I just read two great articles by David Cain ..."the pursuit of happiness" and "the elegant secret to self-discipline.." To say that "the elegant secret to self-discipline..." put my life in perspective is to sell it short of its amazingness. I have struggled with self discipline and self control all of my life ... My impulse is probably the strongest desire known to self and my need for instant gratification is so apparent that it need not be explained.
The article talks about how caring for your current self is caring for your future self.. basically stating every action taken now has a direct consequence to what happens to you in the future... i.e., making very bad decisions now for instant gratification and pleasure affects your future self...
I never cared for my future self because I couldn't even draw up an image of what my future self looked like.. I could not for the life of me see me in the future. This realization was scary and at the same time it made perfect sense. I had always done things for "the now..." .. instant gratification.. always self indulged ..allowing my impulse to consume me because there was no reason to preserve my future self; it was practically non existent in my mind. Also, to double the "whammy" .. my innate desire for self control or rather control in general.. derailed any ounce of self discipline I could have had. Because the need to control things created this urge for everything to be perfect and if things weren't perfect ... it needed to be corrected right there and then to make it perfect with no further thought of future consequence to self.. These combinations... impulsive ... no sense of a future self and my innate desire to control was a dire and deadly mixture to my mind and self. My urge to control and create perfection was in direct conflict with self discipline... it negated the principle.
Now the instant gratification and pleasure is what we are all familiar with... It correlates directly with control... it enables control.. and disables self-discipline. Impulse and Instant gratification are like Siamese twins ... and impulse and self discipline is like oil and water ... I for one know for a fact that my impulse is faster than a lightning bolt... it overcomes me and the emotion that comes along with it never cease until I have acted on that impulse whether it is bad or worse than bad.. lol.. Impulse along side instant gratification never is or rather I would say rarely is for something good.. So how does one restrain this unfamiliar drug called impulse/instant gratification... ?? well read David's Cane "the elegant secret to self discipline .." his present self and future self dichotomy will give you just the thinking and action bolt you need ..It did for me :)
http://www.raptitude.com/2013/10/the-elegant-secret-to-self-discipline/
