Tips to improve self-discipline

[Papist]

Would anybody agree that there are four main ways to achieving or maintaining good health?

1) Eat healthily - don't consume too many calories and ensure your diet consists of a variety of nutritious food.
2) Exercise - lift weights, stretch and do aerobic exercises that include HIIT.
3) Reduce stress - make time for quiet contemplation, get plenty of sleep, take cold showers and pray.
4) Remove unhealthy habits - don't smoke or take drugs; don't drink alcohol, or at least not excessively; don't maintain toxic relationships or friendships; don't eat junk food (overlaps with diet).

Everyone knows this. It's not rocket science. However, it takes self-discipline.

Good health begins and ends with self-discipline! You know what to do and what not to do, but can you discipline yourself?

This is where I struggle. Therefore, I have created this thread in the hope that forum members will share tips to improve one's self-discipline.

 

[Thefinalepic]

I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.
- John 15:5

When you stop living a life in which you are the director and the one with the final say as to your "discipline" you start acting as the body for the head that is Jesus. You become the body - doing what the Head says. You stop living for yourself and start living for All.

It is very easy to stay on track when you have accountability and are doing eveything for a cause outside yourself. Otherwise, you will burn out. You will find yourself falling short again and again, falling to sin after sin.

I fell out of love with "self improvement" a while ago - because you cannot improve without Christ. It becomes a self-flog. You find yourself paralysed.

In walking with Christ, you find you don't have to think about "unhealthy habits" - they don't even cross your mind.

 

[virtue]

2) Exercise - lift weights, stretch and do aerobic exercises that include HIIT.

I am recovering from a stretch of overtraining. My whole body is sore and I vomited 3000+ calories worth of food yesterday. The LORD is chastening me on my bed. I am realizing that intense training might be vanity, a chasing after the wind as the book of Ecclesiastes says.

Let's press toward the mark of the high-calling of God in Christ; but if we become otherwise minded, won't God reveal this to us?

 

[JCSteel]

Good health and self-discipline is synonymous with virtue. One thing I have observed is that there is a spiritual law that no one can avoid: vice compounds and so does virtue. Give in to one vice and you'll find it harder to resist another. Sexual sin gives birth to gluttony, which makes it harder to be focused and motivated at work, all of which will produce greater inward emptiness; likewise, when we practice restraint we'll find energy and joy in pursuing virtue. When we deny ourselves something unnecessary we open ourselves to experience something essential. Instead of viewing it as self-denial view it as active pursuit and ricochet off that momentum to do well.

 

[Thefinalepic]

Good health and self-discipline is synonymous with virtue. One thing I have observed is that there is a spiritual law that no one can avoid: vice compounds and so does virtue. Give in to one vice and you'll find it harder to resist another. Sexual sin gives birth to gluttony, which makes it harder to be focused and motivated at work, all of which will produce greater inward emptiness; likewise, when we practice restraint we'll find energy and joy in pursuing virtue. When we deny ourselves something unnecessary we open ourselves to experience something essential. Instead of viewing it as self-denial view it as active pursuit and ricochet off that momentum to do well.

I can attest to this: whenever you drink or smoke weed for example, it is simple to fall into lust or gluttony as you have "slipped up, oh well!" and pull yourself down even further.

It takes willpower to bring you back onto the path, some spiral downwards for a long time. It is imperative that you get right back on the horse after falling off. Pray, exercise, read scripture, fast. Get back on the road to becoming the Ultimate You, not tomorrow, not next week, but right now.

 

[thinkreadwritecode]

When you stop living a life in which you are the director and the one with the final say as to your "discipline" you start acting as the body for the head that is Jesus. You become the body - doing what the Head says. You stop living for yourself and start living for All.

It is very easy to stay on track when you have accountability and are doing eveything for a cause outside yourself. Otherwise, you will burn out. You will find yourself falling short again and again, falling to sin after sin.

I fell out of love with "self improvement" a while ago - because you cannot improve without Christ. It becomes a self-flog. You find yourself paralysed.

In walking with Christ, you find you don't have to think about "unhealthy habits" - they don't even cross your mind.

I am finding myself in a similar situation where I am falling out of love with self-improvement. I was thinking on this yesterday. When left to my own devices I spent my time playing video games and eating junk food. Then I feel frantic at the end of the day. It doesn't even matter if I've worked out or journaled or read books. I realized I could do nothing on my own and have a faith problem, not a self-discipline problem.

I was remembering something Roosh said in an interview a year ago where the guy asked what advice Roosh had for guys trying to get dates now and Roosh advised against asking girls out and playing the secular game of trying to pick girls up. As I mulled this over and then thought about self-improvement and how decades of looking into self-improvement, reading the books, following the gurus, I didn't seem to have improved at all.

And for what end? To self-improve as a secular with no hope or belief in God, you have to be super fit and attractive to get a woman. You have to work long hours and develop marketable skills to make a lot of money. A lot of these people have incredibly high standards so that they can gain the whole world because they have no God to lean on for their needs. Everything must be self provided, so then you learn about how many of them became willing to lie and cheat their way to the top. When this life is all there is you have to pull out all the stops in order to get what you want.

I was looking up self-help people to see if there was a Jewish connection, because self-help seems to be a type of spiritual inversion where one leans and relies upon oneself instead of God. But I did not find a connection. It does seem to produce more and more inward focus, the navel-gazing and masturbation aspects of self-improvement I've heard others harp on before.