365 Days With Self-Discipline: 365 Life-Altering Thoughts on Self-Control, Mental Resilience, and Success

Day 49: On Obeying Lusts

Bad men obey their lusts as servants obey their masters.

—Diogenes Laertius

 

48

A forbidden fruit is the sweetest. If it weren’t so pleasant to submit to

your urges, nobody would ever struggle with self-discipline.

However,  notwithstanding  how  much  pleasure  it  can  bring,  it’s

important  to  see  the  temptation  for  what  it  is  —  your  enemy  on  the  path

toward freedom.

Obeying your lusts enslaves you, while rejecting them increases your

freedom. The reward you’ll get for not succumbing to your temptations will

more  than  make  up  for  the  price  you  pay  today  for  missing  out  on  the

instant gratification.

Self-disciplined  people  may  appear  to  some  as  if  they  were  the  ones

being enslaved. After all, they’re the ones whose lives are so limited: they

don’t get to eat junk food, they follow a strict routine, deliberately expose

themselves to discomfort, and reject what society considers the spice of life

— gluttony, laziness, and engaging in other vices.

What  the  critics  fail  to  see  is  that,  through  the  rejection  of  those

temptations,  the  self-disciplined  become  the  masters  of  their  lives.  They

serve  the  goals  chosen  by  themselves  instead  of  fleeting,  spontaneous

temptations. They choose to forego temporary satisfactions for deeper, more

lasting ones later on .

In the meantime, in the long haul, the people who fail to control their

urges  —  or  rather,  don’t  even  try  to  control  them  —  fail  to  control  their

lives, manipulated by the temptations like a marionette.

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