Augusta F. Kantra - "Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most."

Welcome to the Daily Quote.

The podcast designed to kickstart your day in a positive way.

I'm Eros Anemigiever, and this podcast episode is brought to you by the Great News Podcast.

Tired of all the doom and gloom news from mainstream media, you'll get none of that there.

Instead, you'll find inspiring stories and developments making the world a better

place.

Find it in your favorite podcast app, but just to make it easy for you, I'm leaving

a link in the show notes.

Now let's dive into today's quote, which is often misattributed to Abraham Lincoln,

and you've probably seen it under his name on social media a hundred times.

But the person most credibly connected to this quote is Augusta F. Cantra, a psychotherapist

and mindfulness teacher from Alabama, who once wrote,

Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.

Interesting.

Quite often when people talk about discipline, it is about depriving yourself of using extreme

willpower.

But notice what Cantra is really saying here.

She's not telling you to be harder on yourself.

She's not talking about gritting your teeth, whitenuckling your way through temptation,

or punishing yourself for every slip up.

She takes the punitive part of discipline away entirely.

That's the reframe.

Most of us think of discipline as deprivation, saying no, giving things up, doing the hard

thing.

But Cantra flips it completely.

Discipline isn't about denial, it's about choosing every single moment you're making

a choice between what you want right now and what you want most.

The cookies or the goal, the Netflix binge or the business, the comfortable silence or

the difficult conversation.

When you keep what you want most at the forefront of your mind, it almost pulls you towards

the right actions, rather than feeling like a constant struggle.

The goal itself becomes the motivation.

You're not fighting yourself, you're just choosing.

I used to think discipline people were just wired differently.

That they didn't feel the pull of distraction the way the rest of us do.

What I've come to understand is that they feel it just as much.

They've just gotten clear on what they want most, and that clarity makes the choice easier.

Not easy, but easier.

When I know exactly where I'm going, saying no to the detour doesn't feel like suffering.

It feels more like steering.

This night I was on the couch playing a puzzle game on my phone and scrolling through my social

feeds.

I was feeling lazy and that is actually what I wanted to do at the time.

But is it what I wanted most?

No!

What I wanted most was to produce this podcast episode.

So that is what I chose.

So here's the question.

What do you want most?

Not what you think you should want, not what sounds impressive.

What do you actually genuinely want most?

Because once you know that, discipline stops being a battle.

And it becomes a choice.

And choices are something you can make right now.

That's it for today.

I'm end of me giving signing off for now, but I'll be back.

Tomorrow, same pod time, same pod station, with another daily quote.