Self-Discipline Is a Word About Situations, Not About Character

Self-discipline just means this: driving yourself to do something constructive, over a long stretch of time, on a regular basis.

Take that definition, and a lot of people who call themselves undisciplined turn out to be disciplined after all.

1. There are far more situations that fit “self-driven, long-term, regular, constructive” than people count

Not only reading and the gym. Managing your money counts. Spending every weekend with your parents counts. Talking with your kid every day no matter how tired you are counts. Holding your own work to a high standard year after year counts. All of it fits the definition.

When someone in a session tells me they aren’t disciplined, I ask them this: what else in your life do you drive yourself to do, over a long stretch (it doesn’t have to be every day), on a regular basis, that builds something?

The people who have just called themselves undisciplined think for a moment, and almost all of them can name several.

Some say eating clean and keeping a lean build is discipline — and that same person may have wanted to study something properly for years and never managed it.

Buffett has read hundreds of pages of annual reports every day for decades. Certainly disciplined. He also jokes publicly about his Coke and his junk food. Is he disciplined? It depends which situation you’re asking about.

Nobody is disciplined in every situation. Each of us is disciplined in some of them. Being disciplined on the court doesn’t mean you stay disciplined on social media and keep your mouth shut there. That’s what makes it a matter of situation.

2. Even in the situations where you are disciplined, a shift in your state can interrupt it

Even when you’ve settled into a good way of living, a sudden bout of internal friction breaks the balance. What usually shows up: no strength for the gym, eating your feelings, putting off sleep for reasons that are purely in your head.

Even professionals can’t avoid it. Those moments come for everyone.

3. Self-discipline got promoted from a word about situations into a word about character — it makes a few people proud and many more people miserable

Once you take it as given that you are not a disciplined person, even the places where you do drive yourself, where you have kept at it for years, start to go into conflict. Things you were perfectly able to do, you can no longer do.

That’s the pain of turning it into a word about character: it was a judgment about a situation, and it became a judgment about a person.

Someone will ask: why do some people look disciplined everywhere? Only when you get close to someone’s life do you find out which things he has been meaning to do and still hasn’t.

Don’t let the word hold you hostage. Even the person everyone writes off as a three-minute enthusiast has some situations that fit the underlying definition.

Full framework: https://ericlogic.com/go/F015-seo