The Dog Days of Discipline II, The Meaning of Love

I am fully willing to accept your thinking I am nuts with this article.  I am betting though, that those with an interest in how people work, and an intellect to understand may just find it a bit interesting.  You see in the last article I tied discipline to love and advised I could not really tell you how that works, only that we can see it from the outside and do our best to guess how that works on the inside.   You want to tell me I am crazy, go right ahead, but watch this.

We have learned through brain function that the life cycle of a result looks something like this.  We observe an event, the event brings us a thought, the thought leads to a feeling, the feeling causes us to take action, and the action brings a result.  The result becomes another observable event and we spend our days travelling this cycle.  If this were a television court drama, this is where the judge would ask me if I were trying to make a point.  I in my best Boston Legal television way would tie the thought / feeling process to the whole cognitive behavioral psychology world and demonstrate dramatically how discipline equals love and produces results!

You see the thoughts we pull from when we observe an event are based on all we know and have experienced since birth.  If our experience includes discipline as an act of love to teach us right and wrong behavior then the thought/feeling connection we undergo at an event will tie to that previous experience.  The thought/feeling connection will cause us to take an action which is the "right" thing because we believe that is right.  More important, it feels like the "love" from our earlier history.  When we connect the feeling of discipline to love, we will always strive for that feeling.  It will be as much a part of us as our DNA.  

So if you don't feel like you have enough discipline to you go back and smack your parents?  Nope, jail is no fun and it wouldn't support your long term goals. (I don't think...)

There are mental and emotional exercises you can do to get back there but (and this is why this is often difficult) they do take discipline to achieve.  Kind of seems like the bank charging you more of what they know you don't have any of when thy penalize you for an overdraft, doesn't it?

Here is the other tie for Love and Discipline. Powerful achievement behavior.  You see anytime anybody sets off on a difficult goal, they must by definition face the obstacles that make it difficult in the first place.  Whether the difficulties attack the physical, emotional or mental self, that obstacle, without the power of discipline can easily lead to ones own "medicating" behavior or what ever the drug of choice is.  Now when I say drug here I mean anything any of us do to not feel bad about a let down or failure.  Sometimes it is shopping, sometimes talking, sometimes withdrawal, and sometimes drinking or actual drugging.  In the moments when the impulse to find a way not to feel bad about the loss is the strongest, it is the sense of self love that drives the next choice.  Do I give into the temptation to buy a new pair of shoes or do I get back on the phone and make the next prospecting call?

That choice will be made by the love of discipline within.

Respectfully submitted,
Michael D Goodman

Seems like it will make sense to write and article in the near future on building discipline when you don't really feel like it.  I am looking forward to that one myself...