We’ve all had those days. “I don’t feel like it.” “I’m too tired.” “I’m underfed.” “I worked out yesterday so I can miss a day.”

All of these are totally normal attempts to rationalize not doing something difficult, even though it’s something you supposedly want to do: exercise, be healthy, get bigger, get sexier.

Where do these rationalizations come from? I’ll tell you where: Feelings. No matter what your mind says you actually want, your feelings tell a different story. And feelings often win.

Don’t beat yourself up for it! Despite how much they complicate our lives, feelings allow people to do some of the greatest things on earth. Where would creativity be without human emotion? It’s hard to contemplate.

How would we know one thing is great and wonderful and another is bad and unacceptable? We would just…be indifferent.

Where would our families and friends and children fit into our lives if we were devoid of feelings? They wouldn’t.

So it’s misguided to associate having feelings with weakness. The question is, what thing, or lack thereof, causes weakness? What causes “those days” that I describe above?

It’s not the presence of feelings. It’s the lack of discipline. Discipline doesn’t take your feelings away. Instead, it organizes them into two categories: a) helpful to my goals, and b) unhelpful to my goals. And the feelings that fit into the first category get priority.

That’s all. Sounds easy doesn’t it? But like any other skill, discipline takes time to cultivate. In our culture, we are encouraged to “indulge” ourselves: during holidays, major sporting events, on birthdays, on weekends, after a long day of overworked and underpaid employment, or “just because.”

Discipline comes, in part, from deciding that your own life is going to be shaped based on how you choose to spend your time, not how others spend theirs.

The difficulty is in resisting the influence of others, whose priorities have affected us our entire lives from birth onwards. Some of these priorities are good and healthy and positive, and some of them are not so good. We absorb as much of the good stuff as the bad, and sometimes there is more bad than good.

So you can’t expect to have “discipline in all things” overnight. You weren’t made the way you are now in one day, and you can’t expect to “unmake” that person in one day either.

Cultivating discipline comes from approaching one area of your life at a time and making a change, and forcing that change to be maintained until it becomes a habit. And then you move on to something else.

However, what is a recipe for failure? Lack of knowledge. Trying to reinvent the wheel usually ends in a person not getting anywhere. Seek out people who have made the changes you seek to make. Learn from them how they did it, and employ those strategies in a way that fits your own life.

What you do might seem weird to some people. “You actually don’t do such-and-such? But it’s so much easier to do such-and-such, I just don’t understand!” Many people don’t understand why anyone would engage in an endeavor that is difficult, grandiose or selfless, or that deprives them of certain momentary pleasures in favor of long-term goals.

It’s not their fault. It’s how our society is organized: mind your own business and take the path of least resistance. Instant gratification is the solution to all of life’s ills.

But that doesn’t mean that you have to live that way too. Look at some of these people, people who haven’t taken many chances in their lives, or who just “went with the flow.” How happy are they? How fulfilled? How satisfied with themselves?

I’m sure some of them are just fine, but others, the ones with lots of feelings, like you….they might criticize your attempts to self-improve just to make themselves feel better.

Instead of doing what came easily and what “felt right,” which is really just what everyone else was doing, they wish they’d listened to their conscience, which told them early on that their lives were meant to be different and fulfilled.

Your journey may involve some trial and error, but just as the desire to stay in bed starts with a feeling, so does the desire to do great things.

As long you’re constantly working to improve, choosing the feelings like conscience and ambition that help you grow, and building the discipline necessary for a life filled with met goals and fulfilled objectives, you’ll always come out ahead, and still possess the feelings required to enjoy it.