You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage — pleasantly, smilingly, non-apologetically — to say “no” to other things. And the way to do that is by having a bigger “yes” burning inside.

Stephen Covey

Without the bigger “yes” burning inside of you, there’s no way you’ll continue making the uncomfortable choices over the long term for the sake of your goal.

The primary reason why I stuck to entrepreneurship, despite countless failures, was my intention to help my parents build a house in the countryside. It was their dream, and by extension, my dream.

This big “yes” had been burning inside me no matter what was happening with my business. Even after another big defeat, I still knew that I would never “lay down my arms” in the fight to become able to give them their dream. If you have such a strong “yes” inside you, you’ll also refuse to surrender the fight to achieve your dream.

Your burning “yes” will also help you pinpoint your priorities and disregard distractions. For example, if you decided to save money for the future education of your child, saying “no” to spending money on things you’d like to have (but don’t need) would be much easier than without such a powerful motivator. You would be focused on the long-view of where you wanted to be when your child was older .

If your biggest dream in life is to become a surgeon, you won’t feel apprehensive about declining an invitation for a party because you want to prepare yourself for an important exam. The “yes” burning inside you would be stronger than the fear of missing out on a few hours spent drinking with your friends.

Granted, as we’ve already discussed, there should be some balance in everything, but generally speaking, you’ll do well if you can discover a burningb reason why you want to accomplish a given dream and unapologetically say no to anything that might threaten your chances of making it come true.

When I meet someone, I consider how normal their life is. I do this not because it’s a one hundred percent accurate heuristic on how much I’ll respect someone, but because it’s damn close. If you have a totally normal life, then there are only two possibilities: you’ve thought through every aspect of your life and miraculously agree with society on each one, or you don’t think at all. I try not to associate with people who don’t think.

Self-discipline is hard to attain, and because it’s not common, sooner or later somebody will deem your behaviors abnormal.

I maintain a healthy weight and physique, but I still fast for 16 to 20 hours daily, and abstain from food for 36 hours or more every several weeks.

My relationship with food is often criticized by other people. If I don’t stuff my face with food every three hours, then surely I’ve developed an eating disorder. The norm is to eat often, and if your behavior differs from it, you’re weird. However, I do what I consider to be best for me, and I refuse to follow different eating habits merely because it’s the most common way of doing things.

It’s difficult to trust your own judgment when everybody around you is doing something different, but if everything you do is in accordance with society’s norms, then what you’re going to get is the same results as everybody else does who follows those norms.

So what if others think it’s weird that you’d rather save money instead of buying a new car every two years? You’re the one who has less financial stress, even if it costs you a little to reject the temptation to spend money unnecessarily.

So what if you’re not partying every weekend like everybody else and instead work hard to grow your business? You’re the one who will eventually enjoy wealth, while those others will complain about their finances for the rest of their lives.

So what if people consider you weird because you go to sleep at nine and wake up at five in the morning, while they stay up until two in the morning watching TV shows? It’s you who’s going to get more done by ten in the morning than they’ll accomplish in the entire week!

Trust your own judgment and think for yourself. It’s better to suffer from your own choices than waste your life away because you were mindlessly following the herd.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

Some people don’t want to start exercising because they’re afraid that others will laugh at their inability to perform a pushup or run for more than sixty seconds without losing their breath. They might be afraid that their friends will talk behind their backs, taking bets when they’re going to fail.

Thousands of people all over the world dream of entrepreneurship, but are afraid to take the first step because if their business fails, their ego will suffer too hard of a blow.

Self-discipline isn’t only about forcing yourself to do things that are unpleasant for the sake of long-term goals. It’s also about resisting the temptation to stay mediocre in order to avoid criticism. True, staying in your comfort zone is safe and there’s little criticism you’ll encounter along the way. However, there’s a high price associated with this choice: you won’t ever get to change your current situation.

Over the long term, how important is it really that some unintelligent meathead smirks at you at the gym when you’re struggling to complete a set of pushups? Is the momentary pain of that really greater than the pain of regret when you realize that another year has passed without you acting on your goals?

Bad men obey their lusts as servants obey their masters.

Diogenes Laertius

A forbidden fruit is the sweetest. If it weren’t so pleasant to submit to your urges, nobody would ever struggle with self-discipline.

However, notwithstanding how much pleasure it can bring, it’s important to see the temptation for what it is — your enemy on the path toward freedom.

Obeying your lusts enslaves you, while rejecting them increases your freedom. The reward you’ll get for not succumbing to your temptations will more than make up for the price you pay today for missing out on the instant gratification.

Self-disciplined people may appear to some as if they were the ones being enslaved. After all, they’re the ones whose lives are so limited: they don’t get to eat junk food, they follow a strict routine, deliberately expose themselves to discomfort, and reject what society considers the spice of life — gluttony, laziness, and engaging in other vices.

What the critics fail to see is that, through the rejection of those temptations, the self-disciplined become the masters of their lives. They serve the goals chosen by themselves instead of fleeting, spontaneous temptations. They choose to forego temporary satisfactions for deeper, more lasting ones later on .

In the meantime, in the long haul, the people who fail to control their urges — or rather, don’t even try to control them — fail to control their lives, manipulated by the temptations like a marionette.