Jan 5, 2022
Today let’s talk about Self Discipline as an expression of self -care and self-respect and not self-punishment
Question: what do you feel when you hear self-discipline? Do you feel free, knowing you can rely on yourself, Or do you feel dread because it’s hard for you?
I am asking because if we oppose SD with SL - and I see some people do this- we miss out on the benefits of self discipline, freedom, ease, self esteem, growth, good habits, better focus.
In this podcast I will also talk about
What is self love? S-PARC
-patience
-acceptance
-respect
-care
When you approach yourself with these in mind you will create a loving relationship with yourself.
I see people talk negatively about self-discipline but does it even make sense to counter-pose it with self-love? Something about it never clicked for me.
Those two things are not even up for comparison,
SD is the action we take to make a wish a reality.
SL is how we show up to it.
There is always someone trying to break your self-discipline, usually the people can’t commit to themselves so they don’t like when you commit.
And they may want to convince you to overindulge in a substance or activity that would break your self-discipline. They think it is self-love. But you know self-discipline is self love.
If you can’t tell OI from SL, think of the long-term consequences.
If I do this activity every day for months, will it create something positive or something I don’t want?
Just because there is a hot dog in front of you and you want to lose a few pounds, it doesn’t mean to love yourself is to NOT eat the hotdog.
It could be a time when it feels right. At this moment you may decide this is the best thing you can eat now.
But we all know what happens when we eat too many hot dogs… There comes the point when the next hot dog will be self-abuse, not self -care.
I also saw that depending on how we understand self love and self discipline we can use them both to harm ourselves or to help ourselves.
After I clarified what self-discipline means to me, what self-love means to me, I saw that they can be one and the same thing.
What do you believe about self-discipline? And are the beliefs helping you or hurting you?
Do you bully yourself into sticking to self discipline?
Does it affect you negatively if you don't do it perfectly?
How would you feel if you knew you could create great results and self-discipline did not have to be perfect.
The most important in my book is Mental discipline
In fact if there was one most important gift I could give to every human is the awareness and ability to manage their mind. Whatever action is self discipline, first there is mental discipline. Because our life is the evidence of our thinking.
Quality for thinking.
It doesn’t mean thinking perfectly to have only useful thoughts in the mind. It means being aware of the useless thoughts coming up, and knowing what to do about them.
Lack of mental SD can look like this:
We let ourselves to be caught in a cycle of useless thoughts that keep us confused. You know your thoughts are useless if they prevent you from making decisions, and taking action. We need to recognize what’s happening, why, and clean up the thinking.
1.Think on purpose.
Once we understand that all the results in life will in the end come from our thoughts, we realize that one thought can change the trajectory of our path and the many paths we have in all the areas of life.
One thought can separate us from taking one more step to succeed
One thought can separate us from forgiveness
One thought on a repeat can make us feel miserable and overeat
2.Mental discipline is another way to predict the future.
Not literally. Think about something that is ahead of you. You may be afraid things will not go the way you want. And you are being reactive to what you don’t want before… You create the images in your mind reacting to them. Mental discipline means you create them in the way you want. And most importantly, you decide ahead of time what you will be thinking and how you will want to feel ahead of time in those situations. We may not be affecting directly what others will do, but we can decide ahead of time who we will be in the situation.
3.Another example of Mental discipline, is the ability to stop the downward spiral of negative thinking. When you think something is wrong with you, how you failed in the past your brain starts looking for more evidence. Our brain is great about finding the evidence of what we believe. The brain wants to scare us, it wants to keep us alert to potential danger.
And here we go on a downward spiral, and before you know it you are convinced nobody likes you, and you will die alone, in hell. How much time you spent on it. But when you manage your mind this doesn't happen as often or as deeply. You are able to catch it faster. Ok Brain I know what you are doing, let’s find the evidence of something that is to the contrary of this negative thought.
You are able to catch the Ts and laugh at your own mind trying to scare you. And then skillfully lead the thoughts to a constructive path.
4.Next - mental discipline is asking ourselves useful empowering questions.
Look at these thoughts:
What if I try this and I fail?
How am I ever going to do this?
What if I ask for it and they will laugh at me?
The undisciplined Mind doesn’t see the ? at the end of the sentence.
And when we start answering the questions we will notice some questions are useless. There is no way to win with them. We need to ask better questions to actually get out of the loop of confusion and inaction.
TOUGH LOVE
Self Discipline equals freedom. A field manual. - book by Jocko Willinck
Mental discipline can look like tough love. Simple.
You ask how do you start exercising - you start exercising
How do I stop procrastinating? You stop procrastinating, here and now.
No wasting time arguing, you said you will do it, and you do it, you don't give yourself time to argue with it. For me It works perfectly well with physical discipline,
Like Daily QiGong. When I almost skipped I got out of bed to do it.
But tough love will not work in creative work.
Sometimes we need another type of approach, more friendly and curious.
Suppose you have trauma and blocks from being overworked. Burnout from doing and giving too much. From fighting for survival. From being a workaholic. Being a perfectionist. Tough love won't be the best choice. The gentle way works better.
Sometimes you first need to recover.
Your mind will still need self-discipline, but this time with a bigger dose of self acceptance and self care. Accept: “this is the state of my body and my nervous system. Not best and that’s ok”. And care - “this time I need to take care of myself first.” You become serious about your wellbeing and wellness. It’s not easy for everyone,
In fact it can be really uncomfortable to put yourself first.
The new area of growth is not to work more and do more. It is to stop the action, stop the work at 6 pm and not 10 pm. It’s uncomfortable at first, like not taking another client or another assignment. Now the self discipline is about scheduling quiet time to tune in, exercise, to listen to your body and soul.
For me the tough love is not working here:
Consistency in creating something that requires thinking, to put out there, is an area of growth. That means I suck at consistency (podcast)
Ask me for anything else that doesn't require thinking and I will do it twice in the given time, but as soon as I need to think and create consistently, I turn into a mule - an animal famous for its stubbornness. If you do anything creative, you know: self-discipline in creating is harder than in consuming information.
It’s harder to write a book than read a book.
In this case mental discipline means uncovering the thoughts and beliefs and feelings that make it hard. Self inquiry done in an intentional useful way.
I don't like comparing but it’s good to put things in perspective.
Think about the people who need to be self disciplined under extreme conditions. Courage, readiness, superhuman abilities, and we - in the warmth of our homes in cozy blankets complain it’s hard to stop drinking wine or eat cookies or to get up and move. It sounds pretty ridiculous.
When you are functioning pretty well a little bit of tough love can dramatically speed up your results.
Is it really hard to do something for my own good and own goal?
This rather sounds like a luxury and privilege. Haha!
What an amazing benefit of freedom: to work deliberately on something that is basically FOR ME.
And I know that our minds will make it hard. When you are going through sugar and flour withdrawal, your mind will tell you it is a nightmare, and it still can be an expression of your care and love for yourself. Expression of freedom: that you can do it.
Discipline equals freedom. You have it on schedule.
No decision fatigue trying to decide what to do now.
Discipline equals freedom, because once you do a certain thing for 21-66 days, the action is delegated to the subconscious mind. From that point it’s on an autopilot. with some things we want that. That action becomes easier. And the conscious mind, the part that is doing the hard thinking, is freed up to do something else.
What would you like to delegate to the subconscious?
In other words, who would you like to become?
Do you want to become the person who goes on a beautiful walk and then creates first things in the morning? Or someone who checks what others write?
Do you want to become the person who creates a caring ritual for herself in the evening instead of scrolling the phone?
Self discipline is keeping yourself in the highest regard - Brooke Castillo
How? Get coached. Coach yourself. And if you want help from me … positivelyrebellious.com