Thursday, August 27, 2009

Self-Control Part I

The school bus is barreling by the house at 6:58 this fall. All the sales at the store are for school supplies, and I’m back into private tutoring for the first time in years. I suppose it’s a habit from being in school from age 5 to 22, plus teaching some after that. That is, every fall, I suddenly feel like delving into academic subjects, buying glue sticks and scissors, even organizing my life down to the bathroom drawers. All that to explain why the sudden diversion from months of newsiness to an “academic” series.
This is the promised blog on Self-Control. I did this study for my own profit; maybe it will be useful to someone else. Of course, it is by no means comprehensive, but I found it challenged my assumptions and even my lifestyle.
All my life, I’ve “struggled with self-discipline.” My three top defeaters have been words, laziness, and food. My words have consistently gotten me into trouble. And although I have tried to be sensitive to any promptings to apologize, it irritates me every time that HERE WE GO AGAIN – AWKWARD! Laziness. Maybe it follows all non-work-aholics around; I don’t know. But I’d sure like to be sleeping right now. Yes, I do have a genetically lower serotonin level than some, which means I CANNOT pull an all-nighter, and I’m not functional on 6 hours of sleep or less. I wish I was. I still lean toward laziness. I’ve been able to hide some of this “struggle” pretty well. Especially with food. I have had so much pride and fear of others seeing me as out of control, that I would balance any, shall we say, “indiscretions” with extra exercise. Alex is two, and I’m still trying to pull off those last few pounds.
As you can see from the above confession, I have good motivation toward the study of self-discipline/self-control. I’m going to pass along some of the thoughts I’ve had in the last few weeks over a few separate blogs. Here are a few questions I’ve been looking into:
1. What is self-control?
2. How important is self-control? (Considering it’s a rather quiet topic in the Church)
3. How different is a biblical self-control from the world’s view of self-control?
4. Where’s the balance between it being a fruit of the Spirit produced in us and being commanded to “put it on”?
5. What is the goal of self-control? (This hit home for me. What are my motives in being self-controlled? Pride? Others’ opinions? Hmmm…)


*Great Quotes* (There’s a bunch of these, so I’ll include one with each post.)
“In reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves… self-discipline with all of them came first.” ~Harry S. Truman

4 comments:

Neugier said...
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Neugier said...
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Neugier said...

Charity, this topic is so valuable! Your transparency is refreshing. I can not say that I have been doing the indepth study on discipline that you have, however; this is something that I have been actively pursuing and examining lately. I truly enjoy and function so much better when I am very organized, as I said I enjoy being such. However, I am just amazed how hard and seemingly impossible it is at times and then of course you have the matter of consistency! Being consistently organized. And organized not over reacting and controlling.
I am excitied to follow along on this your journey of better understanding and grasping the gift of self.discipline!

Holly said...

This has already been very interesting! I'm looking forward to you subsequent blogs! I need so much help/work in this area!