Q & A with Dr. B. – You said that the concepts of self-discipline and compliance were not working. What did you find to be more effective?

Dr. Larry Berkelhammer

The purpose of this website, my book, and the Community Education course I teach at the College of Marin, is to teach people how to live a vibrant, meaningful life through the cultivation of self-empowerment and self-efficacy. In this weekly Q&A column, I post questions from students and from people who attend my presentations along with my answers.

Here is this week’s question:

QUESTION: You said that the concepts of self-discipline and compliance were not working. What did you find to be more effective?

ANSWER: What I had come to realize was that behavioral medicine terms like self-discipline and compliance were not necessarily the best approach. I now view these terms as very disrespectful and even disempowering. So, over time, I began to focus on teaching various methods of self-empowerment in order to stimulate motivation from within, thinking that this would help my clients to engage wholeheartedly in daily practice. Self-empowerment turned out to be helpful, but it was not until many years later that I found an even more powerful and life-altering approach that made terms like self-discipline and compliance unnecessary. The inventor called it Mindful Biology.

This website is offered as a free public service, supplying information that has been found helpful to certain people living with chronic health challenges or issues related to wellbeing. No treatment is offered on this website. The advice is general, and may or may not apply to your individual situation, and is not a substitute for psychotherapy or medical treatment.

If you would like to ask me something, you can type your question in the comment box below. An answer to your specific question may not necessarily appear in this column. The reason for that is I wait until I get a certain number of related questions, then I pick one that covers them all and I answer that one.