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

While people usually associate self-discipline with the ability to resist temptations (such as laziness or overeating), another equally (if not more) important benefit of self-control is the increased ability to control your emotions.

Very often in everyday life one sees that by losing one’s temper with someone who has already lost his, one does not gain anything but only sets out upon the path of stupidity. He who has enough self-control to stand firm at the moment when the other person is in a temper, wins in the end. It is not he who has spoken a hundred words aloud who has won; it is he who has perhaps spoken only one word

Inverse paranoid: someone who believes the world is conspiring to do him good. Sees every situation as being heaven-sent to teach some valuable lesson or make him successful. This is the most outwardly identifiable quality of a high-performing person

Your choices are made in a moment, but their consequences will transcend a lifetime.

Life’s easy when you live it the hard way... and hard if you try to live it the easy way.

If you finish a non-fiction book and don’t act upon any of its suggestions, you’ve wasted time. When reading, always think about how you can apply the teachings in your own life — not about how you can finish the book faster so you can begin reading another one.

What if, instead of thinking of yourself as a person with weak self-control, you’d call yourself a person deeply motivated to build self-discipline ?

Change your opinion about yourself and it will be easier to stick to actions that would otherwise feel unnatural and clash with who you think you are, deep down.

People who seem to act “courageously” usually have specific consequences in mind; they know the consequences both of acting and not acting. They’ve decided that the consequences of not acting are worse than the consequences of what we consider to be their courageous acts.

—Harry Browne

Consciously giving up the last word is a secret prayer because the you that wants the last word isn’t really you at all... it’s that dark spirit of one-upmanship, that dark spirit of combativeness.

—Guy Finley

A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken a new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.

—Tony Robbins