Articles by Giovanni Dienstmann

At the core of both personal development and meditation, there is the concept of self-mastery. To be “the master of yourself” means that you are fully grounded and centered—you are not controlled by your thoughts, emotions and impulses. You have the ability to change your inner states. This is what I call internal self-discipline—the cultivation of the higher mind. It’s […]

Do you spend hours every week watching YouTube videos, listening to one podcast after another, or consuming hundreds of small bits of information through social media and “curiosity browsing”? Do you feel that, despite having read or listened to many books, there is still a big gap between what you know what what you do? If so, you have fallen […]

Can self-discipline affirmations help you actually be more disciplined? It depends on how you approach them. If they are the type of thing that you read, get a spike in dopamine, and then go back to your old self, then they are not very useful. But if they serve as reminders for you, if they help you rekindle your commitment […]

To truly live by your values, you first need to understand what they are, and then know how to articulate your goals and habits around them. If your goals are in alignment with your values, and your habits are in alignment with your goals, then you are living by your values. Let’s unpack what this means. We read everywhere that […]

Peace can be defined as the absence of inner disturbances. It is like the quiet depth of the ocean, like a flame that doesn’t flicker, or like the open sky without clouds. It is stillness. Desire, on the other hand, is movement. It is, in a way, a disturbance. Whenever we have a goal, desire, or aspiration, we are experiencing […]

We are all familiar with the idea that time is a more valuable resource than money, since we can use time to make more money, and no amount of money can buy back the time already spent. Yet a more valuable resource than both time and money is our attention or awareness. You may have a lot of time on […]