13-06-2015, 03:27 AM
Self-Mastery with Self-Discipline
by Napoleon Hill
Self-discipline entails the complete mastery of both your thought habits and your physical habits. When you have gained control over your thought habits, control over your physical habits will be almost automatic, and you will be well on the road to the attainment of complete self-discipline.
The important fact to remember is that self-discipline calls for a balancing of the emotions of your heart with the reasoning faculty of your mind. This means that you must learn to consult both your feelings and your reason in reaching a decision concerning every circumstance of your life. Sometimes you will find it necessary to set aside your emotions entirely, and follow the dictates of your reason. Other times you will decide in favor of your emotions, modified by the advice of reason. Try to find the happy medium between too much and too little of everything.
For example, some men have so little control over the emotion of love that they are like so much putty in the hands of a woman. Such men never accomplish very much in life. And on the other hand there are the men who are emotionally cold because they follow completely and solely the advice of their minds.
Both of these types undoubtedly miss many of the finer things in life. The ideal is to achieve and maintain a proper balance between the faculties of reason and emotion. This is the highest form of self-discipline.
You may wonder if perhaps it would not be safer and wiser to control your life entirely on the basis of reason and leave emotion out of your decisions and plans. The answer to this question is: No. And it would be very unwise even if it were possible.
The emotions provide the driving power, the activating force, which enables a man to put the decisions of reason into action. The emotions are the well spring of man's greatest power. If you destroy hope and faith, what would there be to live for? If you kill enthusiasm, loyalty and the desire for achievement, but still retain the faculty of reason, what good will it be? The mind will still be there to direct, but what will it direct?
Source: PMA Science of Success. Educational Edition. The Napoleon Hill Foundation. 1981. Pgs. 269-270.
by Napoleon Hill
Self-discipline entails the complete mastery of both your thought habits and your physical habits. When you have gained control over your thought habits, control over your physical habits will be almost automatic, and you will be well on the road to the attainment of complete self-discipline.
The important fact to remember is that self-discipline calls for a balancing of the emotions of your heart with the reasoning faculty of your mind. This means that you must learn to consult both your feelings and your reason in reaching a decision concerning every circumstance of your life. Sometimes you will find it necessary to set aside your emotions entirely, and follow the dictates of your reason. Other times you will decide in favor of your emotions, modified by the advice of reason. Try to find the happy medium between too much and too little of everything.
For example, some men have so little control over the emotion of love that they are like so much putty in the hands of a woman. Such men never accomplish very much in life. And on the other hand there are the men who are emotionally cold because they follow completely and solely the advice of their minds.
Both of these types undoubtedly miss many of the finer things in life. The ideal is to achieve and maintain a proper balance between the faculties of reason and emotion. This is the highest form of self-discipline.
You may wonder if perhaps it would not be safer and wiser to control your life entirely on the basis of reason and leave emotion out of your decisions and plans. The answer to this question is: No. And it would be very unwise even if it were possible.
The emotions provide the driving power, the activating force, which enables a man to put the decisions of reason into action. The emotions are the well spring of man's greatest power. If you destroy hope and faith, what would there be to live for? If you kill enthusiasm, loyalty and the desire for achievement, but still retain the faculty of reason, what good will it be? The mind will still be there to direct, but what will it direct?
Source: PMA Science of Success. Educational Edition. The Napoleon Hill Foundation. 1981. Pgs. 269-270.