, psychologist Walter Mischel launched a classic experiment. He left a succession of 4-year-olds in a room with a bell and a marshmallow. If they rang the bell, he would come back and they could eat the marshmallow. If, however, they didn’t ring the bell and waited for him to come back on his own, they could then have two marshmallows.

In videos of the experiment, you can see the children squirming, kicking, hiding their eyes — desperately trying to exercise self-control so they can wait and get two marshmallows. Their performance varied widely. Some broke down and rang the bell within a minute. Others lasted 15 minutes.

The children who waited longer went on to get higher SAT scores. They got into better colleges and had, on average, better adult outcomes. The children who rang the bell quickest were more likely to become bullies. They received worse teacher and parental evaluations 10 years later and were more likely to have drug problems at age 32.

Source: Self-control is the key to success