Day 101: On the Ultimate Excellence in Self-Discipline
Ultimate excellence lies not in winning every battle, but in defeating the enemy without ever fighting.
Some people wrongly believe that self-discipline is a never-ending series of battles with temptations. Today you’re battling against the temptation to drink wine, tomorrow you’ll battle against the temptation of laziness, and the day after tomorrow you’ll struggle with a temptation to eat pizza instead of steamed vegetables. In the meantime, you’ll have dozens of smaller skirmishes, each attacking you from a different front.
In reality, if your life looks like that, there’s little chance that you’ll stay self-disciplined in the long haul. The ultimate goal is to design your life in such a way that you’ll rarely fight against temptations. There are three primary tools you can use for that:
1. Identity change. When your identity changes, you no longer need to desperately fight against temptations because you don’t see them as such. If eating potato chips daily is no longer a part of your identity, there’s no temptation to defeat; previously overpowering urges are now a non-issue because they are incongruent with your new identity.
2. Habits. Unlike identity change, you might still need some
self-discipline to act or to overcome a temptation, but it will be only a
modicum of what had been necessary before you established your routine. Instead of a full-blown battle, either you won’t need to fight at all, or it will be a short brawl at most.
3. Avoiding temptations. If you don’t want to eat fast food, avoid fast food restaurants. There’s little benefit in needlessly exposing yourself to temptations, particularly when you know that the enemy is hard to beat.