On self discipline, again.

I’ve been thinking about self discipline again, and I’m realising I’ll likely never stop thinking about it to some degree. So this may not be the last time I write about it.

Photo by Mark Duffel on Unsplash

I was speaking with a friend recently, essentially complaining about the vast number of things I have going on at the same time. Self inflicted of course. And how it’s important to reduce the number of plates you have spinning in order to achieve anything meaningful.

It reminded me of a definition of self discipline I’d read somewhere: The ability to say no to things you really want to do. Choosing not to do things you don’t care for is not difficult.

But then this got me thinking about patterns I’ve seen more generally in myself, as well as in wider society.

It feels like we live in a time where two things are true: people are ambitious, have goals and great things they wish to achieve. But those same people are also comfortable, relatively speaking. The consequences of not working towards things that are important to you are not very pronounced.

If you don’t do what you were planning to do, it doesn’t feel like you’ve lost anything. The world hasn’t ended, you have everything you had before, meh, you’ll try again tomorrow.

A trite example would be fitness. You’re certain about your health goals. 100% know what you want to achieve. But you miss your gym sessions once, then twice, then more. It’s now been 6 months since you worked out. But of course, you’re still on track right?

Taking breaks is important, so when I speak about ‘self discipline’, I don’t mean working yourself to death. But I think it’s quite common for people to have fallen off their path completely, and not realise it. But somehow still be completely certain they’ll achieve their goals. I think the kids call it being delulu.

What’s more, it’s possible to continue to behave like this indefinitely. Which takes me back to the two ‘truths’: people are ambitious yet comfortable.

This results in the ability to change paths whenever things get difficult. There’s no reason to persevere when you can just start over. Just do something else.

I’ve seen this play out with people changing careers. Someone will decide to become a software engineer and join a bootcamp. They’ll spend 3 months on it, get through some hard parts and finish it. Congrats! They begin to apply to jobs, find it difficult, the first interview does not go well. They wonder if coding is really for them. They’ve been in the field a few months, but have already started applying for a UX/UI bootcamps. Maybe that will be more of their thing. Rinse and repeat.

It’s very possible for someone to spend five years doing this. Maybe ten. Maybe more. Trying something new, hitting a wall of difficulty, and moving onto something else.

Instead of working on ourselves, and our ability to sit still and face difficulty, we default to changing the thing that makes us uncomfortable. So we end up with a string of things we’ve started, and never finished.

There is value in pursuing various interests, and I firmly believe in people aiming to be proficient in multiple things. Polymaths, philomaths, and autodidacts for the win. But doing something new should be an intrinsic and active decision. Not one fuelled by fear, impostor syndrome, self-doubt, and a lack of grit.

The icing on the cake is, we never grow. We convince ourselves that we have learned, we have done things, we have put in hours. But because we have never persevered, we have stayed the same.

Self discipline is to decide what is important to you, and to stay the course regardless of the difficulties that come your way. It’s a muscle to be trained, and a pursuit that requires time, effort, and self-grace.

And because it’s a muscle, it is not isolated to one part of your life. I think if you are someone who lacks self discipline in one part of your life, you likely lack self discipline in multiple parts of your life.

Take stock of where you are, and where your time is going. Reduce the number of things requiring your attention. Seek assistance from Al-Baasit. Focus, and work through the difficulty.