Author | Rain order
Anchor | Fan Deng Reading · Road remote
In life, have you ever had such an experience:
Said to lose weight, but always three days and two ends can not find time to exercise;
Said to get up early, but always after the alarm rang to continue to sleep;
I said that I would study myself courses, but I always spent a lot of time in the evening brushing Weibo to play games.
We all know that "self-discipline = freedom", in order to get real freedom, you have to set some restrictions on yourself, and insist on doing something self-disciplined.
But the truth is often the opposite, the more we want self-discipline, but the more we can't ask for it, so what are we doing wrong?
I believe that most people have had the experience of giving themselves chicken blood.
At a moment of depression, at a moment of intolerability, yelling at life;
I thought about the hard work in my heart, but I didn't expect that after only a few days of persistence, I would return to my original form, and my life would be lazy as always.
We think that by forcing ourselves and forcing ourselves again, we can live a life of continuous self-discipline and fulfillment;
But it backfired and ended in disastrous results, so that for a long time afterwards, you were bored with the word "self-discipline", and the courage and faith to insist on it had long been shattered.
In fact, many people's problems and misunderstandings lie in the fact that they use too much force in a short period of time, and always hope to maintain long-term marathon perseverance through their strong willpower.
Maybe there are such people who wake up at 5 o'clock every morning, eat light and oil-free simple meals at every meal, and go to the gym every afternoon to exercise for two hours;
To them, there seems to be an insatiable demon inside them that drives them like slaves to always do the "right" things.
If you've ever seen someone who lives so disciplined, you'll find another fact:
They enjoy this lifestyle very much.
For them, it is actually effortless to do these things, there is no need for so-called persistence, and there is no need for extremely strong willpower.
Trying to achieve self-discipline through willpower and forcing yourself to form a self-disciplined lifestyle often doesn't work.
In fact, it backfires, and as anyone who has ever tried to diet will tell you, this coercive self-restraint only makes the situation worse.
Willpower is like a muscle, if you push too it, it will become tired and weaker and weaker.
It's like if you stick to a new eating habit or exercise regimen, the first week, everything looks good, but by the second week and the third week, you're back to late-night drunken mode.
You can't lift a 100 pound of dumbbells like you just walked into the gym, and you can't get up at 5 a.m. like you did at the beginning;
Your willpower resources are limited, and to maintain long-term self-discipline, you need to let your willpower be exercised for a long time, and you can maintain it at a very high level steadily and sustainably.
At this time, if we look at self-discipline from the perspective of willpower, we are caught in a problem similar to "chicken and egg, egg and chicken" -
In order to build willpower, we need long-term self-discipline;
But in order to be self-disciplined, we need a lot of willpower.
So should we exercise willpower first, or self-discipline first?
Where do we start? There is a contradiction between the two.
Using willpower to drive self-discipline creates such a paradox, because any sustainable model of self-discipline is never simply dependent on a person's willpower.
You know, any thing that requires you to persist with great effort and be tired of it, often you can't hold on for too long.
People have the nature of seeking advantage and avoiding harm, and we like to do things that make us feel good, and we don't like to do things that make us feel bad.
When we are going to activate our willpower to do something, it is we who temporarily go against human nature, away from the things that make us want and feel good, and do things that make us feel uncomfortable but "right" we do.
One of the strategies that this philosophy brings with it is self-discipline = willpower = self-denial.
It wants us to achieve self-discipline by rejecting or denying our emotions.
But this practice of denying the true emotions of the heart and suppressing the true desires of the heart obviously does not work;
Because willpower resources are limited and people's instincts are too strong, it is easy for you to be affected by bad feelings within and stop doing something.
Just like you know that reading is important, you also want to be able to read a lot every day like those excellent people, so you force yourself not to read Weibo, not to read the circle of friends, reduce social interaction with friends, and shut yourself in the house at night to read.
But all night you did not concentrate on reading, but there were all kinds of struggles in your heart, anxiety, and inability to calm down;
As a result, the next day you not only did not continue reading, but there was a great backlash, and you chatted on your mobile phone until midnight.
Many people pursue self-discipline, in fact, to suppress emotional support reason, to deny themselves in order to force the use of willpower.
This makes them tremble and be cautious, and even begin to become self-loathing, fearful of their own desires, and even self-denial, unable to tap into their true inner potential.
In fact, it is not some rational thought that determines you to persevere, but some real feeling within you.
There's a particularly interesting guy – Jocko Wilink.
He served in the Navy SEALs for two decades, fought in the Iraq War, and then trained all the SEALs on the West Coast, and after retiring from the army, he opened a consulting firm to teach leadership and management experience.
Once, the writer Felice invited him to his home and let Willink stay at home for one night.
As a result, Felice's girlfriend woke him up at eight in the morning and said that Willink seemed to have gotten up four hours ago and had been reading a book, which made her wonder how to be good.
Phyllis, who was particularly efficient, asked Willink: Why do you have to get up early?
Willink said:
In his heart, there is always a feeling that there may be an enemy somewhere at all times, fighting him with a submachine gun at any time, and getting up early can give him a feeling of victory over the enemy.
Waking up early is just a common thing for him, and he has been adhering to this habit for decades.
In fact, getting up early is a kind of self-discipline.
In Willlink's eyes, self-discipline is not only effortless, but also deserved.
Rational thinking can influence our choices, but ultimately our true feelings within determine what we do.
Willink's early rise is actually not self-discipline, but a kind of self-driving.
The so-called self-drive is that you conform to a certain true feeling in your heart, and then let that feeling lead you to do the "right" things.
Like the fitness thing, unless you go to the gym and make you feel good, you will lose motivation and willpower;
And eventually stop exercising, you can quit drinking for a day or a week on your own, but unless you feel the benefits of not drinking, you will eventually return to the habit of drinking.
The final conclusion is that self-discipline is not based on feelings of negating the self, but on the opposite fact, self-acceptance.
Any approach to emotional health self-discipline must match your emotions, not compete with them, or it will only do half the work.
Let's say you're trying to lose weight right now, but you want to eat an ice cream every day, and you know it's not good, but it doesn't work, you hate yourself for it, and every time you eat ice cream, you feel guilty.
However, if you want to truly achieve self-motivation, the first step is to accept that you are addicted to sweets, accept that you are a foodie, in fact, everyone has uncontrollable impulses.
You don't have to feel sinful about it, you don't need to deny your body's desires, you can block out all kinds of exhortations from the outside;
It's more important that you stop the inner self-judgment – I'm not good enough, I'm ugly, I don't deserve to be loved, I'm going to be looked down upon...
Once we let go of our harsh beliefs about ourselves, acknowledge our desires, and decouple our emotions from moral judgments, we begin to accept ourselves, and then you have a new perspective—
It's no big deal, it's whatever it takes, and then all of a sudden, those ice creams don't seem that appealing;
You no longer embarrass yourself and punish yourself, on the contrary, you like yourself and therefore want to take care of yourself.
More importantly, taking care of yourself makes you feel good.
And, even more incredibly, ice cream no longer feels good, on the contrary, it sometimes makes you feel uncomfortable and bloated, and you want to take care of yourself more.
The shift in thinking triggered by self-acceptance can create a self-driving force.
This tension will make your persistence effortless, even self-satisfied, just like Willink's early rise.
Self-denial-based self-discipline cannot be sustained in the long run, it only breeds greater dysfunction and ultimately leads to self-destruction.
What a person should pursue in life is not self-discipline, but self-drive.
You wake up early because waking up early makes you feel like a positive person;
You exercise because exercise makes you feel like a person with energy and confidence;
You read because reading makes you feel like you've been growing, very fulfilling.
Only when you begin to accept yourself and be willing to be self-responsible from the bottom of your heart will you have enough motivation to change your bad habits and continue to do things that will benefit your life.
Everyone has their own way of life, and the so-called way of life should be sustainable and effortless.
If you treat every workout as a chore, and you have to struggle with every day to eat, then the lifestyle around fitness and healthy eating is unlikely to last for you.
Compared to the self-denial self-discipline we often refer to, self-motivation is a stronger and more meaningful way of life, and it will provide a steady stream of motivation for your life.
When you achieve self-acceptance, the judgment of the outside world will not affect you, then you will open the self-drive mode;
Dare to delve into the real needs of my heart – what do I really want?
For example, a friend appreciates my paintings and says that I paint very well, but I know very well that my level of painting is still only the primary level of polishing.
And the motivation for me to continue to draw is because I want to be an interesting and serious person, on the one hand, I can get pleasure from drawing, on the other hand, painting can improve my concentration.
If I don't really like to draw, and just to avoid playing games with my mobile phone, or to get the approval of others to draw, then it will be difficult for me to stick to it, let alone enjoy it.
Therefore, behind a person's pursuit of self-drive is a "Be-Do-Have" mental model.
First clarify what kind of person you want to be, then you will think about what to do, then there will be self-disciplined action, and finally the dream will gradually appear.
When you want to lose weight, your self-driving mental model should look like this:
Be: Explore why you want to lose weight first.
If it's because you want to be a confident and attractive person, then you open the door to thinking: What will a confident and attractive person do?
They would definitely enjoy going out sociable and attending events rather than staying at home.
At this time, they must also want to have a good body, so that they can confidently socialize with others.
With this in mind, fitness becomes a necessity.
Do: Since fitness has become a necessity for self-confidence, we are naturally willing to spend time in the gym.
Have: The result of self-discipline fitness is that you can finally have the good body you have always desired, and weight loss is not a natural thing?
People's inner positioning is accurate, the needs change, and the actions naturally change.
And such actions, because of the continuous inner rigidity of the drive, will become self-disciplined and long-lasting.
The mental model of "Be -Do-Have" actually gives enough meaning to what you do.
And when a thing is given meaning, you can find the motivation to persevere patiently.
When you no longer depend on willpower, when you no longer pursue the so-called masochistic self-discipline;
Instead, accept yourself, start a self-driven model to do something, and then you will find your own rhythm of life.
That self-driven self-discipline model, it's not that it relieves you of the pain of doing things, it's not that it makes things simple and happy, it's not like that.
The pain is still there, it's just that the pain is now meaningful, and the pain you experience has a purpose and value, and it makes all the difference.
In the process of perseverance, you are not fighting against pain, but making fun in suffering, you are not avoiding pain, but actively pursuing and bearing the pain that must be experienced when doing something.
Only such a self-driving self-discipline will make you work hard day after day, year after year.
Ultimately, from the outside, others see your extremely strong self-control and willpower, but for you —
Self-discipline is just a matter of following the flow of the heart after the clarity of the heart.
Click "Watching" and may you live a self-disciplined and free life.
Typography | Zheng to the north
Image | The pictures in this article come from the Internet, and are invaded and deleted
Music | Li Weisong - "Fireworks", "Crush"