The Experience:
It used to be I said I was going to do something and I would do it. It was as factual, as simple and as expected as the rising of the sun and the passage of time. There were no obstacles strong enough to keep me from reaching my goals. There was a determination, borderline obsession and mania of always achieving, always believing and never letting up.
I loved operating in that state of mind. It was exhausting but it had results. I called it my unfailing self-discipline.
The flavor to what I applied this self-discipline varied but the intensity rarely changed. Whether it were the demands of electrical engineering degrees, the pursuit of financial security, the practice of yoga and the aspirations of a successful career, I pursued things with undeterred self-discipline.
Until a few years ago when I noticed the initial ebb, my first lack of self-discipline, in the seemingly constant supply of it. And it was not my last one either. Then the ebb and flow patterns commenced, and I realized that self-discipline can desert the best of us if we do not feed it properly.
The Awareness:
At first, when self-discipline takes leave of us, however momentarily, we may not feel its absence. We are making reasonable progress toward our goals, living our life according to our plans and values – and all seems to be fine.
Then we gradually may notice that our eating choices have become less selective, our devotion to our values has become a bit too relaxed, and our performance has turned out to be slightly lower in quality. We may feel a lack of zest or necessity in the pursuit of what we used to live for and a lack of intensity in the contentment of those accomplishments. We know we used to do things better, more fully, more precisely, more completely. We used to be the best at our game but we have settled. We have relaxed.
We have traded our self-discipline for complacency and by doing so, we have compromised on one of our most invaluable traits in the pursuit of our goals.
The Understanding:
Complacency is a foe, a fence, a false friend and an unwelcome guest into our personal space. We must measures never to extend an invite when it knocks on the door at our most vulnerable hour.
Complacency is when we begin to take things, people and achievements for granted. It is when we forget our own true abilities or the real worth of the amazing partners, spouses, friends, parents, siblings or dogs in our lives.
Complacency is when after we reach one milestone towards building a desirable skill or developing a long-dreamt-of talent, we stop. We exchange the hard labor for maintaining it with the celebration of having achieved it. We become satisfied with one achievement and forgetful about the next milestone. And the next one after that. And all the milestones we said we were going to achieve when we first set out.
Complacency is when we decide a mediocre job is good enough, a diet followed half-way is sufficient, a program abandoned mid-course is not so bad because after all, we started it and that alone should ‘count‘. We create the illusion of boundaries in our mind and live comfortably within those walls, rather than defining new targets. We settle. Far too often, we settle for much less than we can do because as human beings, we are conditioned to take the path of least resistance. When a certain level of comfort and security is achieved in our lives, it is too easy to forget our original end-goal. We lose the initial drive and the burning desire to continuously break boundaries and move up the ante.
We decide that we cannot possibly get into that yoga pose – it is reserved for the lucky few – that we cannot dance all that well, only the professionals do – that we cannot start a new career all over again – only the fearless risk-takers can find success in that route – and we cannot travel all that far and frequently or live in the fabulous lifestyle of our dreams, only the rich and famous live those lives. We fool ourselves out of golden opportunities and sweet realities that could be.
And evident as it is by the world around us, we are wrong about this. Simply, utterly and completely wrong.
Thomas Edison, one of the most prolific inventors of our time, was quoted to have believed: “If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.”
And is this not often true? Do you think that you are always doing all the things you are capable of doing? That simply cannot be because we see every day that people with less opportunities, less abilities, less comfort and less luxury than us achieve far more. We envy them and may label them as lucky. (What does luck have to do with any of it? We are not at the Las Vegas craps tables! This is real life!) The fruits of their labor tend to hide the long hours of toil and sweat behind those beautiful achievements. They have worked long and hard for their end goals, they haven’t taken their eyes off the ball and they have never welcomed complacency into their lives.
The Return to Self-Discipline:
The irony of establishing self-discipline is that we need it the most when we think of it the least. The moment we reach our first goals is the moment of truth. The moment when intentions are set, habits are formed, and the next goal can be firmly set in our mind from the sheer excitement and adrenalin of having achieved the first. That is when self-discipline can serve us best.
I read Céline Dion‘s biography years ago, a jewel among life stories of the rich and famous. Most of all, I was mesmerized by her unbreakable self-discipline. This super star that we see on the stages of the world has more self-discipline than anyone I have met or shall ever meet. The stardom and fame which she has achieved is in itself remarkably rare and can turn the life of most hardcore among us into a blissful and carefree existence. But not Céline’s! When she was already world famous, rich beyond her wildest dreams, and at the top of her game, her long-time coach and husband, René Angélil, constantly urged her to “Up the ante!“ and “Raise the bar!” on every performance. After singing a particular song beautifully for the 500th time, he found a way to improve it yet. He kept pushing Céline like this even when she seemed at her very best in the eyes of her fans and all of the world. She would go silent for days or weeks at a time in order to rest her vocal chords for the small possibility to ever so slightly improve her singing that night. Even though in the eyes of rest of the world, she had already broken all the boundaries, she always looked only to René for breaking the next one and finding a better version of herself. She never settled. She is improving herself to this day and feeding off that self-discipline which has served her so well.
No doubt we all have good intentions and put forth great effort at the onset of a new project, a new plan, a new path. It is somewhere along the way that we need to watch out for losing our momentum, our purpose, our intention and our lofty goals. The bouts of doubt set in and hold us back and keep us from focusing on pushing further and reaching higher. Sometimes the worst thing isn’t missing an opportunity as it is to not take full, true, complete advantage of the opportunity we have seized. It is the difference between settling and doing our best. The difference between complacency and self-discipline.
We stop living when we stop achieving. And we stop achieving when we lose our self-discipline. In this fabulous, unpredictable, exciting life of ours, the ebb and flow of self-discipline is only natural. A setback, a rough patch, a wrong turn, a bad choice and we fall and need to get back up. However, when we do get back on our feet, it is important to return to our self-discipline and pursue the original path to our goals. It’s imperative that we find it again and come home to it.
Who is to say what we can achieve, who we can become, what life we can lead and what dreams we can realize in our time on this earth? Let us ignore statistics, be ware of social conditions and peer pressures, rise above the norm and banish the thoughts of boundaries and limitations from our minds forever. Let us be completely ourselves and build a life entirely our own. All we need to succeed is the flow of that self-discipline.
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{ 14 comments… read them below or add one }
Farnoosh, I would have been nodding my head in complete agreement with this blog ten years ago. But now I’d have to say that this total and complete devotion to an achievement and goal-oriented life is only one alternative to living, and not the right one at all for many people and for different stages in one’s life.
I can speak with some deep understanding of this because I epitomized this ultra-disciplined approach for much of my life. I don’t regret it. It brought me many good things in life and I stretched myself to the limit wherever I went. So this is not a comment of regret.
But after thirty years of that, I decided to retire and see what would happen if I took the opposite approach to life. I had trouble doing it for a few years until I discovered that I realized that to live a relaxed life I needed a whole new philosophy to replace my previous hard-driving optimize-each-minute achievement orientation. Yoga fit the bill. Eventually that led to YogaDemystifed.com, in which I explain my new approach to living.
Again, I don’t regret my extreme achievement orientation of the past. That was good for me now. This is good for me now. I’m just suggesting that you don’t think of ultra-achievement as right for everyone. It’s just not right for everyone.
Bob Weisenberg
Bob, I love a challenging reader! Thank you for sharing your thoughts. And you are right, the self-discipline and the achievement of goals is not for everyone. In fact, that may be why many people shy away from it, and some perhaps are happier to do so. I think my main point here was that we shouldn’t get complacent in life, and we can use self-discipline in all we do. I wonder if you don’t use self-discipline to keep yourself from being obsessed with the goal-oriented life or with the practice of meditation that helps you live that kind of life? Maybe in that regard we agree, and that is one of the points I am trying to make, even if my examples differ.
Great to see you here! Thanks for stopping by!
Hey Farnoosh,
I enjoyed this post. You made some valid points here. I have also found that in my life self discipline is more of a daily thing for me, the more I can focus not only the better the results in my projects, but it also keeps me very much in the present moment. It’s a great tradeoff.
Hi Farnoosh.
I hear you there about complacency. I have fallen into that trap. When you take a person for granted, it feels fine or right at the time, and then later you realize how you made them feel, and then it isn’t so good. The ebb and flow is somewhat annoying, because we assume that we have conquered the “ebb” portion, but then it returns.
Regarding self-discipline, that and “boldness” are my two words of choice these days. When I run on self-discipline, nothing is out of my reach. When I let it slide a bit, some items are no longer so easy to grasp or maintain control of. I don’t like the downs of the cycle you describe here so much, but I can see why they occur.
I would say that some certain folks help me with self-discipline just by their very nature.
@Baker: A daily task that constantly needs to be renewed, tell me about it! Glad you enjoyed the post.
@Armen: I love “boldness” – there is nothing like self-confidence in the face of adversity or just plain old every day life which seems to not adverse but just feeds complacency to us sometimes. And you being most grateful of all (as I know already), it’s only natural to look for that inspiration to others to help us stay on track with that self-discipline!
I definitely struggle with this. My to-do list is hundreds of items deep at this point, ranging from “Buy new shoes” to “Sell condo”. I’ve recently taken to writing tasks on Post-It notes and sticking them to my bathroom mirror. (I have yet to work out the significance of the X vs Y axes…) I’m not sure, yet, whether or not this system actually helps, other than making my bathroom messier.
More on-topic, I think there’s a fine line between complacency and contentment. As great as it feels to get things done, it seems a shame to perpetually saddle oneself with discontent and self-shame for not being as productive as one could be. At some point, the drive for “bigger, better, more, more, more!” becomes an enemy, rather than a friend, and you gotta step back and enjoy the wonderful life you’ve built. I certainly don’t mean to champion mediocrity, but sometimes “good enough” is good enough.
Jerry,
This subject is of great interest to me. As I described in the first comment above, I came to Yoga in retirement to support my goal of having very few goals. I’ve always wondered if Yoga would have been any use to me during the hard-driving, optimize-each-moment-toward-the-achievement-of-goals phase of my life.
The answer is unequivocally yes. Yoga philosophy has a clear, simple and convincing answer to the dilemma you describe in you comment. The answer is to act and strive and achieve, but DETACH YOUR EGO FROM THE RESULTS!
That means, go for whatever you want, fulfill whatever destiny is yours, but don’t attach any ego judgment on whatever happens. It also means that, no matter how hard you strive, you would never “saddle oneself with discontent and self-shame…” Work hard but don’t attribute any ego value at all to the results, whatever they are. Takes some practice. But this is one of the greatest principles of Yoga.
One could even say this is the core message of the entire Bhagavad Gita. See “What Is It That Brings Us Happiness” http://wp.me/PlUox-f0 and Yoga Tennis http://wp.me/PlUox-iN
Thanks for the excellent comment.
Bob Weisenberg
Interesting, Bob! I’ve arrived at a similar conclusion regarding ego, but from perhaps a different angle. I started training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (a grappling art that looks a lot like, but is very different from, wrestling) just over a year ago as a simple martial arts interest, and I’ve been shocked, amazed, and enlightened by its philosophical implications. One of its most powerful messages is that you have to release your ego if you want to learn. To improve, you have to fail, habitually.
Failure, in this case being choked out or joint-locked, identifies your weak points so that you can work on them. If you’re winning all the time, you’re probably not learning much. If you’re losing a lot, you’re probably improving by leaps and bounds. Those students who shield their ego learn more slowly because they a) tend to avoid fights or positions where they might lose, and b) reject advice that would help them, because that require accepting that they were WRONG, implicitly accepting that somebody else knows more than them. I’ve come to see “being wrong” in general as a GOOD thing, as an opportunity to learn, and not a hit to my self-esteem, something to be resisted.
This is all very different from my upbringing, where for various reasons, being wrong was something to be avoided at all costs. Looking back, I certainly feel that approaching life ego-free would have led to more eventual successes in both my business and personal life. …Then again, maybe I would have been completely content living in a trailer and working at McDonald’s. Is that “success”? But if I’m happy, where’s the problem? Again, it’s the contentment vs. complacency dilemma.
Although I’ve never practiced Yoga, I see Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as a sort of competitive one-on-one Yoga mixed with real-time chess, where body positioning plays a large role, but strategy is just as important. (Fighting a high-level practitioner feels like fighting a psychic — s/he will usually defend your moves before you’ve made them!) Like Yoga, I’m sure, the benefits to physical fitness are almost a side-benefit!
Great insights, Jerry. That corresponds with modern sports psychology, too–go for it, but you’ve got to remove your ego from results, especially the day-to-day results, for precisely the reasons you enumerate.
Bob Weisenberg
Farnoosh,
You just made this my new mantra:
“If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.”
Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant!
Sahar, it’s Einstein’s quote so indeed he was brilliant enough for all of us….Good choice of mantra!
Hi Farnoosh ! – A most interesting, provocative and thought provoking post ! As ever !
Thinking about you, I associated the following verse :
Living in a hurry
A head without ‘deep thoughts’
A dress without taking a probe
An act without rehearsal
Planning to be planned for
I don’t know the role
I am playing on the scene
Only that it is entirely mine
Not to be changed
For anything else.
Aren’t you a bit Egocentric ?
This way of neurotic hurry and way of life. Isn’t that a bit disturbing ?
Moralist: Your whole trouble is that you are too egocentric. All you ever think or speak about
Is yourself – your problems, the ways you have been traumatized , your reactions to them .etc. You seem to be so obsessed , that one gets the feeling that you have no serious interest in other people.
Victim : This obviously can’t be so ! As you well know, my main interest these days is in literature, biographies and autobiographies. If I wasn’t utterly fascinated by these people I read, why would I spend so much time reading and thinking about them and the weight of the world I carry on my shoulders ?
Moralist : Because all these people you spend so much time reading and thinking about are people who are exactly like you.
Subconsciously, I tried to make a difference between an optimist and an incurable optimist ?
Well, an optimist is one who says : “everything is for the best; mankind will survive.”
An incurable optimist is one who says : “Everything is for the best; mankind will survive. And even if mankind doesn’t survive, it is for the best.”
Then there is what I call a pessimistic optimist. A pessimistic optimist is one who sadly shakes his head and says : “I am very much afraid that everything is for the best!”
A Sad Story – Once upon a time there was Somebody who spend the first half of his life trying to become famous. He failed in that. Then he spend the second half of his life trying to get into that mystical state in which it was no longer important to him whether or not he was famous. He failed in that too.
Another Sad Story – Once there was Somebody who was overcome by mystical inspiration. He had all sorts of remarkable insights as to the ultimate nature of reality. He wrote voluminously; he wrote and wrote. He was not however ego-less, for he took a great pride in what he had written. For many months after he had finished writing, he read his manuscript over and over again with great pride and joy……During the next couple of years he slowly but surely lost all his mystical insight. Then one day, he reread his manuscript but could not understand a word of what he had written.
Famous ? – I was once discussing the subject of fame with a very astute friend of mine. At one point he said : “ It all depends on what you mean by famous : For example, would you call God famous ?”
Existence is the very opposite of nonexistence! I know they are the opposite! But so is minus zero the opposite of plus zero.
Well, Michael, you have finally done it. I am speechless and no idea how to reciprocate on such a thought-provoking comment in return. For certain, they are having a deep effect on my thoughts. I have been thrown now into a loop of reflection on the stories and dialogues you have shared here. Thank you for taking the time to do so in such a delicate way. I am sure the readers will enjoy it as much as I did.
Farnoosh, – I was also speechless when I stumbled into such a beautiful lady like you analyzing Anna Karenina !
You got me right on the spot, completely unprepared. Here are some further thoughts, that you may appreciate :
I have prepared something from LAO-TZU ,chapter-56 :
Those who know do not talk.
Those who talk do not know.
Keep your mouth closed.
Guard your senses.
Temper your sharpness.
Simplify your problems.
Mask your brightness.
Be at one with the dust of the earth.
This is primal union.
He who has achieved this state
Is unconcerned with friends and enemies,
With good and harm, with honor and disgrace.
This therefore is the highest state of man.
Thanks. The pleasure is entirely mine.
))
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