Discipline Is the Highest Form of Self-Love

Discipline shows that you take yourself and your time seriously — that you're willing to give up what you want now for a much better result a year from now.

“Discipline is the highest form of self-love.”

I heard this line recently and I’ve been turning it over in my head for a while. I think it’s true.

Because when we build discipline in ourselves, it means we’ve genuinely got down to business and stopped idly thinking about something or merely planning it.

Our body, our finances, our relationships, our growth have become important enough to us that we start actually improving something.

Discipline shows that we take ourselves and our time seriously.

We’re willing to ignore what we want right now in order to get a far better result in the future. We choose a more interesting life a year from now over small pleasures here and now.

To get truly good results in life, you need patience. No area of life changes in one hour. Everywhere it’s a process that takes years, if not decades.

Making the right decision once isn’t enough. You need discipline to stay faithful to that decision every single day and not turn off the road — even when you’re very tired, even when it’s very hard, even when there’s no motivation left to move forward.

And it turns out that if I really do love myself and my life, then it will sadden me to simply flush the time of my life down the toilet. I’ll want to make my life a masterpiece, and in exactly the same way I’ll strive to take care of the people close to me.

In that sense, being disciplined and working on your goals and your vision systematically is a particular way of treating yourself. Yes, it turns out to be a form of self-love.

And an important caveat: when we build discipline and become more productive, it doesn’t mean there’s no room at all in our day for small joys and pleasures. We simply give them their allotted time instead of the whole day.

Do you agree with the idea that the more we love ourselves — in the healthy sense — the more carefully we’ll treat our time and the more we’ll build discipline?