Quotes about Self-discipline

I've started a new diet—for the fifth time this year. I know I'm overweight, and I really want to change. I read all the new information, I set goals, I get myself all psyched up with a positive mental attitude and tell myself I can do it. But I don't. After a few weeks, I fizzle. I just can't seem to keep a promise I make to myself.

Habit 1 says, "You are the programmer." Habit 2, then, says, "Write the program." Until you accept the idea that you are responsible, that you are the programmer, you won't really invest in writing the program.

He realized that real success is success with self. It's not in having things, but in having mastery, having victory over self.

Build inner character first—private victory before public victory.

Remember to keep working from the inside out and keep getting back on track when we blow it.

At the very heart of our Circle of Influence is our ability to make and keep commitments and promises. The commitments we make to ourselves and to others, and our integrity to those commitments, are the essence and clearest manifestation of our proactivity.

The degree to which we have developed our independent will in our everyday lives is measured by our personal integrity. Integrity is, fundamentally, the value we place on ourselves. It's our ability to make and keep commitments to ourselves, to "walk our talk." It's honor with self, a fundamental part of the Character Ethic, the essence of proactive growth.

There is no effectiveness without discipline and there is no discipline without character. And there is no character without first starting and asking questions.

It also requires independent will, the power to do something when you don't want to do it, to be a function of your values rather than a function of the impulse or desire of any given moment.

The gravity pull of some of our habits may currently be keeping us from going where we want to go.

The inside-out approach says that private victories precede public victories, that making and keeping promises to ourselves precedes making and keeping promises to others. It says it is futile to put personality ahead of character, to try to improve relationships with others before improving ourselves. Inside-out

Self-discipline will never make us feel righteous or clean; accepting God's love will.