Discussion

Discipline through doing things you hate

This is the third installment in a seven-part series on being disciplined. We all would like to be able to think a little clearer, feel a little better and enjoy the things we need to do in life a little more. No matter where you are when it comes to being disciplined, these thoughts can help you better achieve your goals and continue along your path of being disciplined.

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Discipline is no fun. Discipline sucks. It hurts. It’s boring. It’s excruciating at times. When facing a difficult project or task, recognize that. Call it for the crappiness that it is and don’t try to coat it in sugary motivational statements to try and trick yourself into thinking you’re going to enjoy it. Because as soon as you get past that first thin layer of excitement, you find that you’re just chewing on…well, I’ll spare you the graphic details.

Sweet deception and how it works against discipline

Feeling good is better than feeling bad. We’re programmed to avoid pain and to seek gratification. This is made easier by the seemingly unending ways in which gratification can be found instantaneously. Every year our world seems to make it easier and easier to think that not only do you need instant gratification but you deserve instant gratification. “Hungry? Grab a Snickers.” And why don’t you grab diabetes and heart disease while you’re at it.

It’s a lot of painful work to walk to the fridge, open the door, take out some potatoes and chicken and make yourself a hearty soup. You have to spend time and energy. You have to move. You have to wait for it to cook. You have to clean the dishes when you’re done. And when it’s cooked it may not even taste as good as that snickers you could have had an hour ago. There’s very little pay off in the thick of discipline.

The road to your goals no longer passes through peppermint forest and over gumdrop mountain. You’re an adult now. The time for skipping through candy land has ended. Your new road is lined with missing-the-new-episode canyon, sleepless desert and sore-muscle valley and you’re in for very few rewards before arriving at Well-Disciplined Castle.

IMG_6596

Ouch

It’s hard. It’s hard for us to imagine that anything we do is supposed to be uncool, not fun, painful and boring.

How often have you heard, “Find what you love and do that.” Or, “When your job no longer feels like work, that’s when you’ve found your calling.” This is BS. No journey to anything worthwhile has ever been smooth and easy. Even when you’re in a profession you legitimately enjoy, there are all kinds of detail tasks and responsibilities that are as a rule unpleasant. You can’t enjoy top levels of performance unless you also work through the parts you don’t like.

Ok. So we’ve established that discipline is no fun and that it’s not supposed to be. How do we make this practical? How can you apply this? Let’s take a look at some things to avoid and some things to practice.

What not to think about when working on discipline

Disciplined hippies and other oxymorons

Whoever said, “It’s not about the destination, but about the journey” is an idiot. A delusional daisy chain hippie. When it comes to getting anything accomplished in life, it’s all about the destination. What are your results? What have you accomplished?

It’s not all sour-faced work. There can be small rewards along the way like the endorphin high at the end of a workout, or in enjoying more savings in your bank account.

But what you’re ultimately working towards is where you should fix your gaze because if you focus on the steps, you’re going to wonder why this “goal” (a single step) isn’t any fun. The truth is the steps themselves aren’t the goal and so you can allow yourself to dislike the step knowing that the goal is where you’ll experience the reward.

Why motivation can take a flying leap

It’s not motivation that teaches. It’s discipline. Motivation can be taken out back and shot. Seriously. Load your gun right now and shoot it. If you allow motivation to determine when and where you’re going to work on your goals, you’re going to settle into a nice retired life in Candy Land and never make it to Well-Disciplined Castle.

Nothing big was ever accomplished through motivation. Discipline is the hero. Ask any disciplined person and they will tell you it’s the hours spent that got them to where they are today.

Practice discipline through “pain sessions”

Now that you’ve prepared yourself mentally, let’s look at some concrete steps you can take to practice the art of discipline through doing things you hate.

Activity 1 (10-15 minutes)

  • Make a list of 5-7 tasks around your house or apartment that you really dislike doing
  • Rank those tasks in order from least worst to absolute worst
  • After you’ve identified the worst one, circle it
  • Congratulations, here’s your new task!
  • Choose an half-hour or so of time today or tomorrow when you’ll be home for the next activity

Activity 2 (30 minutes)

  • When your half-hour starts, use the first ten minutes to read back over the highlights of the above post
  • Take 1-2 minutes for self talk. Remind yourself that you’re dreading this task for good reason. Allow yourself to think about how much you dislike it and how little enjoyment you’re going to draw from working on it.
  • Start the task and continue doing it for 15 minutes*
  • Stop and think for awhile. How do you feel? On a scale of 1-10, one being pretty crappy and ten being pretty great, give yourself a number. If it’s low, ok. If it’s high, congratulations, you’ve just achieved nirvana, or something.

Activity 3 (ongoing throughout the week)

  • These are what we’ll call “pain sessions”
  • They’re like 1 & 2 above but focused on one particular goal
  • Choose something that you’ve been putting off for awhile, or an area where you’ve been lacking in the discipline department
  • Schedule in 3-5 fifteen-minute blocks throughout this week for your “pain sessions”
  • Before beginning each pain session, take 1-2 minutes to prepare yourself mentally
  • After 15 minutes of doing it, mark down your “crappiness” level on a scale of 1-10. If it’s still low, ok. If it’s high—you’ve probably turned into a masochist.

Activity 4 (ongoing)

  • Continue on like activity 3
  • Try to crank the rack a few notches to 20 minutes or even an half-hour

*Moan and complain to yourself the whole time if you need to. That’s fine. (Just please moan to yourself silently. No one else wants to hear that, nor do they want to listen to you talk about how great a martyr you are.)

Are we disciplined yet? Are we disciplined yet? Are we disciplined yet?

No, it doesn’t get easier. At best you will develop calluses on your pain receptors that keep the misery from going as deep. What will improve, however, is the speed and frequency at which you’ll arrive at your desired destinations. This is good news! (Finally.)

Those who are well disciplined are simply good at dealing with pain. Those who are disciplined have accepted the fact that waking up at 5:30am to go for a jog in December is not enjoyable and they’re willing to hurt for a short while.

So there you have it! Allow yourself to hate the things that aren’t any fun. Try a few pain sessions. Then see if that doesn’t just change your world.

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This is the third installment in a seven-part series on being disciplined. You can read each of the posts by clicking below:

I’m in my room laying scotch tape over a flipchart sheet of white paper to try and make a white board for class, while my 15-year-old host brother is in the other room playing Assassin’s Creed on his computer and lamenting the temporary outage of 3G internet. Somewhere there’s a disconnect here…

In the world of development, there’s the ideal and then there’s reality. The trick is to make the gap between the two as small as possible.

Should “small” languages be preserved?

Yesterday was National Kyrgyz Language Day and I couldn’t have felt more out of place. I had agreed over the weekend to show up for a recording for a show on foreigners who speak Kyrgyz and instead found myself on live television, sharing the stage with a host and 5 other Kyrgyz gentlemen—fathers of the Kyrgyz Republic.

I was the little kid brother to a 6th grader. A peon to the president. A proletariat to an aristocrat. I was a strange, thirty-year old foreigner in a purple checkered shirt and Adidas tennis shoes among congressmen, professors and those who have written Kyrgyz history with pens dipped in the sweat of their brows and the blood of their struggle. Let’s just say I felt…inadequate.

IMG_1290Public Teleradio Corporation (Коомдук Телерадиоберүү Корпорациясы)

Why I was on this show is beyond me. I was told there would be other foreigners there and that we would be briefed on simple questions like, “Why are you learning Kyrgyz? Is it hard? Do you like puppies? Here’s a piece of candy…” The host’s first question was something along the lines of, “Dear gentleman so-and-so, you were the one in congress who pushed for the recognition of the Kyrgyz language in the Soviet Republic of Kirgizia back in the late 1980s. Could you tell us a little about the history of that historic vote?”

We were told this would go on for an hour and now I was really nervous—how many questions was the host going to ask me? How was I going to understand the question, much less be able to put together a string of coherent thought cogently processed and well reflected given the diverse and nuanced point of views on the usage of the Kyrgyz language in today’s culture and society?

What ended up happening was the host asked me a question, I ignored it and then rattled off every piece of Kyrgyz that was anywhere near the front of my brain to tens of thousands of people tuned in to watch this talking head make a blunder on live, national television.

Basically I just talked about how I studied and learned Kyrgyz and gave some advice, but I also added that I thought both Kyrgyz and Russian are important for people to know. In some places, mainly small villages, students speak almost entirely in Kyrgyz and practice Russian very little. Then when they come up to the capital to attend colleges and universities, they really struggle because they don’t have a strong academic command of the Russian language. In order to function in the top tiers of Kyrgyz academia, business and society in general, you really need to know both.

That was about all I had time to say. I had been worried about the whole hour long thing, but luckily I was on stage with several senior gentlemen who also happened to be very opinionated and so that quickly ate up the time. (The first question above took over ten minutes to answer just by itself since we were receiving a minute-by-minute replay of the vote in congress from the distinguished gentleman on my right.)

IMG_1285I missed the memo on wearing a kalpak…

The discussion never really got to anything truly controversial or interesting. Basically they just said Kyrgyz culture and mentality is best preserved through the language. That in order to best understand and preserve a culture, the language must first be preserved. Others added that since this was Kyrgyzstan, populated mainly by ethnically Kyrgyz people, the language should be the main operating language of the land.

I agree with this but thinking about it afterwards, I wish I had asked some questions like, “How do you ensure that everyone learns Kyrgyz, especially when Russian is already the operating language?” The world today is so interconnected that it makes little sense to huddle up with a small language almost no one outside of these borders understands. I’m all for preserving Kyrgyz and yes it is useful for those living here, but we can’t deny that Kyrgyzstan—like any nation in the world—is dependent upon relationships with surrounding countries near and far. If we are going to preserve Kyrgyz, let’s also push for fluency in Russian and English. English is the language of the world—you can go to China and speak English. You can go to Argentina and speak English. It’s a transferrable skill that offers immediate benefits in business, tourism, and education and the sciences, all areas that Kyrgyzstan needs so desperately to improve.

After what seemed like hours, the minute hand on the clock hit one revolution and the “live” light went dark. I was completely soaked on every limb of my body except for my mouth which felt like it had been lined with sandpaper and then filled with sand. I performed the perfunctory handshakes and cell phone pictures, received my little gift folder for being on the show and scooted out into the afternoon air.

IMG_1292Gift package including a Russian-Kyrgyz medical dictionary

I may not have had the time or language to get into a deep discussion at the studio, but maybe we could chat here if you have some thoughts to add? How important is it to preserve languages spoken by very few people? Does it make sense to require all people in a nation to speak one mutual tongue? What direction is Kyrgyzstan going? And what part should the English language play here?

Discipline through Defeating Deception

This is the first installment in a seven-part series on being disciplined. We all would like to be able to think a little clearer, feel a little better and enjoy the things we need to do in life a little more. No matter where you are when it comes to being disciplined, these thoughts can help you better achieve your goals and continue along your path of being disciplined.

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What lies have you told yourself today?

Stop for a few minutes and think about it—in what ways today have you told yourself things that aren’t true?

Maybe this is a difficult exercise. The ways in which we lie to ourselves aren’t usually immediately apparent. In fact, you’ve probably gotten so good at lying that you are seeing these lies as truth.

This is the basis for “Misbelief Therapy” championed in the book Telling Yourself the Truth by William Backus and Marie Chapian. This form of therapy helps you identify the lies you tell yourself and to replace them with the truth. It’s an incredibly helpful book and I’ve gone through it four times in the last eight years.

Misbelief Therapy applies to all aspects of your life and particularly to your self worth as a person. If you struggle with this, I encourage you to get professional help! I’ve met with a few different psychologists and therapists over the course of my life and they’ve been so good at helping me get on the path to better thinking and better living.

Here we are going to look at how this therapy applies to being disciplined. Many other topics are addressed in Backus and Chapian’s book, and you can read at length there if you’re interested.

Lies lie in the absolutes

Let’s go back to thinking about identifying the lies we tell ourselves. Lies are easier to spot when you think about the superlatives you tell yourself:

  • “I’m never going to be able to finish this assignment.”
  • “I simply can’t get out of bed.”
  • “I’m never going to amount to anything.”
  • “My boss is going to kill me if I don’t show up on Saturday.”
  • “If I can’t finish this paper, it’s going to be the worst thing ever.”

These statements aren’t true. They can’t be. For most of them, you’ve already proved them lies again and again. Yet you keep telling them to yourself and worse, continue to believe them.

The first thing you need to do on the path to discipline is to defeat deception. Try this for the next week: Listen for your self talk. Each time you catch yourself using one of these absolute terms, write the entire comment down. Don’t worry about correcting it yet. Before you start arguing against the lies, you need to know what you’re up against.

After a week of this, look over your list. What kinds of absolutes are you telling yourself? Are you often using the word “never?” Or maybe they’re things like, “I would just die if…”

Following the trail of lies

The next step is to think about each of these statements, one by one. Let’s look at one of the statements above—“I simply can’t get out of bed.”

Have you gotten out of bed before? How many times have you successfully gotten out of bed in your life? Are you going to get out of bed in the future? After all, you’ll eventually need to go to the bathroom. It’s simply not true that can’t get out of bed.

“But, I’ll skip work, that’s the worst!” You might answer. “It’s not about getting out of bed, but about what I’m trying to avoid!”

What are you telling yourself about what you’re trying to avoid? Is skipping work “the worst?” Is it really the worst thing you can imagine happening to a person in his or her lifetime?

“If I don’t finish the project today, my boss is going to kill me!”

Is your boss really going to kill you? Do you think he’s waiting at the office, standing in front of his collection of torture devices, trying to decide between the two-handed sword or the piano wire?

And maybe he will really be angry. Maybe he’ll yell and swear. Maybe he’ll fire you. But he’s not going to kill you.

IMG_5314I can’t go out. I’m just going to stay indoors, next to this warm pot of food all day.

Discerning what’s horrible and what’s only unpleasant

Yeah, it’s going to sting a bit, listening to your boss’ angry words. But it’s only unpleasant. It’s not unbearable. You’ve had people yell at you in the past and you’ve survived. You’re still alive, reading this, so it must be true.

When we’re lacking in discipline, we’re often blowing things way out of proportion in our use of absolutes.

  • “I can’t turn in this paper unless it’s perfect.”
  • “I’m always late for everything.”
  • “If I can’t present myself as a perfect person today, I might as well not go outside.”

The truth is, there are very few things in life that are absolute, and there are very few consequences in life that are the absolute worst. The vast majority of your decisions and actions do not fall into this category. The things you think might kill you in reality will probably only sting. Sure, it’ll hurt a little. Getting a D on that paper is not going to be pleasant. But it’s not the worst thing ever and you will survive and have chances to write papers again.

Replacing deception with the truth

Now you have a list of the lies you’ve been telling yourself. This is a big step in shedding the weight of all the untruths that have been pressing down on your and wrecking havoc in your life. When you believe a lie instead of the truth, you learn to act and behave as if that lie were true. If you tell yourself you’re no good at cleaning the bathroom and that it’s icky and gross and you’re going to contract an unknown-to-medical-science disease, it’s going to be pretty easy to avoid cleaning the bathroom.

Instead, recognize this as a lie and replace it with the truth.

  • “It’s icky and unpleasant to clean the bathroom. But I’m not going to die. I do have a pair of gloves and I can wear them.”
  • “It’s ok if this paper is not perfect. Perfect doesn’t exist, anyway. I’ve put a few hours into it and that’s good enough. I can be happy that I finished a project.”
  • “I’ve amounted to a lot already. I have family and friends who care about me. I’ve had a couple different jobs already and those bosses decided to hire me so I do have desirable skills. Someone even liked one of my facebook posts yesterday, so I accomplished something. And even if no one does recognize me, I still like what I do and I can enjoy the work.”

After you’ve practiced writing out truth statements for each of the lies you collected throughout the week, try combining these steps. Over the next week, each time you hear yourself lying about a situation, recognize it, identify the lie, and then replace it by telling yourself the truth.

This is not an easy thing to all of a sudden start to do. You need time through lots of truth telling to work out of the habit of telling yourself all the lies you’ve been listening to for so long. But with small steps, you’re on the path to thinking truthfully about your life and the areas where you want to have more discipline.

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This is the first installment in a seven-part series on being disciplined. You can read each of the posts by clicking below: