Saturday, February 24. 2007Discipline
I have been thinking about the topic of this article for a long time. There is too much to say but everything is quite obvious. Even though most of the things are pretty obvious, I would like to mention them here along with my personal opinions on the subject.
First of all, let me tell you why I decided to even spend my time writing about discipline. I believe that people can be easily divided into as many categories as one wishes, based on the strength of self-discipline. You can have two categories: people with strong discipline and people with weak dicipline. Or you can have ten. But what I believe to be true to any number of categories is that you can predict another person's actions based on his/her self-discipline. I assume, of course, that there is no mistake made in estimating the level of self-discipline in another person. Let me now try explaining why self-discipline is important. The simpliest definition of discipline is "acting according to some rules". When a person is being formed(usually in childhood), the rules are set by the parents at home and by teachers in school. The stricter the rules are enforced, the stricter they are followed and the stricter the discipline is. When a child is still in the process of forming as an individual, he is trying to follow the example of the people around him. And the first and most effective example for the child is his parents' actions. It is naive to assume that in a family with both parents or even one of the parents abusing smoking or alcohol, the child is going to grow up as a non-smoker or a non-drinker. It is the same for everything else. If the father of the child abuses or openly cheats on the mother, the kid(assuming he is male) will most likely grow up very similar to his father. Since self-dicipline in a person is formed along with other personal characteristics, it is very important to understand that lack of example of self-discipline in childhood can lead to lack of self-discipline in the person himself for the rest of his life. Like I just mentioned, self-discipline is formed by following the example of someone else. Usually it happens in childhood, but it might also happen in a later life, though, to a lesser degree. It is also not the only way for a person to form self-discipline. In addition to following someone's example, self-discipline is also formed by external discipline, which was imposed on a person. A good example would be a soldier, who went through military training, participated in battles etc. The longer the soldier has been imposed this external military dicipline upon, the more his personal self-discipline is affected by it. If that soldier used to wake up at 7am sharp every morning for 20 years, he will most likely be waking up at 7am sharp for the rest of his life. Similarly to the soldier, a child in a family is being imposed the family discipline upon. Parents want the child to wake up at a certain time, go to school on week-days, do homework and so on. Now what is very important is how strongly parents actually enforce the rules in the house. If the rule is to brush teeth every day before going to bed, and if the child feels like this rule is of no or little importance, he will never learn to follow it 100%. Even when he reaches adulthood, motivating himself to do it will be a much harder thing to do. Let's now imagine that in a family there are some rules and parents don't really enforce them and don't even follow the rules themselves. The child in such a family will grow to be very similar to his parents. In other words, his self-discipline will be weak. So, we have established that the definition of discipline is following some rules. Let's me think outloud about how self-discipline can be defined. So, there are rules in discipline, then in self-discipline these are rules that are set for the person by the person - the rules that the person follows in life. In other words these are the rules that the person lives by. Well, there is actually another term, which fits that same definition perfectly - personal values. Well, it seems pretty clear now, that weak self-discipline is nothing but weak personal values. What does it really mean? Well, first of all weak personal values don't tend to stay the same all the time. That's why they are called "weak". Tthe formula for a person with weak values would sound something like: "Today I live by one rule(or value) and tomorrow I might change the rule because it will be easier this way." The person with strong self-discipline(with strong personal values) will never or rarely change his/her values. Hence they are called "strong". Now let me go back to my original idea about predicting person's actions based on his/her self-discipline. It is all pretty clear now, isn't it? If a person doesn't have too much in terms of self-discipline, he is likely to go the easiest path, the path, which is mostly benefitial for him. Let's take an example from one of my previous articles. You ask your friend to pick you up from some airport. Imagine that your friend is a person with weak values. That essentially means that even if he promised you to pick you up, he might not necessarily keep his word, because he might decide that going to a bar to have fun is more beneficial, than wasting time picking you up from the airport. It all boils down to this: the person with weak values(with weak self-discipline) is not consistent. You can still predict such person's actions if you know all the details. If you knew that he would get invited to bar by someone else, you could measure the weakness of your friend's self-discipline and apply it to your decision about whether or not it is (or is not) a good idea to actually rely on him with the pickup. Another thing to think about is whether such a relationship is worth continuing, since when times are good, the person will be with you, and when times get bad for you, you will probably not find him around you. Let me now talk about a person with strong self-discipline. All in itself strong self-discipline doesn't necessarily mean a good thing. Discipline is first of all a set of rules, which are being followed. And for self-discipline to be good(not destructive), all the individual rules must be good(constructive, not destructive). There are many examples in history of people that got to levels of enormous power because of their strong self-discipline, but there were too many casualties because of those personal rules during the process of getting to the power and thereafter. Such people are still respected for their strong self-discipline, or in other words for their strong will, but hated what they actually did to others. I believe there is no need for me to define people with strong self-discipline and with constructive values. If you have at least a single person with such characteristics as your friend - consider yourself very lucky. This person is your true friend, you will never be betrayed, you can always rely on such a person and so on. You can always predict the actions of such a person - if one of his rules is to"always keep his word", get him to promise something and rest asured, it will get done. In the example, which I mentioned above, if you ask such a friend to pick you up at the airport, sky can fall, nuclear war can happen - but till he is still breathing, you will get picked up, guaranteed. It is very unfortunate but there are very few people with very strong self-discipline around. We are taught to be opportunistic since we are little kids, most of us are taught to select easy ways even if it means altering the rules by which we live. That is why if you want to develop strong self-discipline, you can only do it by changing yourself incrementally. Not a single person will be able to help you when you reach adulthood, only your own personal will can do it. So we kind of have a "catch-22" situation. Only your will can make your self-discipline stronger, but self-discipline is your will. Making it stronger is still possible, but it usually is very hard and super slow. That is why gaining strong self-discipline is very important during childhood. Makes you think about how you will be bringing your kids up, huh? :) |
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