Chapter One: Your Own Worst Enemy
“The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.”
-Plato
It’s early in the morning. You are fast asleep, dreaming, but a familiar noise keeps playing at the back of your mind. Finally, you slowly open your eyes, feeling groggy. There it is again. Beep, beep, beep, beep. It doesn’t take much sleuthing for you to realize it’s the alarm you set for 5.00 am. Last night, after watching a particularly inspiring training montage, you decided you’d get up early and go for a run before heading to work.
However, it is cold outside and your bed feels so warm and comfy.
“Come on. This is it. Change starts today.” you say to yourself, as you close your eyes again to think. “But it’s cold outside. Maybe I can start jogging tomorrow.” You know you have to make a choice. You can either take the easy way out, hit the ‘snooze’ button and go back to sleep in your cozy cocoon… Or take the high road, put on your running shoes, and bolt out the door.
Every single day, we’re faced with numerous tiny decisions like this one. In these moments, we have to decide between what is good for us… and what is easy, comfortable, enjoyable and safe. On their own, most of these choices seem fairly insignificant, but together, they add up. They compound, and it is the summation of all these micro-decisions that determines our destiny. Like dominoes, bad choices set us back one piece at a time, until we realize that the damage has been done when it is too late.
Consistently taking the higher road will help you achieve your biggest goals, unleash your full potential, and maybe even change lives around the world.
Taking the easy way out too often results in a life of mediocrity and constant disappointment in yourself… Until one day, you look back in regret, wondering… “What if?”
I want you to humor me for a moment… Imagine a day in your future (say, ten years from now) as a 'multiverse'. There are an infinite amount of ways your life can turn out at that point, depending on the choices you make from today onwards (and hence multiple versions of yourself coexisting). Somewhere out there, there is a richer version of you, a poorer one, a healthier you, a more intelligent you, one who can play the piano, one who can speak nine different languages, and so on. Which one do you want to be?
The present you is not who you are, it's who you WERE - the result of your past decisions accumulated over time. That means that whoever you WILL BE depends on the choices you make from now on. There are plenty of important qualities that can contribute to a person’s achievements and happiness, but there is only one that produces sustainable, long term success in all aspects of life, and that is self-discipline.
Be it in terms of work ethic, fitness, dieting, or relationships, self-discipline is the number one attribute needed to accomplish goals, lead a healthy lifestyle, and ultimately, to be happy. A 2013 study by Wilhelm Hoffman showed that people with high self-control are happier than those without. This is true because the self-disciplined subjects were more capable of dealing with goal conflicts.
Disciplined people spend less time contemplating whether to indulge in behaviors detrimental to their success, and are able to make positive decisions more easily. The self-disciplined do not allow their choices to be dictated by impulses or feelings. Instead, they make informed, rational decisions on a daily basis without feeling overly stressed or upset.
These people are not disciplined because they lack disruptive urges; they are disciplined because they have learned to ignore them. Theodore Bryant, a Human Behavior Specialist, personifies our resistance to change as ‘Mr. Hyde’. Our inner Mr. Hyde is our self-defeating traits that keep us from transforming our desires into ideas, plans and actions.
Mr. Hyde’s methods of sabotaging our discipline operate on a subconscious level, where we are unaware of them. The following is a list of Mr. Hyde’s tactics:
Cynicism
As your inner skeptic, Mr. Hyde’s goal is to instill doubt and discourage you. Realism is good – it saves you from a lot of disappointment and helps you plan accordingly – but pessimism isn’t. Realism helps you take practical steps towards achieving big goals, but doubt paralyses you in fear of failure.
Negativism
“Why bother?” says Mr. Hyde. “The economy is bad.” “You’ll never finish it in time.” This is what you hear as you begin to devise goals and plans during harsh times. Once Hyde’s negativism triumphs over you, your brain will search for reasons to support negative attitudes. Hyde will remind you of your present circumstances and sympathize with you, making you a victim, instead of a victor. Whatever you tell yourself, negative or positive, your subconscious believes.
Our attitude has everything to do with our success. We create our own attitude, and our attitude influences our behavior. Purposefully choose to have a positive attitude, no matter what happens around you. Be a victor, not a victim.
Defeatism
Nobody’s perfect. We all have our shortcomings and we do not succeed at everything we attempt to do. The only thing we can do is pick ourselves up and try again, learning from our mistakes as we go along. Hyde will play the blame game, attempting to drown your enthusiasm by pointing out all your perceived faults, previous failures, and trick you into self-defeat.
Do not allow any perceived inadequacies to dredge up feelings of insecurity and low self-esteem. This will lead to your giving up. Hyde will use anything relentlessly - a personality trait, a physical characteristic, or even any other irrelevant quality like our race, sex, or religion - to make us feel inferior.
Escapism
I am a firm believer of ‘all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy’, but we have to manage our distractions, instead of letting them manage us. Hard work is naturally uncomfortable, and Mr. Hyde always looks for the easy way out. Think of the rewards; constantly remind yourself of the reason you decided to pursue that particular venture.
Continuously revisiting your source of inspiration gives you the strength to endure the temporary hardships you may come across along the way.
Delayism\Procrastination
Hyde’s favorite excuse is “I’ll do it later,” Any one of the previously described tactics is usually used as a reason to “do it later.” We all get 86,400 seconds in a day, and what we do with that precious time makes the difference between success and failure. A second seems inconsequential to us, but seconds add up into minutes, hours, days, weeks and months.
Hyde is good at placing hurdles between you and your goal. For example, you may say, “I can’t begin a weight-loss program until I buy a proper exercise outfit.” Then Hyde adds another obstacle by saying, “I can’t afford to buy a new outfit right now.” We sometimes heap ourselves with more and more excuses until we completely discard our original plan.
There is a difference between prioritization and procrastination. Ask yourself whether a given delay is legitimate or not. Is it working for you or against you?
Despite everything that I’ve mentioned above, we should not treat Mr. Hyde as the bad guy. Instead, we must treat Mr. Hyde as the part of us that is creative, fun-loving, and pleasure-seeking; our inner child. Treat Hyde as an unruly child - one that has no self-discipline, no self-restraint, and no ability to delay gratification.
Like any spoilt little kid, Hyde will be manipulative to get what he wants. Don’t try to fight this side of yourself. You’ll end up being a walking mass of inner conflicts and lose mental energy that could be used in the drive toward accomplishing your goals.
We recruit Hyde as a partner who supports our self-discipline efforts instead. All it takes is positive self-talk and compromise. In his book The Now Habit, Dr. Neil Fiore suggests that making time for guaranteed fun can be an effective way to overcome things like procrastination.
Decide beforehand what blocks of time you’ll allocate each week to family time, entertainment, exercise, prayer, social activities, and personal hobbies. Then schedule your work hours using whatever time is left. This ensures that your work will not encroach on your leisure time. It’s a win-win for both you and Hyde.
Benjamin Franklin suggested that the best strategy for high productivity is to divide the day into one third work, one third play, and one third rest. I have found this particular strategy to be very effective, as it relieves my stress and makes me happier when I’m working. It is important to value both your work time and play time equally. Respect them, and they won’t interfere with one another.