“Hold fast to this sound and wholesome rule of life – that you indulge the body only so far as is needed for good health.” – Seneca

While this is good advice for keeping our diets in check, our habits healthy, and our excesses to a minimum there is no reason to stop only at the indulgences of our body.

There are also the indulgences to our wishes, our laziness, our complacency that we allow ourselves daily.

We all know that the best time to finish a project, especially a project with a deadline, is right away. But we allow ourselves to procrastinate, we allow ourselves to check our email one more time, we allow ourselves to scroll through social media, and we put off the things we know we should do.

We all know that it is useless and counter productive to get angry or upset at situations that we have no control over, but we allow ourselves to be short with loved ones, pitch little fits, and waste time worrying.

How do we stop? The answer is simple. Simple but not easy. Discipline. We declare complete control over the one thing we can control, how we respond to the world around us. And then we use discipline to hold ourselves to that.

It won’t be easy. It will be worth it.

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