The first of the five pillars of self-discipline is acceptance. Acceptance means that you perceive reality accurately and consciously acknowledge what you perceive.
This may sound simple and obvious, but in practice it’s extremely difficult. If you experience chronic difficulties in a particular area of your life, there’s a strong chance that the root of the problem is a failure to accept reality as it is.
Why is acceptance a pillar of self-discipline? The most basic mistake people make with respect to self-discipline is a failure to accurately perceive and accept their present situation. Remember the analogy between self-discipline and weight training from yesterday’s post? If you’re going to succeed at weight training, the first step is to figure out what weights you can already lift. How strong are you right now? Until you figure out where you stand right now, you cannot adopt a sensible training program.
If you haven’t consciously acknowledged where you stand right now in terms of your level of self-discipline, it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to improve at all in this area. Imagine a would-be bodybuilder who has no idea how much weight s/he can lift and arbitrarily adopts a training routine. It’s virtually certain that the chosen weights will be either too heavy or too light. If the weights are too heavy, the trainee won’t be able to lift them at all and thus will experience no muscle growth. And if the weights are too light, the trainee will lift them easily but won’t build any muscle in doing so.
Similarly, if you want to increase your self-discipline, you must know where you stand right now. How strong is your discipline at this moment? Which challenges are easy for you, and which are virtually impossible for you?
Here’s a list of challenges to get you thinking about where you stand right now (in no particular order):
Do you shower/bathe every day?
Do you get up at the same time every morning? Including weekends?
Are you overweight?
Do you have any addictions (caffeine, nicotine, sugar, etc.) you’d like to break but haven’t?
Is your email inbox empty right now?
Is your office neat and well organized?
Is your home neat and well organized?
How much time do you waste in a typical day? On a weekend?
If you make a promise to someone, what’s the percentage chance you’ll keep it?
If you make a promise to yourself, what’s the percentage chance you’ll keep it?
Could you fast for one day?
How well organized is your computer’s hard drive?
How often do you exercise?
What’s the greatest physical challenge you’ve ever faced, and how long ago was it?
How many hours of focused work do you complete in a typical workday?
How many items on your to do list are older than 90 days?
Do you have clear, written goals? Do you have written plans to achieve them?
If you lost your job, how much time would you spend each day looking for a new one, and how long would you maintain that level of effort?
How much TV do you currently watch? Could you give up TV for 30 days?
How do you look right now? What does your appearance say about your level of discipline (clothes, grooming, etc)?
Do you primarily select foods to eat based on health considerations or on taste/satiety?
When was the last time you consciously adopted a positive new habit? Discontinued a bad habit?
Are you in debt? Do you consider this debt an investment or a mistake?
Did you decide in advance to be reading this blog right now, or did it just happen?
Can you tell me what you’ll be doing tomorrow? Next weekend?
On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your overall level of self-discipline?
What more could you accomplish if you could answer that last question with a 9 or 10?
Just as there are different muscle groups which you train with different exercises, there are different areas of self-discipline: disciplined sleep, disciplined diet, disciplined work habits, disciplined communication, etc. It takes different exercises to build discipline in each area.
My advice is to iden
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