There is something barracks in the word «discipline». In school years, adults repeated this word so often that it seemed that the school and the barracks were something similar. As a result, since childhood, I have had an association that discipline is from the field of violence, that they are trying to impose something on me, they want to force me to do something meaningless and completely not mine. Something from the area of subordination, and with subordination I have had a problem all my life.
In everything disciplinary there was a stupid obligation, and no one explained to me the practical meaning of discipline and my personal benefit from it. And the benefit really was and is, that’s a shame.
So I had a million ways to avoid this meaningless «should.»
The simplest was my father’s multi-volume medical encyclopedia. As soon as some control was drawn or I just got tired of getting up for the «zero» lesson at 7:45, I had descriptions of endless diseases that I could memorize, mimic the symptoms and go with all this to the local doctor. The district police officer believed in everything and freed me from school.
Once I was almost operated on for appendicitis, which I did not have, and another time, for some reason, the doctor did not believe that I had lumbago disease (popularly — backache). But there were no more misfires, and I managed to somehow live undisciplined, bypassing any tension that was unpleasant for me.
Nothing worked with the daily routine, although it hung on my wall, such a multi-colored poster. Almost nothing of the planned was implemented, my day did not correspond to any plan, and in the end I got tired of filling out this table.
Discipline is when you do not shy away from the unpleasant or difficult, but go and meet difficulties.
The same fate befell all my diaries many years later. These were new attempts to become a disciplined person, but on about the fifth page the text was interrupted every time. And even though crack, I did not manage to plan, to comply with these plans, and even record progress in writing. My desk is still full of barely started diaries, some ten years old. Throwing them out is somehow stupid — they are almost empty.
Over the years, at the very least, I began to succeed with discipline. Simply because it dawned on me that this is a skill necessary for survival. But still, those people who plan and execute plans, those who show consistency, and not the spontaneity and randomness I love, those who know how to exist in a disciplined way every day, and not one indicative day, and at the same time do not declare this an unrealistic achievement, For me, they are just some kind of super-beings.
In general, it turned out that discipline is not about violence and submission, and not about the word “must”, in which for me personally there is no meaning. This is the ability to self-organize. And yet discipline is when you do not shy away from the unpleasant or difficult, as I did in childhood with a medical encyclopedia under my arm, but go and meet difficulties.
Now it seems to me naively that if they had explained to me in childhood that it would be much more profitable for me to cope with difficulties than to avoid them, I think there would be at least fewer neuroses in my life.
I have a book, almost desktop. It was written by psychotherapist Morgan Scott Peck. And it was he who opened my eyes to the real meaning of discipline. “Life consists of a chain of problems. Are we willing to lament over this or will we deal with them? Do we want to teach children how to solve problems? Discipline is the basic set of tools needed to solve life’s problems. Without discipline, we can’t solve anything. With some discipline, we can solve some problems. With full discipline, we can solve all problems.”
Here I completely agree with him. All the people I know who have achieved something worthwhile in life really organize themselves very well, that is, they are good with discipline.
Scott Peck continues: “Most of us aren’t that wise, though. Fearing the accompanying pain, almost all of us try to avoid problems. We play for time, procrastinate, hoping that somehow they will disappear. We ignore them, forget them, pretend they don’t exist. The habit of avoiding problems and the emotional suffering that goes with them is at the root of all mental illness. Some choose to take quite extraordinary measures to avoid problems and the suffering they cause. Trying to get rid of problems, they build their own extraordinarily intricate fantasy world and live in it, sometimes completely ignoring reality.
Scott Peck goes on to say that discipline comes in several forms. Let’s focus on the first — the ability to delay pleasure. That is, first the lessons, and then the TV is a discipline. But first to have fun in the club, and then write the annual report — no.
Explain to the children that self-discipline is the basis of their future success, and that it is really useful and beneficial.
“Recently, a thirty-year-old woman economist complained to me that for several months now she had noticed an aversion to work, a tendency to put off tasks for later.
— Do you like rum baba? I asked her. She nodded.
— Which part do you like more — the crumb or the glazed crust?
— Oh, of course, a crust!
— And how do you eat this cake? I kept asking, feeling like the most stupid psychiatrist in the world.
“First I eat the crust…” she replied.
From her gourmet habits we moved on to office habits, and, of course, it turned out that she distributes her working day in such a way that she does the most pleasant part of the work in the first hour, and the rest of the six hours sheds with the unpleasant part. I suggested that if she could find the strength to do the most unpleasant job in the first hour, then the other six would be pleasant.
In general, you can, if you want, find and read the book by Morgan Scott Peck «The Road Less Traveled». As for me, no forces will be able to force me to keep diaries, even in digital form. I’m not going to give you a long list of everything I can’t learn by now, from job planning, money, vacations, to… well, everything that disciplined people do easily. Use me as a negative example and immediately explain to the children that self-discipline is the basis of their future success, and that this is really useful and beneficial.
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