From miserable indiscipline to joyful & effective self-control
REVIEW AND SUMMARY
Introduction:
Most of us are struggling at the mastery of life.
We all find the balance, harmony and prosperity we aspire to in our lives if we pay attention to its different important aspects and address them.
There are times when you make the craziest of decisions even if you have mastered your life.
Mastering of life is figuring out the right direction and paying attention to every important area of your life in order to live a well-rounded life and ultimately to actually enjoy living.
In this book, you will learn all you need to know in order to steer your life in the direction you want.
By the end of reading this book, you will feel motivated and focused on working with great zeal to live a more rounded and meaningful life.
Whether you want to become more self-disciplined, master your life, become more emotionally intelligent, make money online, break some bad habits, build new habits, learn new skills and much more, you will find all that on my website and in my books.
Contents
From miserable indiscipline to joyful & effective self-control 1
Chapter 1: What makes a well-balanced life. 3
Mindset, beliefs and questions. 3
Family, friends and love life. 3
Chapter 2: Mastering your mind. 4
Train yourself to think and speak positively. 4
Know your core beliefs & principles. 5
Practice Positive Affirmations. 6
Chapter 3: Mastering your Health and Nutrition. 6
Become more physically active. 7
Become aware of your temptations. 7
Chapter 4: How to have better relationships and a great social life. 7
Chapter 5: Career, money matters & spirituality, 8
Chapter 1: What makes a well-balanced life
The series of events in life are inevitable and unpredictable.
This awareness can be scary.
But it can also be profound provided we have self-mastery and courage and a willingness to work hard.
As Theodore Roosevelt once said, “Courage, hard work, self-mastery, and intelligent effort are all essential to a successful life.”
If you are well aware of what you want, what you believe in, how you plan to take your life forward and the goals you truly aspire to achieve, you will be able to fight and conquer every obstacle that comes your way.
To do this you need to address the key areas of your life and bring balance to each one of them, so that when you have a challenge, you know what to do.
Let us look at key areas you need to pay utmost attention to so that you can live a well-rounded life.
Health and fitness
Whether you are dealing with a difficult client, pursuing a challenging goal or just pushing yourself to become self-disciplined you need a healthy mind and body to do all that.
If you are unhealthy physically or mentally it will be difficult to pursue your goals.
To live a more balanced life and to increase your productivity in every aspect of your life, you will need to pay attention to your health and fitness.
You will find out how to do this in this book.
Mindset, beliefs and questions
Research clearly shows that Emotional Intelligence (EI) and grit are two of the most important tools you need to carve out a beautiful life for yourself.
If your EI is high and are super gritty you will stick to whatever you put your mind to despite the challenges until the very end.
Also; you will embrace right beliefs based on clarity and consciousness of your core values so that you can drive your life forward in the right direction.
As you read on, you will find out how you can do it.
Thirdly, you need to take charge of your thoughts in order to maintain positive ones and rid yourself of negative ones.
Family, friends and love life
You need a loving partner, a supportive family and some sincere friends to add extra spice and sugar to your life.
This book will show you how to have a healthy love life, happy family and a thriving social life.
Career and financial life
A thriving career or business leading to a successful financial life is essential to feeling good about yourself in your life.
A life characterized by bankruptcy and a meaningless career is not fulfilling.
This book will provide with advice on how to achieve this.
Spirituality
Spirituality is a significant part of your life even though many of us ignore it.
The feeling of incompleteness many of us feel is mainly because we haven’t unlocked our spiritual side yet.
If this is what is missing in your life, this book offers you the golden opportunity to understand and unlock it too.
This book discusses all three different aspects separately in order to give you an understanding of exactly what is required to achieve more balance and prosperity in each area and to help you do the needful to shape your life positively.
Getting control of your thoughts, mindset and beliefs is crucial to enabling you to become disciplined.
Only when you get self-disciplined can you focus on precisely what you want and go after it.
Chapter 2: Mastering your mind
“Self-discipline begins with the mastery of your thoughts. If you don’t control what you think you can’t control what you do”. Anonymous.
To move towards soaring heights of success, be it in terms of financial prosperity; career, love life, relationships, spirituality or any other aspect you need to first master your mind.
Your thoughts influence your emotions, which in turn affect your behaviour and attitude and this in turn affect your decisions.
If you do not have control over what you think, you are quite likely to make irrational and hasty decisions, and given in to impulses and temptation.
If you are not pleased with your life right now, it is primarily because you have not mastered your mind yet.
Mastering your thoughts will inculcate self-discipline and train your mind to think positively to draw good things your way.
Here is how to do it:
Train yourself to think and speak positively.
Your thoughts and self-talk greatly influence how you feel about yourself, your life and the decisions you make.
An unhealthy habit of talking negatively to yourself and putting yourself down every now and then keeps you from becoming disciplined, focused and motivated.
Negative beliefs direct your life in a negative direction.
And this is the main reason you give in to temptation.
Your negative mindset is what is putting you down and not letting you grow your wings so you can fly high.
Work on this habit and you see great changes to your life and manifest genuine aspirations.
By training yourself to speak and think positively you are able to gain control of your thoughts.
Start by being aware of what you are thinking about when working on a task. Pay attention to the thoughts that enter your mind and the moment you find even a hint of negativity in your mind point it out.
Write down that negative feeling or thought and challenge it.
When you are through with that process, replace that negative thought with a more realistically positive one.
With repetition and practice you will get rid of unconstructive thought patterns and build a more can-do attitude.
As you turn into a more optimistic thinker, you start to have better control of your urges and temptations and develop enough self-control to do what you actually want to do.
Think and work mindfully
- Focus on your thoughts and work and cultivate increased focus.
- Train yourself to do everything mindfully to attain complete mindfulness.
- Mindfulness refers to living in the moment non-judgementally, peacefully and acceptingly.
- This will keep you from constantly rehearsing the past, thinking about the future, attaching unnecessary meaning to everything and from constantly jumping from one core to another.
- To unleash your inner focus, so you master your mind, start becoming more mindful of yourself, your emotions and everything that you do.
- Slowly and cautiously bring your thoughts back to the task when they drift away.
- The practice helps you to inculcate inner calmness which helps you to focus better on your thoughts and define your core values so as to shape your life accordingly.
Know your core beliefs & principles
To master your life completely, it is necessary that you give it the right direction.
That happens when you identify the right principles you want to live by.
These are the values and beliefs you strongly believe and those you want to abide by in any given situation.
Honesty and sincerity maybe part of your core values that you will not compromise.
Your values make it easier for you to make certain decisions.
They also help you set goals in different areas of your life which you stick to.
Through reading and taking time to think about your life, you gain clarity on your core principles. This gives you a general framework you would like to apply to your life to infuse more meaning and value to it.
Next apply the core value, to every goal you set for yourself and every aspect of life to make it as meaningful as possible.
Practice Positive Affirmations
You need to practice the habit of saying positive affirmations.
Positive affirmations are statements, suggestions and beliefs you say to yourself.
When you affirm something to your mind, you compel your mind to accept it and then shape your thoughts accordingly.
To break negative thoughts and experiences practice positive affirmations daily.
For example, say things like, “I can do this” or “I am going to start this task and do it successfully.”
Say this loudly and confidently repeatedly with firm convictions.
Example: “I am going to work successfully on my diet plan and lose 15 pounds in 3 months.” Say this repeatedly every day of the week.
Commit, speak positive affirmations to every goal you set and you will harness the power of your mind to actualize it.
Consistently working on these strategies will help you attain mastery over your mind.
And this mastery will help you to structure all the other aspects of your life.
Chapter 3: Mastering your Health and Nutrition
“Good health and good sense are two of life’s greatest blessings.” – Publilius Syrus.
Good health is critical to getting anything done and living the kind of life you want.
To reclaim your health and physical well-being:
Adopt a healthy diet
If you are overweight, avoid foods that increase your cholesterol levels and push you toward obesity and healthy issues like diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular problems.
If you are underweight, eat more meat, dairy foods and slowly increase your portion size to give your body enough nutrition.
Eat a balanced diet that provides you with the right amounts of carbohydrates, good fats, proteins, minerals, vitamins and fibre to stay healthy and fit.
Drink at least 2 to 3 litres of clean drinking water daily to stay hydrated and to ensure your body functions properly.
Eat slowly and take small bits when eating.
Eating big bites and eating hurriedly makes you eat more than you need, which then leads to obesity.
Incorporate these changes and you will feel a lot stronger and healthier in a matter of weeks.
Become more physically active.
- Physical activity helps you burn calories and releases mood improving hormones in your bloodstream that boosts your confidence, enthusiasm and happiness levels.
- Ensure that you are active physically to enjoy the above benefits.
- Have adequate sleep (7-9 hours)
- On average an adult needs 7-9 hours of sleep to feel good, fresh and focused.
- If you are sleeping less that is why you feel grumpy often and feel your life lacks meaning.
- Establish a bedtime routine where you engage in relaxing activities to unwind such as reading a book, taking a cup of tea, reviewing your day, etc, like 50 minutes before you sleep.
- Sleep and wake around the same time each day.
Become aware of your temptations
Write down things, activities or feelings that trigger your temptations and make you engage in things that make you lean towards an unhealthy lifestyle.
Write those down and then find healthier alternatives to battle those urges.
Find healthier alternatives to battle those urges.
As you become healthier with time, you will find in you the strength to devote time to your relationships.
Chapter 4: How to have better relationships and a great social life.
- “Find a heart that will love you at your worst and arms that will hold you at your weakest.” Anonymous.
- Being around loved ones who shower you with unconditional support and care is the best feeling in the world.
- To enjoy that lovely emotion you need to build healthy, meaningful relationships.
- To do this you need to:
- Distinguish positive influences from negative influences
- Evaluate your relationship, slowly discard the toxic ones and focus more on developing relationships that have positive impact on you.
- Mend broken and strained bonds
- Look for loved ones, friends and family you used to bond with.
- Renew the relationship you had with them
- Spend time with loved ones.
- Spend quality time with loved ones on a regular basis.
- Quality time will make you understand them better and feel closer to them.
- This adds meaning and value to the relationships you have.
- If you don’t have enough good friends or meaningful relationships, start hanging out with more people. A thriving social life is important to having a successful, happy and fulfilling life.
- Believe in the power of love
- Believe in the power of love and think optimistically in that direction. Practice love-based affirmations, to draw your soulmate toward you.
- Get clarity on the kind of person you want to be and be open to meet new people and have deep conversations.
- Gain control of your relationships to improve your career & spiritual life.
Chapter 5: Career, money matters & spirituality,
- Financial and career success are equally important in enabling you to gain mastery over your life.
- Ponder on the type of career you want which is consistent with your core values.
- Set specific milestone to achieve career goals after undergirding them with compelling reasons.
- Mastering your financial life
- For better control of finances, find out basic expenses first
- Unlocking your spirituality
- Spirituality is the search for meaning for your life and it varies for each individual. To unlock adds value and a sense of completion.
- To begin: sit in silence, next think of what makes you unique.
- Think of the universe and its origin, faith and religion. This will unleash your spirituality giving you the impetus to structure it beautifully.
