Well, it’s going to be a new year soon. So what? What’s changed from last year? What’s remained the same? Perhaps the idea of making New Year’s resolutions has become overly overplayed. But perhaps so has the mocking backlash against such a beginning point for change. What’s important is understanding the process of change no matter what date the calendar shows. And so enters our lead character: Discipline.
I’m jumping the gun a bit by introducing the lead character first. The supporting cast members Motivation and Goals appear on screen first. Oh, and there will be a surprise guest appearance later on.
I spend a great deal of time thinking about behavior change and how it relates to other concepts of daily life and the overall guidance of life. But change, as an effortful process, sucks. In this and a couple of following posts, I’m going to discuss Discipline, Motivation, Goals, and more, attempting to understand some of the intellectual aspects of change, which somehow magically morph to the actual physical aspect.
You can have all this intellectual insight you want, but any change in behavior comes down to a simple binary choice of doing or not doing; that’s it!
But that’s too short of a post, so here goes…
Discipline = Freedom (this may have a copyright). Much has recently been said of discipline, perhaps with all due credit to Jocko Willink. And a lot of it is very good. I’m not sure I’m going to add much originality here, perhaps just some more in-depth intellectualizing and specifying of concepts so we can piece together the various aspects of behavior change.
Discipline underlies all that eventually leads to success, goal attainment, and, yes, eventual satisfaction. Unless you happen to be one of the very lucky few that just “hit upon” something, you will need to work (apply effort) to achieve (a result). Yes, the struggle is real, or at least it should be!
Discipline, then, is the organized or structured process in which effort manifests. It is the doing.
Discipline is related to Motivation and Goals, but is a separate component. The concept of discipline is also related to other supporting concepts such as determination. To provide an example: discipline is the motion of waking every morning at 4:45 AM and going to the gym. It is the actual action, repetitive in nature. Determination is the intensity that transfers across the whole process of forward momentum; that added element causing your workouts to be the grueling, soul-stealing sessions necessary—the mindset, if you will. There is also the concept of perseverance, that which continues the behavior in the face of obstacles. The point is that there are several individual components needing to be understood when considering what gets you from point A to point B and eventually Z. And discipline may be the most inflexible.
In a sense, discipline is the consistency, which can hardly be understated in its importance for anything requiring change. I view it as the base of a continuum leading to goals. It’s the discipline, the behavior, that accomplishes. The actual behavior is what leads to an actual outcome—this is where the idea of a simple binary situation of doing/not-doing arises.
The other components direct and influence, but they do not do work. Discipline is all the shit that needs to be done to get to the top of the mountain. Often boring and unglamorous, often not enjoyable in the moment — it’s required, so it doesn’t matter.
Of course, having all components aligned is extremely helpful. But even without the others, discipline can remain. And without discipline, the others are pointless.
Due to the inherent consistency of discipline, it is therefore necessarily organized and structured. The opposite would be randomness or inconsistency. This is a subtlety in why discipline works with regard to both motivation types (moving toward and moving away). Discipline in “moving toward” motivation is the continued actions. Discipline in “moving away from” motivation is the structure that does not deviate to undesired behaviors.
I may be playing with some semantics with all the terms used above: discipline, determination, perseverance. But if we gloss over what we mean by these words and make assumptions to ourselves that we understand how they work independently and interact together, we run the risk of self-defeat. It’s almost an ironic failure in the sense that without the discipline (focused, receptive use) of definitions and their examination, there exists room for randomness (or at least wavering) in understanding.
So how do we apply discipline? Under the direction of motivation and goals.
Goals are mental; they are intangible and can be very simple and specific or very complex and lofty. Either way, they exist in the mind. So we need a method by which to accomplish or realize these goals: discipline.
So we have a linear path: Goal (what you want) → supported by Motivation (why you want it) → by way of Discipline (the action).
Now, just performing the discipline is not sufficient. There’s been more than enough written on goals, so I’ll not belabor it here. But Motivation can use a few words. Unlike discipline, motivation is relatively easy to come by. When face-to-face together, I can light my face up, tighten my voice, quicken my speech pattern and easily generate motivation in someone. This would be an external, emotional-type motivation. There also exists an internal, intellectual type, exemplified by the change that occurs after reading yet another study detailing causes of lung cancer as you reach into that fancy humidor.
Because we can bullshit ourselves (intellectually weighing pros/cons, probability, etc.) so easily, and be manipulated so well by our ego (emotionally flip-flopping from infatuation to hating one moment to the next) motivation ebbs and flows. It’s pretty fragile and often not substantial. I’ve found it’s the easiest aspect to come by as there is no commitment involved and therefore the easiest to leave us.
A very practical consideration of change can be understood in the sense of knowing intellectually and knowing experientially. The former is knowing what to do, or knowing why change is wanted or warranted. But, as is often the case, the more difficult knowing is the latter type. Knowing how requires an application of the what. By examining the process and the nuanced differences in concepts, we can begin to understand the how, specifically in the sense of everything working together to bring about change.
I have to end with one of my favorite quotes (well before a spotlight fell on Jocko):
“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.” — Frank Herbert