A lot of people confuse discipline as locking into accomplishing a certain objective, such as working on a project or going to the gym every day.
Yes. This is discipline. You are forcing yourself to put time and effort into this thing that will eventually bring you growth. But is this kind of discipline really sustainable for the average person? Our world is full of people that taunt and flex their accomplishments. We begin to admire them and wish to become as successful as them. Fortunately, the only thing that keeps you from getting there is time and discipline. So for a person like me, and probably you as well, wanting the discipline to work out well. You and I both have fantasised versions of ourselves that are working towards our goals because we are disciplined. But does this fantasised version of you that is supposedly disciplined have flaws? Do they have moments of weakness, things that hold them back?
If your answer is no, then your progress of growth is doomed to halt or fall. Or you are just exceptionally talented person. But let’s not kid ourselves. You and I are average people.
So what makes me think that your growth is doomed? It’s simply because you have an idea of yourself in your head that is pure fantasy, like some character from a fiction book. You like to think about a life where you are this person that you have conjured up in your head. This unrealistic expectation of you gets compared with you, a flawed human. And I know how the flawed human will feel, because I am this human.
Don’t create a person with unlimited energy, charming charisma or even logical intelligence, because that is not who you are. Not calling you dumb or anything, but I doubt that every decision you make in your life is logical. This perfect you will only exist in your imagination, and any attempt to become this you will fail.
Listen, it’s not bad that you push yourself and have an idea of things to improve to make you a better person. I am saying that this constant chase to become this perfect you will eventually exhaust you and you will burn out. This consequence will have severe impact on your mental health and the standards that you hold yourself up to.
Going back to discipline, this means that the discipline that you have and the perfect you have will be completely different. The discipline of perfect you never falters because the perfect you is not made up of human flaws. You cannot keep working and working, grinding the real you to be as disciplined as the perfect you. You will burn out, and you will feel sad. This version of discipline where everything is perfect and we can work towards it non-stop does not work, contrary to the belief that people who have achieved a lot like to push. A belief where you just need to lock in, become a stranger, grind for months.
You need to love your discipline, and it needs to love you back. Love a discipline that works at a speed that is manageable for you and love a discipline that does not punish you for being human. Allow yourself to break your discipline, allow yourself to fall in the progress of life. This means that when you fall over, you can pick yourself up with energy that you haven’t depleted.
A terrible analogy, but imagine you are supposed to climb this tower. Getting to the top of the tower is your goal. And this grindset discipline mode, where you force yourself to climb as many floors as you can, hoping that you will reach the top is disastrous because anything can happen. You might tire yourself out and faint, a strong wind might come, or you come across a slippery surface, all leading to your fall from the highest floor that you could’ve climbed. You lay there, on the dirt. You are not prepared for this level of fall and you stay there a while.
But suppose you go in with a rhythm discipline mode. You know that you will fall, even from the second floor of a hundred-floor tower, so you let yourself fall. This isn’t as painful as before, and you have the energy to pick yourself back up to start climbing again. The rhythm starts. Each fall you prepare yourself for the next fall, your body adapts to it and slowly, you reach your goal.
So keep falling and hurting yourself, you fucking masochist.
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