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Why Your Discipline Might be Diminishing— and How to Fix It

Feeling stuck in a rut? Reassess your goals.

Amy Tang
4 min readJan 15, 2023

Recently, I’ve been stuck in a bit of a rut. On my weekends, I stay in my apartment and have little motivation for anything else. But the thing is, I know myself. I know that lounging around every weekend is going to make me feel worse than waking up early, getting exercise, or writing on Medium.

So why don’t I do any of those things? Why do so many of us choose the path that we know will feel worse in the future?

In the past few months, I’ve felt my discipline slowly dwindle. What feels worse is that I know I’m capable of so much more, but every time that split second decision comes, I’d make the choice that prioritizes the comfort of my current self rather than my future self.

Whenever I failed in this regard, my inner voice would say: “I know I can do better than this.” But for some reason, the next time around, I’d still make the same choice.

Why do we choose comfort over discipline?

Although I wanted to be better and more disciplined, I simply did not have a strong enough reason to be doing these harder, more painful things.

As an ambitious person, I have a list of goals I want to accomplish. But when I looked at the list, most of the goals were about making X amount of money or attaining Y.

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Amy Tang
Amy Tang

Written by Amy Tang

Trying to live a fuller life and learn more about myself and the world.

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