Self-Discipline pt. 1
Why is it so hard to have self discipline?
“Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”
1 Corinthians 9:24-27
Discipline is a key factor in every person’s life. Our ability to get things done is equal to the amount of discipline we have. When we are children, that discipline comes from adults, most of the time our parents. Then we grow up and suddenly no one is watching over our shoulder making sure that we do what we are supposed to do. The world opens up for us and we are free to spend our time only doing the things that we want to do. However, as most people know, doing exactly what we want to do all the time doesn’t usually end well. That is where self-discipline comes in. But it is easy to talk about self-discipline, it is much more difficult to apply it.
Before I really get started, I want to be clear about what I mean by self-discipline. Many people use ‘self-discipline’ interchangeably with ‘self-control’ or ‘willpower’. I think there is a difference, and I want to clarify what I mean by each of these terms because, while I will likely mention the others, I am only going to talk about self-discipline in this blog post. I may post about the other later on, but discussing them here would make this longer than I want it to be.
To me, ‘self-discipline’ is best defined as choosing to do things that you know will make your life better. In other words, self-discipline is doing what you ought, not what you want. Everyone knows that there are things they ought to do that they are not doing. Just as there are things they ought not do, that they are doing. Which is where self-control comes in. Self-control is the ability to choose not to do something because you know you shouldn’t. And lastly, willpower is more like motivation or energy that can be applied to either self-control or self-discipline. The trick it to be able to have self-discipline even if you don’t have any willpower. Which I will talk about in part 3. But for now, lets focus on why it is so difficult to have self-discipline.
1. There are no immediate consequences for a lack of self-discipline.
For most people self-discipline is difficult because its lack doesn’t, at first glance, appear to have any consequences. Or if it does, it seems to only affect the person and not those around them. Our own lack of self-discipline can easily be ignored or completely unnoticed because we can’t rely on other people to make us aware of it. Most of the time if we mess up someone else is negatively affected and that person makes it very clear to us that we have made a mistake. For example, if someone does a poor job stacking cans at the grocer where they work and the cans fall over and spill on the floor, the manager is going to make it very clear to them that they made a mistake because their mistake cost the manager time and cost the store money. However, a lack of self-discipline is a more complicated problem than an inability to stack cans properly. It rarely has any immediate consequences for those around us and even when it does, we tend to focus on the symptoms and not the source of the problem. I’ll give another example.
Let us say our poor grocery store employee (we will call him Fred) shows up late for work one morning. The reason Fred is late for work is because he slept through his alarm. The reason he slept through his alarm is because he was up all night on his cell phone. The reason he was up all night on his cell phone is because he doesn’t have enough self-discipline to put it down and go to sleep on time. Now, when Fred arrives at work his boss is going to ask him why he was late and Fred is going respond, in complete honesty (assuming Fred is not a liar), something along the lines of “my alarm didn’t go off” or “my alarm wasn’t loud enough to wake me”. Both of these statements are technically true, but Fred had missed the real problem. Even if Fred is a proactive person (which is unlikely) and goes out the next day to purchase a louder alarm clock. He will still be treating the symptoms (not waking up on time) and not the problem itself (a lack of self-discipline). Fred is blind to the source of the problem, and no one is pointing it out to him because they are only affected by the symptoms.
But what if they did tell him? What if Fred’s co-workers and manager got together and told him point blank. “Fred, you have a serious lack of self-discipline and it is negatively affecting everyone around you including you.” What would Fred’s response be? Hopefully, Fred would thank everyone for bringing it to his attention and begin making an effort to change. But I think that is unlikely. What I think would happen, (and I think most people like me who have been like Fred in the past will agree) is that Fred would sit quietly and listen to his co-workers, nodding every now and then to be polite, and then leave thinking “What do they know, As long as I show up to work on time they should just leave me alone. It only happened the one time anyway. I’m fine just the way I am.” And that brings us to reason number 2.
2. It’s tough to admit you have a problem
It is understandable that Fred would have these thoughts. It is a lot easier to admit that you are bad at stacking cans than it is to admit you lack self-discipline. It is much easier to assume that everyone else had judged you incorrectly than admit you have a problem. It’s scary to realize that you are incapable of controlling your own actions. Even if it’s just on a small level. You may have perfect discipline in every other aspect of your life, but when it comes to washing your dishes, you are simply unable to make yourself do it. That may seem silly, but it is genuinely scary to realize that there are things in your life that you can’t control. It is much easier to come up with excuses and push the responsibility onto other things rather than take it on yourself. Just like Fred felt after the intervention from his co-workers: “I’m fine, they just don’t understand”. And in a way Fred’s attitude of “I’m fine just the way I am” is true, but it depends on his definition of “Fine”.
We are all free to live our lives however we want. You could spend your life doing only the things you wanted to do, with the possible exception of going work. Where you could make sure that you only put in the minimum effort required to avoid being fired. In one sense this would be “fine”. You would be surviving and only subjecting yourself to discomfort when it was completely unavoidable. Therefore, having no need for any self-discipline. Some people might think that this is a perfectly reasonable way to live your life. I believe this way of thinking is wrong, but I will talk about that in part 2. For now, let’s just stick with why it is difficult to have self-discipline
3. Choosing to do difficult things means that you are willingly sacrificing your potential.
When we are children, we have the potential to be anyone we want, and to do anything we want. As we grow up, we have to sacrifice that potential in exchange for our lives. What I mean is that I no longer have ability to be the worlds youngest author. That title goes go Dorothy Straight who published her debut novel at 6 years old. Maybe if I had gotten my act together when I was 5 and stopped spending so much time playing with toys and more time focusing on my career as a writer, I could have taken that title, but I didn’t. I sacrificed my potential to be the worlds youngest author in exchange for afternoons spent riding my bike and playing in mud puddles. Whether or not that was a good trade I will leave up to you, but that was the decision I made, and I will have to live with the consequences.
Every day you have the potential to do something new with your life, but you can’t do everything. Each decision you make takes up time, and no matter how hard you try you can never get back even a single second of your life. You have to choose: what will you spend your seconds on? That’s where self-discipline comes in. Every time you choose to do something difficult, it means you have set a goal of some sort, and you are working toward that goal. IN exchange for working toward that goal, you are sacrificing some of your time that potentially could have been put toward literally anything else. Sacrifice is not easy; it is tough to make yourself let go of your potential in exchange for a goal. But we need goals, we need to make sacrifices in order to live meaningful lives (as I will talk about in part 2) and we need self-discipline in order to move toward those goals.
It is much easier to never set a goal, and some people don’t. Everyone has the option of simply waiting for something to happen to them while they do whatever they can to avoid doing difficult things. Again, I think this choice is wrong, but it is an option, and on the surface, it can seem much more appealing than building self-discipline.
