Discipline is self-love

Discipline. It sounds like the opposite of fun, like routine and structure. And perhaps for that reason it was notably absent from my life, to the point that it began to feel like self-sabotage.

It would start, as most things do, at the beginning of the day. My alarm would go off and, despite my best intentions, I would hit snooze. And again. And again. And then I would rush to get showered and dressed and into work (back in those glorious pre-Covid days), by which time I would arrive flustered and unfocused. After a couple cups of coffee I’d be firing on all cylinders but I’d crash by the end of the day and all of the decision-making at work had eroded any willpower I might have to go to the gym or commit myself to an enriching hobby.

Sleep. Snooze. Repeat

I’m sure you can sympathise with this dysfunctional morning routine. But I wrestled with it for years. I tried every trick under the sun to get myself out of bed, from drinking gallons of water the night before to doing trial runs of waking up to the alarm during the day. But even setting the clock in the corner of the room only served to delay my snooze by a few groggy seconds.

Ultimately, I just didn’t want to wake up, go to work, and start the day. Perhaps the snooze was my own little act of rebellion, testing the limits of what I could get away with without my mum pulling me out of bed.

Unfortunately, it created a cycle of poor discipline and a lack of self-respect that reverberated throughout each day. And so, perhaps unsurprisingly, in many other areas of my life I couldn’t summon any intrinsic motivation. I was entirely dependent on external motivation like deadlines and personal accountability. Now don’t get me wrong, these were effective sticks. But it was no way to live – running up against timelines and overthinking about potential criticism and failure.

I knew deep down that I needed to do things for their inherent satisfaction rather than for some separable consequence. And for that, I needed to reframe the meaning of discipline.

This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing. And instead of calling it work, realise it is play. - Alan Watts

For the longest time, I felt like I was in a battle with myself. Like I had to beat myself into shape the way a fitness marshall might scream at some out-of-shape nerds at boot camp. But what I learnt is that rather than seeing self-discipline as something uncomfortable, I could see it as an act of self-love. By being disciplined I could be saying to myself: “I am going to make a sacrifice today so that my future self will reap the benefits. I am going to show up, every single day, whether I want to or not, because I know it is right for me. I’m going to pay forward all of the gifts that my past self has contributed to get me to where I am today.”

In this way, I learnt that discipline is actually the most compassionate thing I can do for myself. It is about enabling me to reach my highest potential. It is about recognising the choices I need to make in life and about being intentional with my actions. I have limited time and energy, which means that if I want certain parts of my life to flourish, others parts must wither. It’s just unfortunate that those parts happen to be lie-ins.

In the end, a human life is the sum of all of the decisions made and not made, consciously and unconsciously. Self-discipline allows me to honour my potential.