If the title sounds funny, it's only partially so, and is such to keep my own feelings at bay.

I'm just in from researching more about self-discipline after reading something about how poor impulse control is the reason many people are poor. I have no impulse control or discipline myself, and I know what a toll this takes financially, in addition to constant regret.

Yet I can feel the rage building as I read article after article of techniques to strip any pleasure or enjoyment from my life, or to become a robotic workaholic for no reason other than self-respect. I can never see discipline as anything but black-and-white.

My single biggest problem is food and compulsive eating. This is the main reason I'm often broke, am overweight, and am simply a terrible person. Well, one article mentioned a quote about how self-respect comes from the ability to say no to yourself, so the answer is obvious: to gain discipline, I must starve myself. Or else adopt an extremely strict diet and set up a system of punishments to violating said diet. And then maintain it for the rest of my life.

I don't exercise either. So naturally, I should subject myself to be most painful, brutal daily workout routine I can devise, and if I get injured, well I deserved it.

I don't have much work to do and I'm always procrastinating when I do. Articles talk about routinizing your life to get more done, except I don't have anything to get done. So I need things to fill in time so I can always be working. Even if I don't want to and don't care, because that's what being disciplined is, what not being a worthless piece of trash is. It means always doing things you hate and living joylessly for...some reason.

All these articles insist that it's a matter of payoff. I generally don't see much of a payoff to a life of self-denial and discipline other than not hating myself, but clearly, I don't even want self-respect enough. The only other motivator is money, as I tend to feel guilty any time I spend on almost anything, and avoiding that feeling has actually worked as a deterrent. But only for a while. But then again, isn't self-respect a worthy payoff by itself, and if it requires pulled muscles, starvation, and forced focus on inauthentic goals, isn't that the price people like me have to pay, especially if it's true that self-respect comes from a disciplined life?

I'm going somewhere with this. I have bad habits I'd like to change, but I can't see non-extreme ways to do it. Or the non-extreme ways feel like not enough. Discipline, to me, innately implies strictness, punishment, and frequent, if not constant denial. "Being disciplined" necessitates a joyless, dutiful, self-subjugating existence compared to which my bad habits are perfectly average and harmless. Discipline is pain, discomfort, and doing things you don't like.. so it would follow that the more discomfort and unpleasant duties in your life, the more disciplined you are and the more self-respect you deserve. And for some reason all of this infuriates me to a violent extent.

I'm probably going to end up getting snacks after this, because I'm a fat, undisciplined piece of trash and that's what I usually do when I'm upset somehow, even though I'm going to hate myself for it after. Because.