No Excuses! - The Power of Self-Discipline Part 18

The Law of Control.

In my book Maximum Achievement, I teach the importance of the Law of Control, which states, "You feel happy to the degree to which you feel you are in control of your own life. You feel unhappy to the degree to which you feel you are not in control, or controlled by other factors or people."

Psychologists call this your "locus of control." There are fifty years of research and hundreds of books and articles on this subject. They all conclude that stress and unhappiness arise when you feel controlled by outside circ.u.mstances. This is explained as the difference between an "internal locus of control" (happy) and an "external locus of control" (unhappy).

You have an internal locus of control when you feel that you are in charge, you make your own decisions, and what happens to you in life is largely determined by yourself. When you have an internal locus of control, you feel that you are behind the wheel of your own life and that you are in the driver's seat. You feel that you determine most of what happens to you. As a result, you feel strong, purposeful, and happy.

On the other hand, you have an external locus of control to the degree to which you feel that you are not in control or that you have little ability to direct your own life. For example, if you feel that you are controlled by an arbitrary or critical boss, but you cannot afford to lose your job because you have no savings put aside, you experience high levels of stress and anxiety. This causes you to do a poor job, which makes it even more likely that your difficult boss will fire you, and this very often brings about exactly the circ.u.mstances you fear.

Another example is that you may feel you are controlled by a bad marriage or relations.h.i.+p from which you cannot escape. You may feel controlled by your bills, by the money you owe, and your obligations to maintain your standard of living. You may feel that you are controlled by your physical condition or lack of education. Many people feel that they are controlled by their past because of a difficult childhood or upbringing and that there is nothing they can do to change their situation.

Many people feel that they are controlled by their own personalities and that they are not able to change for the better. They say, "That's just the way I am." By saying this, they absolve themselves of all responsibility for exerting the necessary discipline and willpower to make the changes they know they need to make in order to live the kind of life they want to live and to be happy.

The key to replacing an external locus of control with an internal locus of control is for you to decide today to take complete charge of your life. Realize and accept that you make your own decisions and that you are where you are and what you are because of yourself. If there is some area in your life in which you are not happy, discipline yourself to do whatever it takes to change the situation.

The Reason for Happiness.

It is often the size of the gap between your present situation and the conditions and circ.u.mstances that you feel that you need to be happy that determines whether you are happy or unhappy. This is very much a matter of your own evaluation and decision.

There is an old saying that "success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get." When your income and your life are consistent with your goals and expectations and you are content with your situation, you feel happy. If, on the other hand, for any reason your current situation is different from what you really want and expect, you will be discontented and unhappy.

This state of contentment can be constantly changing. When you start off in your career, an income of $50,000 per year can seem like a huge achievement. But once you reach this goal, you start to be unhappy because you are not earning $100,000 or more. Some people are unhappy earning a million dollars a year.

Happiness Is a By-Product.

The interesting thing about happiness is that it is not a goal that you can aim at and achieve in and of itself. Happiness is a by-product that comes to you when you are engaged in doing something that you really enjoy while in the company of people who you like and respect.

Earl Nightingale, perhaps the most famous and respected radio commentator on success in history, said that "happiness is the progressive realization of a worthy ideal." Whenever you feel that you are moving, step-by-step, toward something that is important to you, toward your most important goals, you automatically feel happy. You feel satisfied and content. You feel a tremendous sense of personal growth and well-being.

Five Ingredients of Happiness.

Self-discipline is essential to happiness. Self-discipline requires both that you determine clearly what happiness means to you and also that you work progressively each day toward the achievement of that ideal condition.

In my experience and teachings, I have found that there are five ingredients to happiness. A shortfall in any of these areas can cause stress, unhappiness, and a feeling of being out of control.

Five Ingredients of Happiness.

1. Health and energy. This is perhaps the most important element of a good life. We strive for it all our lives. It is only when you enjoy high levels of pain-free health and a continuous flow of energy that you feel truly happy.

In many cases, health is a "deficiency need." This means that you do not think about your health very much until you are deprived of it. For example, you do not think about your teeth until you have a toothache. You do not think about your body until you have aches or pains of some kind.

You must use discipline and willpower throughout your life to achieve and maintain high levels of health and fitness. Chapters 16 and 17 cover these in more detail.

2. Happy relations.h.i.+ps. Fully 85 percent of your happiness-or unhappiness-will come from your relations.h.i.+ps with other people. As Aristotle said, "Man is a social animal." We are designed to function in society, working and living with other people at every stage of our lives.

Your ability to enter into and maintain high-quality relations.h.i.+ps with your spouse, children, friends, colleagues, and others is the true measure of the quality of your personality and your level of mental health. People with high levels of self-esteem and self-respect get along better with others and have much happier lives.

One of our biggest mistakes is to take our relations.h.i.+ps for granted, especially our most important ones. We often don't think about them until there is a problem, and then we think of nothing else.

3. Meaningful work. To be truly happy, you must be fully engaged with life. You must be doing things that keep you active and give you a sense of fulfillment. If you are making a living, you must be doing work that you enjoy, do well, and for which you are well paid.

People are truly happy only when they feel they are making a contribution of some kind, that they are putting in more than they are taking out. You need to feel that what you do really makes a difference in the lives and work of other people.

In studies of employee motivation, employers think that people are primarily motivated by money and benefits. But when employees are surveyed, the three factors that motivate them the most turn out to bechallenging and interesting work; opportunities for growth and advancement; and pleasant coworkers.

One of your most important responsibilities to yourself is to find the right job for you, and then, once you have it, throw your whole heart into it. If for any reason, you do not feel like putting your whole heart into your work, it may be lacking one or more of the three essentials to a positive workplace. It may be a sign that this is not the right place for you.

4. Financial independence. Some of the greatest fears we experience are those of loss, failure, and poverty. We fear being dest.i.tute, without funds, and dependent on others.

One of your chief responsibilities to yourself is to work toward financial independence and financial freedom throughout your life. The happiest of all people are those who have reached the point at which they no longer worry about money. This is not something you can leave to chance, but rather something that requires deliberate, purposeful action and tremendous self-discipline to achieve.

Whenever you feel that there is a big gap between where you are today financially and where you would ideally like to be, you experience stress, worry, and unhappiness.

5. Self-actualization. This is the feeling that you are becoming everything you are capable of becoming. This occurs when you feel that you are realizing more and more of your true potential.

Abraham Maslow is best known for his Hierarchy of Needs. He determined that people have both "deficiency needs" and "being needs." People strive either to compensate for their deficiencies or to realize their potentials. He concluded that you begin to evolve and develop to the highest levels possible for you only when your deficiency needs are first satisfied.

Deficiency Needs. Your first deficiency need is for safety and survival. Satisfying this need requires that you have sufficient food, water, clothing, and accommodation to preserve your life and well-being. If for any reason your safety or survival is threatened, you will become totally preoccupied with satisfying this need. You will experience tremendous stress, and you will be completely unhappy until you are safe once more. For example, think about being in a life-threatening situation.

The second deficiency need that Maslow identified is the need for security. This need embraces financial, emotional, and physical security. You need to have enough money to provide for yourself, security in your relations.h.i.+ps at work and at home, and physical security to a.s.sure that you are not in danger of any kind. If your security needs are threatened, you become completely preoccupied with them. For example, think about losing your job suddenly: How would you feel?

The third deficiency need that Maslow identified is belongingness. Each person has a need to be in social relations.h.i.+ps with others, both at home and at work. You need to be recognized and accepted by other people in your world. Each person needs to be comfortable in his or her relations.h.i.+ps with others and seen and accepted as part of a team or group.

Self-Esteem Needs. Once you have achieved a sufficient level of each of these basic needs-safety, security, and belongingness-you then turn to satisfy the higher needs for self-esteem and self-worth, your being needs. Your self-esteem is the core of your personality and largely determines how you feel about everything that happens to you. Everything you do in life is either to increase your self-esteem or to protect it from being diminished.

Your self-esteem-how you feel about yourself and how much you like and value yourself-determines your happiness more than any other single factor. Your self-esteem comes from many factors. When you are liked and accepted by others, living consistently with your highest values, doing a good job and being recognized for it, and moving progressively toward the achievement of your goals and ideals, then you naturally feel happy and satisfied. You feel valuable and very much in control.

The Highest Human Need. The highest need that Maslow identified was for self-actualization. He concluded that less than 2 percent of the population ever reaches this height of personal fulfillment. Most people remain so preoccupied with their deficiency needs and protecting or enhancing their self-esteem and their ego needs that they give little thought or effort to self-actualization.

But it is only when you realize that you have tremendous personal potential and begin striving to do, be, and have more than ever before in some area that you begin to experience self-actualization and true happiness.

The happiest of all people are those who feel that they are doing something worthwhile and important with their lives. They feel they are stretching and moving beyond anything they've ever done before. People devoted to self-actualization may be writing books or creating works of art. They may be climbing mountains or competing in sports. They may be building businesses or scaling the heights of their professions.

The wonderful thing about self-actualization needs is that they can never be completely satisfied. As you continually strive throughout your life to be and have and do more than ever before, you experience a steady flow of happiness and contentment. You feel that you are becoming more and more of what you were truly meant to become.

Never Be Satisfied.

In each of these areas, whenever you exert self-discipline and willpower to overcome the tendency to take the easy way, you feel happier about yourself. When you take a leap of faith in the direction of your dreams and then discipline yourself to keep going in spite of all obstacles and hards.h.i.+ps, you feel powerful. Your self-esteem and self-confidence increase, and then as you move, step by step, toward your ideals, you feel genuinely happy.

In the next chapter, you will learn how to incorporate self-discipline into your daily health habits to ensure that you live a long, happy, healthy life.

Action Exercises:.

1. Identify the areas of your life in which you feel the happiest and the most in control. How could you expand them?

2. Identify the areas of your life in which you feel controlled by other people or factors. What could you do to resolve these situations?

3. Identify those areas in your life in which there is a gap between your current levels of accomplishment and what you would really like to achieve. What could you do to bridge these gaps?

4. Identify the most pressing needs you have today that are not being fulfilled. How could you begin to satisfy these deficiency needs?

5. Identify those activities that give you the greatest feeling of personal happiness, your "peak experiences" in life. What could you do to increase these moments of happiness?

6. Identify those areas in life in which you feel the most discontented. What steps could you take immediately to resolve these feelings of discontent?

7. Define "happiness" for yourself. What does it mean? What would have to happen for you to feel truly happy? What could you do immediately to create this situation?

Chapter 16.

Self-Discipline and Personal Health.

"Self respect is the root of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself."

-ABRAHAM JOSHUA HESCHEL.

More people are living longer and better today than ever before in human history, and your goal should be to be one of those people. There is no area in which self-discipline is more important than in your practices regarding your health. Your number one goal for yourself should be to live as long and as well as you possibly can. This requires lifelong self-discipline with your health habits-and as mentioned in Chapter 15, good health is one of the ingredients of overall happiness.

The average life expectancy for males today (in 2009) is 76.8 years; for females 79.8 years, or approximately eighty years, and this number is increasing each year. This means that about 50 percent of the population will die before the age of eighty and about 50 percent will die after the age of eighty. Your goal should be to defy the averages and live to age ninety, ninety-five, or even longer.

Living a Long Life.

Today, most causes of early death that had shortened life in the past have been eliminated in the industrialized world. Diseases such as tuberculosis, polio, malaria, cholera, typhus, and others have been wiped out through sanitation and modern medicine.

The predominant causes of early deaths today are heart disease, cancer of all kinds, diabetes, and traffic deaths, all of which are subject to your control to a certain extent.

You cannot predict or protect against the unpredictable, like random accidents, but you can use your self-discipline to control the controllable in your life.

Seven Key Health Habits.

The Alameda Study, covering many thousands of people for more than twenty years, concluded there were seven key health habits that contributed the most to long life:1. Eat regularly rather than fasting, starving, or gorging. Eat normal, healthy meals, preferably five or six times per day, with your last meal fully three hours before you go to sleep.

2. Eat lightly: Overeating makes you tired and sluggish, whereas eating lightly makes you feel healthy and alert. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "No one ever regretted eating too little after a meal."

3. Don't snack between meals: When you eat, your body has to break down and digest the foods in your stomach so that they can move into your small intestine. This requires four to five hours. If you put food in on top of food that you have already eaten, the digestive process must start over again, with part of your food at one stage of digestion and another part of your food at another stage. This leads to upset stomach, heart-burn, drowsiness (especially in the afternoon), and constipation.

4. Exercise regularly: The ideal is about thirty minutes a day, or two hundred minutes per week. You can achieve this by walking, running, swimming, and/or using exercise equipment. You should fully articulate every joint every day.

5. Wear a seatbelt: Right up to age thirty-five, the most common cause of premature death is traffic accidents.

6. Don't smoke: Smoking is correlated with thirty-two different illnesses including lung cancer, eso - phageal cancer, throat cancer, stomach cancer, heart disease and a variety of other ailments.

7. Drink alcohol in moderation: Studies show that one to two gla.s.ses of wine per day aid digestion and seem to be beneficial to your overall health. Anything in excess of that can lead to all kinds of problems, including overeating, traffic accidents, personality problems, and antisocial behavior.

Each of these seven factors that contribute to long life are completely a matter of self-discipline. These seven factors are a matter of choice. They are actions that you can choose to take or not take deliberately. They are completely under your control.