Self-Discipline
October 21, 2025
I am at the same time reading the
Apostolic Exhortation of Pope Leo XIV on Dilexi
te “I have loved you”.
Yesterday was a day of favors for me. God is truly a God full of surprises. I experienced the love of God in many ways. Of course I asked Him to accompany me do the errands of sourcing out items for an outreach I am looking forward to. As I was going to do it on my own without any car but commute, I asked Him to accompany me and facilitate everything. The first favor was when a friend who was also going out of the building saw me and gave me a ride to the place of destination which according to her was along her way. But I tell you it was not really so. She had to go passed the road home to bring me to the place and then maneuver back. The second favor was another friend came to my rescue and settled the problem of the tricycle driver that brought me home and the third was when somebody at home offered to drive me to get the only item I lack from another place where she plans to get her toiletries. At the end of the day I had everything I needed to raise funds for the outreach. God is awesome!
Following is the superhabit of self-discipline (From SUPERHABITS, The Universal System for a Successful Life by Andrew V. Abela, PH.D., Dean, Busch School of Business, The Catholic University of America, 2024)
It is helpful to understand what Self-Discipline really is.
Self-Discipline, or self-control, is the superhabit for managing your desires. It is not, at root, the ability to impose your will on your actions, against your feelings. Rather, as we saw in chapter 4 on Diligence, Self-Discipline is the fine art of coaxing your desires into more productive directions, by carefully nudging them in small and repeated ways.
No. 10 of the chapter on Character
(escriva .org) says: “Never correct
anyone while you are still indignant about a fault committed. Wait until the
next day, or even longer. And then,
calmly, and with a purer intention, make your reprimand. You will gain more by one friendly word than
by a three-hour quarrel. Control your
temper.” And
mind you there was not even a fault committed.
It is just that she participated in a gossip and with such bias she fell
into the trap of lack of character. See
how gossip destroys self respect? You
become subjective and you easily give in to your lack of objectivity. You lose everything of good judgment and
prudence. You will have to swallow your
words and make reparations for the consequences of lack of self control. “Get used to saying no” (escriva.org, Character,
no. 5)
No. 8: Serenity. Why lose your temper if by doing so you offend God, annoy other people, upset yourself…and have to find it again in the end?”
No. 25: “Don’t argue. Arguing seldom brings light, for the light is quenched by passion.”
No. 34: “Don’t be afraid of the truth, even though the truth may mean your death.”
This, I believe, is how the Water tribes find the Self-Discipline they need. You take one large thing that you really want, for whatever reason – camaraderie, sense of purpose, connection with nature – and then you coach and guide any smaller desires you have that might push you in a contrary direction, such as staying at home and watching YouTube videos, back toward that one bigger goal.
Of course, it’s worth asking why we should be trying to change our desires. After all, some people think that happiness in life comes from fulfilling your desires, not changing them. There’s an entire tradition in psychology, called “desire theory,” that says that the path to happiness is exactly this: satisfying your desires. So why tamper with them? Well, for one thing our desires can sometimes lead us to do things that we know are really stupid things to do. Sometimes I desire to say something, do something, or eat something that I know I’ll regret afterwards.
Even so, we do sense intuitively that, however worthy our aims are, our happiness does involve fulfilling our desires in some way, and that ignoring or repressing our desires can be quite unhealthy. As we saw above, in our discussions of Diligence and Gentlefirmness, our desires are energy and can be used productively even heroically, and should neither be wasted on frivolous stuff, nor extinguished.
Aquinas offers an understanding of desire that integrates the best of both of these theories, even though he was writing hundreds of years before either theory was developed. He realized that our desires can be unruly, and need to be cultivated, channeled, to flow in the right direction. Think of desires as wild horses. The goal is not to kill or hamstring them, but to tame them so that they can run as fast as they did when they were wild, but with you at the reins, guiding them in the direction you choose. Recent research supports Aquinas’s view, showing that taming our desires is not only possible, but also productive.
How do we grow in Self-Discipline by taming our desires? As we saw in the previous chapter, Self-Discipline is one of the cardinal superhabits. This means that it encompasses several smaller superhaibts. Rather than cultivating Self-Discipline directly, you can focus on cultivating one of these subordinate superhabits.
A
medical analogy can help explain this. Target
a small area. Focus on growing in one of
Self-discipline’s subordinate superhabits, like Restraint, for example, is a
more targeted, and likely more effective approach.
How do you decide which of the superhabits related to Self-discipline you should focus on first? Working through Aquinas’s MECE description of human life is the way to do this. (Referring back to the Anatomy of Virtue diagram will be helpful as we go through this.)
There are five superhabits, which we have already seen, for managing our “non-physical desires” for what we want. They are grouped into desires to do things, to know things, and to control things.
The desire to know things is managed by the superhabit of diligence. This is the one for you if you have difficulty learning new things and find yourself wasting time on trivia.
The desire to control things is managed by Gentlefirmness and Forgiveness, which address “anger in the moment” and “anger after the fact” respectively.
There
are also five superhabits for dealing with non-physical desires for “how” we
want to live, and specifically how we like to work, play, move, and dress. We’ve discussed the first two, Orderliness
and Eutrapelia, which address the “work” of making sure that things are in the
right order and place, and the “play” of having restful leisure.
Guess what my outreach preparation has just made a step
forward. Hope it continues moving on and
that I am able to cope with it. Meantime let us focus on what we have started
regarding cultivating superhabits that will give more meaning, fulfillment and self-improvement
to our daily ordinary life. And this can happen even more effectively if we talk
to God in the quiet moments of our prayer about our desires and everything this
post shares with us. Let us keep our
hopes high trusting in God who knows best and loves each one of us. Let us heed what He tells us every moment of
the day.
See you in the next post, “May tomorrow be a perfect day; may you find love and laughter along the way; may God keep you in his tender care; ‘til He brings us together again.”
Affectionately,
Guadalupinky
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