Discipline-ish

Discipline. I need it. You need it. We all need it. And we all have some degree of it. And in an illustration of irony, I’ve wanted to blog about it for a minute; buuuuut just haven’t quite had the self-regulation to get it done. The cursor flashes at me; taunting, “What do you know about discipline?” You’re right cursor. There’s plenty of room for improvement for me on this one.

Anybody can do things when they’re easy. Maybe it’s new and exciting and so it doesn’t take much get you moving towards your goal. But then,…those damn walls and changing circumstances. That’s when you really get the benefit of being tested. Stolen internet quote of the week: good sailors are not made on calm seas. It’s not until things become inordinately difficult that we learn whether or not we have the needed amount of discipline. We have to be faced with the decisions about satisfying the “what you want now” vs. “what you want the most” to know how much restraint we have.

I could be wrong, but I thoroughly believe that discipline is a transferrable skill. Once a person develops those intrinsic means of self-discipline in one area; they are able to apply those skills to new goals. In looking at people who’ve accomplished pretty cool shit; they have a tendency to complete other pretty cool shit. Like the doctors and lawyers who are also black belts. Or the people in addiction recovery who now run marathons.

I very much do want to be more disciplined. I even read a book to learn more; the one by the writing guy/navy seal guy Jocko Willink. The book was a fun read. Each chapter charged with enough oomph and motivation that it felt like caffeine to the jugular. I would read and be like “YEA!!!!! That makes perfect sense! But also, ….now I kinda need a nap.” A theme that was a new to my undercooked brain was “discipline equals freedom.” It was counterintuitive. In general, I think of discipline as restrictive. But the words that my brain could only read in a yell made sense.

My interpretation was probably too social-workie, but how I understood it was that we learn where the boundaries are. Then it’s up to us to charge full steam towards them and get them to move. Test, and then be tested again. See how much progress we can make. What we can’t tolerate today; if we work at, maybe we can do tomorrow. There’s a great picture lots of us have probably seen with the horse obediently remaining tied to a plastic chair. The horse could totally shred the chair and get away, but in it’s horse brain, that chair is a limit they can’t surpass.

All our proverbial plastic chairs are different. But we can operate in the freedom of knowing that we are in control of how we react to the limits. (She said as she headed to the gym knowing it’s questionable if she’ll squat below parallel bwah ha!)

Thanks for reading!