Daily Truth Jan. 12, 2022
Nobody likes a tyrant, so why would you think tyrannical ruling of yourself would be effective?
In an effort to break old habits that no longer serve you, or start new routines that will improve your health, it is necessary to become a master negotiator. A successful life is full of self-negotiations. “If I don’t spend this money at Target today, I will have $100 more for vacation.” “If I don’t snooze my alarm, I’ll have time to eat breakfast before work.” “If I go to the gym today, I’ll hit my weight-loss goal in 3 months.”
We negotiate with ourselves to sacrifice something now, in order to have what we want in the future. Kind of like we do with children. “Eat your broccoli and you can have frozen yogurt.” “Stop hitting your sister and we’ll get to go to the zoo.”
We negotiate in the present to teach them self discipline in the future.
Lucky for me, my daughter was a master negotiator and she taught me well. I’ll never forget when she was about 3 years old and refused to eat the otter pop my husband had opened for her because he bit it open. She saw him put his mouth on something she was going to eat and she was OUT! I was attempting to dampen her obsession with people touching her food so I told her if she wasted that otter pop she couldn’t have another one for an entire week. Her response was, “well, how many days are in a week?” When I told her there were seven, she quietly handed me back the bit open otter pop, walked away and said “I’ll wait.”
You are no different than a child. You need to negotiate with yourself to give up what you want (or don’t want to to do) at the moment to reap the rewards in the future. Learning to negotiate with yourself is necessary to develop discipline and because tyranny never works. Plus, who wants to live with a tyrant? Just like a child, the more you tell yourself no, with no reward dangled in front of you, the more you want to do what you shouldn’t.
Life is not about ruling yourself, that will only cause rebellion. Learn to negotiate with yourself instead.