When some people hear self-discipline, they think that it's boring. They equate a disciplined life to feelings of entrapment. Allow me to tell you a story.
On a hot sunny day, Bertha is buzzing by her hive with some other bees, just relaxing and having a good time. Suddenly a bear starts to approach her hive for some honey and bee eggs. To save her hive, Bertha stings the bear. But its skin is so thick that once she tries to pull her sting out she dismembers(肢解) herself and dies.
The sad part is that Bertha has no choice. Through years of evolution she has developed a biological reaction to dangers—to sting threats. If she had known she would die, she might have flown away and saved her own life.
Bees are prisoners of their own biology, but humans can override their biology. Through self-discipline，most people have long-term desires for lasting relationships, meaningful careers or healthy bodies but are constantly tempted by short term pleasures, such as junk food or video games. Deep down they really want the life that comes in the long term. Yet they keep giving in to short-term pleasures.
The only difference is self-discipline. Luckily, humans have the ability to practice self-discipline. It gives us the freedom to achieve what we truly want in life and allow us to break free of the biological or societal cages around us. But it's not that simple.
Companies are aware of our natural, biological reactions and use this against us by using supernormal stimuli. An example is junk food. Our ancestors were wired to seek out and enjoy fat and salty food because it was so rare at the time. But now companies have genetically engineered food to include more fats and salts than ever before in order to make us desire it even more.
Social media and the Internet as a whole is another form of supernormal stimuli. Humans are biologically wired to seek out novelty. For our ancestors novelty could lead to more knowledge about the world, which could lead to more wisdom that helped us thrive as a species. It has its usefulness. However, the Internet has been designed to take advantage of this desire for novelty by showing you more novelty than you can ever dream of. Every page links out more pages. And every video to a video with even more novelty. Video games do the same thing.
On the plus side, however, you and I are not like the bee, because we are not caused by our own biology. With self-discipline, we can live the life we truly want. We have the choice to be free.
