You just spent 90 minutes at the gym — an hour-long Pilates class followed by half an hour on the elliptical. Your workout clothes are soaked through, and you're still basking in the glow of an endorphin high.

Driving home, you spot your favorite ice cream store up ahead. Time slows down as fantasies of a large chocolate-strawberry milkshake dance through your mind and shift your salivary glands into overdrive. You start feeling a bit lightheaded, an irrefutable symptom of dehydration and hypoglycemia brought on by the intensity of your workout. Your body is crying out for replenishment.

Yogurt or hummus would be a healthier option. But after such a grueling session, you're entitled to a little reward. In fact, you've earned it. What's more, after burning all those calories in the gym, you can afford a little indulgence. You park your car and sashay into the ice cream parlor.

But here's the problem. In a 90-minute workout, you might expect to burn between 400 and 800 calories. An ice cream store milkshake, however, can easily clock in at 1000 calories or more. For 10 minutes of pleasure, you've not only undone an hour and a half of exertion; you've moved the needle backward.

You've also fallen prey to the latest entry into the Ethical Lexicon:

Licensing (li*cens*ing/lahy-suhn-sing) verb

Rationalizing indulgent or immoral behavior as permitted by previously disciplined or virtuous behavior.

It's common practice for us to evaluate our own ethical rectitude in accounting format: we add deposits by doing what we should do and take out withdrawals by doing what we shouldn't, all the while trying to keep our balance out of the red.

But what if we saw character not as a bank account but as an investment portfolio? By withdrawing our deposits immediately after putting them in, we forfeit the opportunity to earn interest from them. We may stay in the black, but we end up with little profit to show for our efforts.

A recent study reveals the unwelcome news that employees are more dissatisfied with their jobs than ever. If so, it's worth pondering whether employers might be contributing to the problem by indulging transactional thinking:

I let my employees work from home, so I can expect them to do extra work on weekends. I let workers take time off when they need it, so I'm allowed to ask them to do jobs they aren't trained for and that don't challenge them.

It's remarkable how reasonable these justifications sound inside our own heads. But spoken out loud, they sound as vapid as they truly are.

When employees perceive a lack of consistency and fairness in job demands and work expectations, they naturally lose trust in their bosses, feel unappreciated and find little meaning in what they do. It's not surprising that efficiency and productivity plummet to the point that employee disengagement costs businesses hundreds of billions of dollars annually in the United States and trillions worldwide.

Ironically, indulging our desires erodes our sense of agency and personal autonomy by leaving us feeling like slaves to our impulses. Conversely, it is self-discipline that fills us with a spirit of control over our lives.

Moreover, when employers give themselves license for inconsistent management in the workplace, they encourage their employees to do the same:

My boss doesn't value my time or effort, so I don't need to apply myself to my job. I can't count on reasonable treatment in the office, so I shouldn't be expected to produce quality work.

Inevitably, the great resignation is not so much about employees walking out the door as it is about them becoming resigned to unfulfilling careers, expending minimal effort, and aspiring to mediocrity. A licensing mindset will spread through a culture as swiftly as false promises at a political convention.

Whether in the workplace or in our personal lives, justifying counterproductive behavior sabotages success and leaves us unfulfilled. Conversely, self-discipline promotes self-respect, leading us along the path of productivity toward genuine happiness.

A rabbi once told his students that they would never have any shortage of legitimate excuses for not doing their best work. Rather than erasing every victory by surrendering the next battle, allow each win to drive the next one on a campaign of unremitting success.

See more by Yonason Goldson and features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists; visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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