Self Discipline - A guide to taking control of your mind, your time, and your life

Self-Discipline

Author: Mark Manson Created time: March 12, 2021 8:36 PM Page No.: 50 Progress: ✔️

Quote

• Just because something makes us feel bad doesn’t mean we are bad.

Points

• Demons and Shame?
  • Find it. Address it. And most importantly: accept it. Find that deep, dark ugly part of yourself. Confront it, head-on, allowing yourself to feel all the awful, icky emotions that come with it. Then accept that this is a part of you and it’s never going away. And that’s fine. You can work with this, rather than against it.
• Self Discipline is easy with people than without them.
• You pursue it rather than run from it. And with every pursuit, you get stronger and healthier and happier.
• Goal vs Habits
  • Goals are a one-time bargain. They are the spending mindset. “I will spend X amount of energy to receive Y reward.”
  • Habits are an investing mindset. Habits require one to invest one’s efforts for a little while and then take the rewards of that effort and re-invest them in a greater effort to form even better habits.
• It is okay to miss a day inhabit just remember it is part of the purposes.
• People don’t develop and acquire habits at the same rate; everyone is different.
• Some habits are better than other habits because some habits once acquired, make other positive habits much easier to acquire as well.
  • eg: quitting smoking is hard. But some data suggests that taking up some form of exercises such as jogging or biking can make it easier for someone to quit
• You wouldn’t keep watching a TV show you don’t like. You wouldn’t eat an entire plate of food you don’t like. So why the hell are you trying to read a book you don’t like?

Stores

• Waight Loss
  • I know someone who lost a lot of weight (almost 80 lbs) over a 2-year period. He was running marathons by the time he was in shape, but you know how he started out? Four minutes a day on the exercise bike. That’s all he could do at first, but he did it every single day and increased his workout as he lost more weight and gained more confidence.
  • Once he knew he could do a few minutes on the bike, he figured he could do a few more, then he figured he could go for a run, then he believed he could run competitively, then he set a goal to run a marathon and did it.
  • He didn’t say, “OK, I’m ridiculously overweight so I should run a marathon.” He instead started where he was, which was in his basement on an exercise bike for four minutes a day. This kept him engaged and he didn’t feel too overwhelmed while he was working to create a healthier lifestyle.
• Making Friends
  • Now, I don’t mean just bullshitty Facebook chatter. I mean genuine, “Hey man, what’s been going on with you lately? How have things been?” followed by a couple, “Oh, that’s cool, tell me about that,” and finally finished off with a, “We should get together soon, what are you doing next week?” for good measure.
  • It would take maybe 15-20 minutes at most. And it was surprising how easy it was to reconnect with many people. Most of the time it was touching base with some friends who I had kind of lost touch with.
  • Other times it was reaching out and taking a chance with getting to know someone whom I barely knew. Other times it was going out and meeting somebody new, maybe at a party or a conference or being introduced