As long as we act because we feel forced, whatever we do will be distasteful.
Our true nature operates for the sake of fulfillment and creating a meaningful life. Really, isn’t that our deep desire?
But then something goes sideways in life and we are suddenly comparing ourselves with others. We begin using our ambition in the wrong way.
If we were to use our initiative in a proper, realistic way, we would discover that it’s actually self-activating. It is self-generating.
It operates from an inner need to establish our own sense of integrity and find our own inner strength. It does not operate to impress or prove something to others.
Unfortunately, when we shy away from becoming our best self—when we don’t make the effort to become the truest version of ourselves—our ambition goes wonky. We find ourselves in extremes of over-ambitiousness and under-ambitiousness.
The key lies in finding the areas where we act because we have to, but don’t want to. In these areas we base our actions on someone or something else, rather than ourselves. When such areas are seen, explored and understood, our inner conflicts will stop.
The truth about discipline
These conflicts stem from seeing discipline as unpleasant. And in fact, as long as we summon discipline because we must—because life and authority demand it of us—it will be unpleasant.
When we do something because we think there’s no other way and that we must, we are obeying an outer authority while inwardly putting the brakes on. Occasionally, in defiance, we will rebel and we won’t do anything. We let go and become destructive.
When discipline becomes a freely chosen act, however, it’s not a burden. It actually becomes pleasurable. When something is freely chosen, it is pleasurable, but when we do something because we must, it is not.
It’s not the act, then, that is either pleasurable or unpleasant, desirable or not. It’s the circumstances under which we are doing it. Always. Indeed, the most supposedly pleasurable act, if we are forced into it, will become distasteful to us.
When we act because we feel forced, whatever we do will be distasteful. This leads to feelings of rebellion, hostility and hate, which cascade into guilt. As a result, we waffle between obeying—while hating the other person for having to obey them—and rebelling, which makes us hate ourselves.
Once something becomes pleasurable, though, it’s no longer a discipline. At the beginning, though, we choose it, even though it may not yet be enjoyable. Nonetheless, we freely choose it out of fairness, out of reason, out of decency, out of our own self-interest and the interest of others.
The key is to find our inner motivation to do something, not because it is imposed on us, but because we choose it of our own free will. Then, even while it is a discipline, it is a free act. In this choosing, repeatedly, it stops being necessary to use discipline.
How to free ourselves
As long as we think we must choose between obeying or rebelling, the “musts” that exist in our lives—which we hate so much—will continue. These exist because somewhere in us, we do not want to give up making our parents responsible for our life. We won’t let them off the hook.
We may do this directly or indirectly with our parents, consciously or not. But we want someone else to arrange our life for us, and for the outcome to be as we want it.
Once we tackle this, though, freely choosing for ourselves how our lives will be, there will be no more “musts.”
For children, discipline is often associated with punishment. For adults, though, it becomes a steppingstone. The whole question of discipline will cease to be a problem once we freely choose, out of our own reasonableness, fairness and acceptance, to grow up.
To use self-discipline willingly, we are effectively saying, “Yes, in the short run, I could follow the line of least resistance and not do this. But then I will not like myself and I will not like the result. No one is responsible for this result but me. Therefore, I choose to do this.”
Then life will not feel like a chore, or a punishment. We will stop rebelling and grow more fully into ourselves.
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Adapted from Pathwork® Q&A on Self-Discipline.
