We Give Discipline Too Much Credit, Here’s What Actually Works

Okay, well, don't ponder yourself into stagnation, Diva. You got this. So, there's something really cool about this. So, a lot of people get stuck, and we sometimes call this analysis paralysis, right? Because you don't know what to do, and then we feel stagnant, right? So, inaction feels like stagnation, but it's not really

stagnation. It's often times conflict. If you don't know what to do, which is often times a conflict between what you want and what you should. What a lot of people assume is that I need to use willpower. I need to use discipline. And it turns out that using willpower or discipline fosters something called

action crises, okay? And I'll explain how this works. So, let's say that I want to do one thing, and I should do something else. When I'm in that situation, I use willpower to overcome my want and move towards my should. And a lot of people will be of the mind that like this is the right thing to do,

right? Then you blame yourself for being lazy, you blame yourself for being undisciplined. You look at other people who are consistently moving in a particular direction. I love this paper. Stuck in limbo: motivational antecedents and consequences of experiencing action crises in personal goal pursuit. So, controlled motivation has been positively associated with a

participant's intended effort at the decisional phase of goal striving, but it was not shown to translate into actual goal effort at two or four weeks later. Suggests that people have trouble translating their controlled intentions to tangible activity at the actional phase of goal pursuit. So, what is a controlled intention? First thing, controlled motivation. Controlled