Self-inquiry is the practice of asking the right questions—and being honest with the answers. “What am I feeling right now?” “What am I avoiding?” “What story am I telling myself?” These questions pull your awareness to the surface. Over time, it becomes a habit: catching

You can practice self-mastery deliberately: do hard things on purpose. Challenge yourself, push your limits—just a little—again and again. Example: Don’t start with a marathon. Start by running regularly. Then extend the distance, the frequency, the speed. Each rep builds not

Challenge yourself in one area, and your self-mastery skill will spill over. What once felt impossible in other parts of life starts to feel easier—or at least less hard.

All achievement has one thing in common: it requires action. You can have all the right ideas in the world, but if you don’t act, nothing changes. It seems obvious, almost too simple to mention. Of course action is what creates change, but then why don’t we act?

So how do you improve your self-mastery skill? Self-mastery grows every time you act in the face of internal resistance. The truth is, the only way to become someone who can do hard things is to start doing hard things, even if you fail.

My self-mastery journey started 13 years ago when I set on a park bench and thought: “Why do I keep doing this?” as I lit another cigarette. “I want to quit. I know what not to do. So why can’t I stop?” How could I study behavior and still fail so miserably at changing my own?

Discipline doesn’t exist. It’s a word people use when they don’t understand why deliberate action shows up sometimes and vanishes when things get hard. Ask a better question: How can I work with my self-sabotage? Do that often enough, and people will call you disciplined.

Be honest with yourself. When you sabotage yourself, do you act automatically or can you look back and observe the resistance without becoming it? Can you say “I’m experiencing anger” instead of lashing out? Act from the observing place, not the emotion.

Self-sabotage is a universal human experience. Across cultures and throughout history, people have struggled with it. It’s part of what makes us human. So don’t waste energy blaming yourself, instead, decide to learn how to overcome it.

Everyone agrees that intelligence gave humans their evolutionary edge, but that’s not the whole story. What truly sets us apart is the ability to consciously override primal urges, to act despite fear. That capacity, is what makes us dominate the rest of the animal kingdom,

Self-mastery is system-level cooperation between consciousness and biology. Trying to work with impulses? It’s not just willpower, but also maintaining health, managing cues in your environment, and breaking and building habits. You need all of them. They support each other.

Being able to take action despite internal resistance is a learnable skill and key to any achievement. I call it Self-Mastery.

Telling people to “push through,” “toughen up,” or “just have more willpower” doesn’t work. Sure — it works for maybe 5%. Calling the other 95% “weak” is just arrogance. If 95% can’t use your advice, the problem isn’t them. It’s the advice.

You know what to do? So why aren't you doing it? Read here my latest ramblings on the fascinating topic of self-sabotage. More posts are coming! open.substack.com/pub/rubenbijma…

I know exactly what to do. So why am I not doing it? My latest substack article on self-sabotage can be found below. An exploration of the gap between knowing and doing. I am experimenting with dialectical writing where I show my thought process. open.substack.com/pub/rubenbijma…

I can want something, know how to get it… and still not act. That shouldn’t be possible. So what’s actually happening? Let's think it through together: open.substack.com/pub/rubenbijma…

Self-mastery is trained by refusing to obey yourself until the part of you worth obeying becomes dominant. Put yourself in situations where desire conflicts with reason, act according to reason anyway and repeat until your character changes. This is the key skill to train first

The Greeks had a word for acting against yourself: akrasia. Knowing what’s right and not doing it. What’s interesting is how they thought you actually fix it. Put my thoughts down here if you’re curious. open.substack.com/pub/rubenbijma…

Have you ever tried exercising willpower while having a hangover? It doesn’t work. And yet you want to force yourself to take action while treating your body like shit. It doesn’t have energy for your to do list

“Just be more disciplined” is one of those pieces of advice that sounds right but explains nothing. I have been struggling with this and wrote down my thoughts: open.substack.com/pub/rubenbijma…