Discipline comes through self control. This means you must control all negative qualities; before you can control conditions, put organisations in shape or change situations for good, you must first be able to control yourself. Self mastery is the hardest job you will ever tackle. Perhaps that is what Aristotle meant when he said, “Know thy self”. If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self. Spending money aimlessly, philandering, happy hour projects that have no limits. You may look in the mirror one day and find your best friend as well as your worst enemy: Yourself!
George Leonard in his book Mastery says mastering an art or function “is the mysterious process during which what is at first difficult becomes progressively easier and more pleasurable through practice.” So, to master a profession, a process or an activity, you need practice. In some cases, a lot of practise. Ironically, the same process is relevant for the self discipline which is the mastery of self. Habits, especially bad ones, cause a lack of discipline.
Discipline enables us capture emotion and wisdom and translate them into action. Once we see our desired future, it takes discipline to get there. The gap between thought and accomplishment is discipline, between inspiration and achievement, between necessity and productivity. All good things are located upstream from us and the passage of time often takes us adrift from our goals and targets. Drifting from our targets brings us disappointment and failure. But failure is not the ultimate tragic event. Usually failure comes from a long list of seemingly insignificant accumulated activity we neglected to engage in.
You may look in the mirror one day and find your best friend as well as your worst enemy: Yourself!
‘You are supposed to make calls to 10 clients and you only made to three. Your goal specifies that you must save 10 per cent of your salary over a two year period; you miss five instalments and console yourself that “it is okay.” One day of neglect could lead to life time of repair. Miss one day of planned and required discipline and then you have begun to go adrift and miss your targets. Those small details are what culminate in the cataclysmic crash which you recognise as failure. Success can probably be described as the same process in reverse. Make more calls to clients than you are supposed to, save more money than you originally planned over the same period. It is likely to lead to success. Discipline requires willingness. You must strive to master the circumstances of your daily life. Take all circumstances good or bad in your stride and see what you can make of them.
Did you know discipline cooperates with nature? How tall can the tree in your garden grow? As tall as is possible, the tree will bear all the leaves, branches and fruit it can and even help sprout more trees. Discipline enables you and I do our utmost to reach the highest level of our lives. Motivation can only pump us up for a minute, inspiration lasts a little longer, but discipline for those who are committed to it, can be a life long attribute which will never leave us. If we have it, we do not need to be pumped up every now and then to do our jobs or strive harder. It will come naturally. Discipline attracts opportunity.
People love to see a highly committed focused individual that will not waiver. Discipline puts a lid on a bad temper and opens a tap to humility and perseverance. We all need to make discipline our friend. We all need to make the declaration: “I will do it until…” Until commits us to an unending unwaivering struggle to get it right and meet our targets. Let us start with self. See if you are able to fulfill some pointers to discipline. Are you able to keep cool when other people get hot? While others are saying angry things, does a soothing balm come from you that enables you stay in control? The corporation chief who remains silent when the other people are blowing their tops is in control. It is a good thing if you are not talking the way the other people are. The bigger man does not allow anyone to draw him into a brawl.
There are three sides to all arguments; your side, the other person’s side and the middle side which is normally in between the two. How often can you stay in the middle? If you are the man in charge it helps if you never give directives to a subordinate when you are angry. Whether you are rich, famous, influential or powerful do you think you could treat everyone as if they were rich relatives who you expect to will you a fortune?
Discipline enables you and I do our utmost to reach the highest level of our lives. Motivation can only pump us up for a minute, inspiration lasts a little longer, but discipline for those who are committed to it, can be a life long attribute which will never leave us.
Look for a seed of equivalent benefit from unpleasant circumstances. One keen observer noticed that a dead dog had white teeth. There is always something you can learn from undesirable situations if you just focus appropriately. If all else fails, at least you learn: “how not to do something.” Our past lives and experiences serve as the most important guide to our future prospects and successes. Never accept everything that is thrown at you. We live in world of fact checks and data. Learn the important art of asking questions and getting answers in most situations. Ask this one question when someone makes a statement: “How do you know?” The answer will either reveal the person’s gross ignorance or make you confident that he knows what he is talking about. Try never to say or do anything that will influence another person until you ask yourself if it will hurt him. It does not look right when you encourage people or a person to take action and they end up in trouble because of it. There is a difference between friendly analysis and unfriendly criticism. We need to learn which one we wish to live by in our relations with others. Knowing the difference will enable us question peoples’ motives without offending them.
- The other side of discipline is our ability to master our profession. George Leonard notes that all significant learning is composed of brief spurts of progress followed by long periods of work where it feels as if you’re going nowhere. It takes determination to get to the level of mastery because sometimes, during practice and activity, we do not see our skill acquisition mounting. On the path to improvement, generally, progression always seems to be the same. To take the master’s journey, we have to practice diligently, striving to hone our skills, to attain new levels of competence. But while doing so, we also have to be willing to spend most of our time on a plateau, to keep practising even when it seems we are getting nowhere. During consistent hard practice certain things begin to happen even though we might not spot them immediately: we begin turning new behaviours into habits. These habits of our profession are mostly procedural skills and nuances we attain that go into the depth of our subconscious, such that at a certain threshold we begin to attain productivity and progress almost seamlessly. We make it look easy to the observer at this level. This is the level of mastery. A teacher helps us get there, but discipline is what sustains our interest in reaching this level. Are you there yet?
*Ogundadegbe is a renowned management consultant. He trains managers and executives in the arts of Customer Service, Human Resources Management and Management strategy ([email protected]).
