How to Take Control of Your Life

Hint: It's not more discipline

Perhaps the most obvious question should be answered first.

What does it mean to take control of your life?

Is it to get what you want? To have freedom? To change however you want?

How about we define it as: Acting congruently with yourself?

That’s a weird definition, but I think it’s a good one. After all, saying what you’ll do and doing what you say seems to be the quickest route to getting our lives in order.

What I’m deeply curious about is how we go about doing this. Do we need to be more disciplined or muster up more willpower? Or is there a more sophisticated, strategic answer? It’s a tricky question because there are seemingly successful people on both sides.

The discipline flaw

We’ve all been put to shame by some well-meaning influencer telling us that the answer to our problems is to be more disciplined. After all, discipline solves everything, right? Social media addiction, physical shape, and hard work, don’t we just need to buckle down, grit our teeth, and discipline ourselves to make the change?

Even if we haven’t been told this by someone else, we’ve all felt it from our inner critic, but it turns out that there’s a flaw with this line of thinking. That flaw is that it doesn’t take into account that discipline is hierarchical. Meaning that there are levels of discipline that fluctuate based on the time, energy, and experience of the person.

Disciplining yourself to say no to a donut is not the same as being disciplined enough to go to the gym. There is localized discipline and there is abstract discipline, and they are different.

When we get down on ourselves for wasting time or eating unhealthy food, or when someone tells us that a lack of discipline is our problem, we are often attacking our discipline as a whole. Our abstract disciplinary character. You’re not disciplined because you can’t even say no to a Klondike bar. Etc.

But discipline isn’t necessarily overarching. All that happened is you didn’t meet your standards because of one or two undisciplined decisions, and it doesn’t mean that you as a person are undisciplined. It means you weren’t fighting a fair fight.