Self-control is a spiritual topic—and a psychological one

“Self-control is a spiritual topic—and a psychological one. All truth is God’s truth, and I’m scouting for wisdom wherever I can find it.”

@drewndyck from his book, “Your Future Self with Thank You”

Friends….I bought another book on self-discipline and habits. 😳 I can’t stop. I am thoroughly disciplined in buying books that speak about discipline. If only I was as disciplined in reading them. 🤔

I haven’t read this book yet but the title speaks to a way that I started seeing myself that helped me deal with some behaviors that weren’t all that productive - and that is that there are actually two Pauls; “now Paul” and “tomorrow Paul.”

Now Paul is terrible to tomorrow Paul. Now Paul eats the extra cookie and expects tomorrow Paul to run it off. Now Paul procrastinates on his tasks and lets tomorrow Paul worry about pulling it together at the last minute. Now Paul doesn’t clean up his workspace because tomorrow Paul will clean it up when he get’s to work. See where I’m going with this?

I would never treat a coworker the same way I treat myself - especially my future self. I’ll grant my present self all the grace in the world and expect my future self to have all of the discipline and focus that I can’t seem to muster in the moment. That’s why the title of this jumped out at me; it’s one of the ways I’ve been able to frame things to get myself to “do better” when it comes to the mundane discipline kind of stuff. When making a decision to do or not do something, I try to frame it as if I was doing it for different person - someone I wouldn’t want to let down. This stuff seems kinda silly when talking about work tasks and other small dumb things but ends up being life changing when applied to my life as a Christian.

Sometimes I draw these in a response to a book I read; this one I’m drawing in response to a book I’m excited to read!