Legal Research

"How to Have More Self-Discipline"

Posted by Penelope Trunk: "For a while I have been fascinated by the research about happiness. Some of my favorite research is from Sonja Lyumbomirsky, psychology professor at University of California Riverside. (She's great at listing really small things you can do to impact your happiness.) And from Dan Gilbert's Hedonic Psychology Lab at Harvard. (I follow PhD students from that lab like other people follow favorite quarterbacks.)

But something I've noticed in the last year is that most of our happiness is actually dependent on our self-discipline. For example, we are happier if we exercise, but the barriers to getting to the gym are so high that it takes a lot more than missives from the Hedonic Psychology Lab to get us there. Also, Roy Baumeister, professor of psychology at Florida State University, has studied self-esteem for decades, and finds that when it comes to success, self-discipline is much more important than self-esteem.

So I have started tracking my own self-discipline rather than my happiness. And I think that the process is making me happier, because I am teaching myself how to bounce back quickly when my self-discipline falls apart. Here's what I've learned:

Self-discipline is about small things paving the way for very big things...
The key to self-discipline is finding an easy re-entry point...
You need to give up perfectionism in order to get anywhere...
Self-discipline is mental, but only because it's about believing in yourself...
The moment of regaining self-discipline feels triumphant..."

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Full post as published by Stark County Law Library Blawg on July 09, 2009 (boomark / email).