I’m sitting in my kitchen on a gray winter morning, lacing up my running shoes and watching light flakes of snow falling on the sidewalk outside. Inside it’s a cozy Sunday morning, and nothing would be better than curling up on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate and watching another episode of Archer.
I consider this very appealing option, but then remember the commitment I made to myself to try for a P.R. at a trail marathon in a couple of months. So I take a moment and summon that resource I need to get myself outside: discipline.
Discipline is often seen as an essential ingredient in successful running. We require discipline to achieve our goals, to get out there in the wind and rain and put in our training miles, to race to our full potentials.
But what, exactly, is discipline – and how do we build it?
Open up your favorite inspirational blog or the life empowerment book on your nightstand, and you’ll find a standard definition of discipline. It often comes from a military mindset, in which discipline means toughness, strength, and victory. “Nothing can be more hurtful to the service, than the neglect of discipline; for that discipline, more than numbers, gives one army the superiority over another,” said George Washington. For General George S. Patton, discipline “must be a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of battle.”
In the world of business, discipline is about winning and leading others. “It’s absolutely true that unless you can instill discipline upon yourself, you will never be able to lead others,” according to salesman and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar. Discipline is dry, difficult, ascetic. It’s giving up pleasures and renouncing sin. It’s work, not play
The Truth About Discipline
I’d like to offer a different take on discipline than the military/victory/sacrifice metaphor we’re used to.
Discipline is a deep faith in your own truth.
When we behave in a way that lacks discipline, we are actually denying our own intuitive sense of our truth. Take, for example, addiction. This is a force that draws us away from our own truth and tries to get us to do its own bidding.
The first step to countering addiction, of course, is acknowledging we have a problem. But even when that’s been done, our addictions – which are instantiated in the physical world as patterns of neurons in our brains – try to compel us to follow their actions, rather than follow those we know, at a deeper level, to be our truth.
It’s often very difficult to remained disciplined, as our habits and scripts tell us to smoke another cigarette or drink another bottle of beer or stay on the couch when we know we ought to be eating salad, getting to bed early, and lacing up our running shoes.
How To Build Discipline By Drawing On Your Inner Sense of Truth
So how do we surface these truths, these “truths”? How do we get in touch with them, say hello to them and handle them?
First, we need to distinguish bad “shoulds” from good “should.” Bad “shoulds” are the scripts we’ve internalized that tell us we’re living our lives wrong. They tell us we “should” be making more money, we “should” be a better parent, we “should” generally be better people. These “shoulds” are not your truth; they block you from it.
Good “should” are truths you know intuitively to be best for you. If you feel you “should” stop smoking, you know at some level that stopping smoking is a better choice for your own happiness. If you “should” go out for a run today instead of sleep in, you know that you will be adding joy to your life by getting exercise and working towards your goals. You will be feeding your soul, and that is your truth.
We find these truths using our intuition and self-awareness. We make decisions and set goals based on these truths when our minds are clear and our bodies are rested, in order to have as pure a channel to our inner selves as possible.
Discipline is the act of living these truths, be they physical, mental, or spiritual. Discipline simply means following through on the plan we know will serve our deeper selves.
Identifying our own truths is a skill we can develop. As the great philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote, “Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.”
When the going gets tough, then, we need not second guess our truth. We need only have faith that the “right” thing to do is to persevere, to run on, to run fast, in spite of other messages we may be getting from our bodies or minds.
Of course, the world – and our own brains – challenge us to live our truth. But the stronger that pull is, the greater opportunity we have to show our belief in our true selves. perhaps that’s why so many great runners – from Charlie Engle to Jim Walmsley – came from substance abuse backgrounds. They needed belief in an inner truth to overcome their addictions, and that same power guides them to achieve in running.
Discipline means finding and holding on to that shining light of our truth, our deepest decisions and convictions, even when things try to bring us way from it. When we gather the fortitude to push on past that needle, or that brownie, or that nice comfortable aid station, and into our deeper truth, we feed our souls.
