Discipline is About Returning...

There is a quality to all practice, a willingness to return to it when life intervenes.  When life makes your routine harder or, sometimes, impossible.  We gain ground in this life by having an unwavering commitment to return...

I used to think that discipline had a lot to do with motivation.  But I know now, it does not.  Motivation is great.  It definitely makes the practice of anything more enjoyable.  It is always easier to do the things you are slated to do when you want to do them!  But discipline is about returning to the practice even when you don’t feel like it, even when it makes your life more difficult, when it is hard to maintain that particular task or practice.

Discipline is really the simple act of returning to something you have decided is good for you, makes you feel good, supports your overall wellbeing...it isn’t complicated, it is just finding a willingness to return.

And it sounds so simple, but in practice, I have found it to be very hard at times.  I can know something is good for me, that I feel better, work better, live better because I am doing ____.  But then comes the day when I wake up late and do not have time, or I have an early appointment or more typically, I just don’t feel like it.  I have lost more ground to “I don’t fucking feel like it,” than I have lost to anything else.  I am not the same person all the time.  There are variations of me and not all of me has congruence on what we want and like to do.  There is a very superficial version of me that doesn’t ever want to spend time meditating or being still.  And she takes over a lot of the time.  And so I get to practice returning with her to see if I can get her to release the demand that we not return and so a disciplined practice may continue.  Sometimes I am successful and sometimes I am not...

I have had a meditation practice since I was 13.  I have been meditating that long!  But it has been sporadic so my results, the results being easily discernible in my life, have really varied.  And this is because I was not able to return to it on the daily. But I have returned to it year after year, time after time.  I come back to it always with the idea that THIS time it will stick. 

I have been this way with working out, eating, hiking.  I develop a practice and then work to dismantle it just when I get it going and find how much it supports my life.  But I do eventually return to it.  I know what stabilizes me. I know what brings me comfort and support.  I just don’t always do it but I do seem to always return.

Writing is a practice that I have been very disciplined about.  I write every day, with almost no exceptions.  That is amazing to me.  For the last seven years, I have maintained a successful daily writing practice.  And I am amazed at how that happened.  Why can I so easily return to this practice when I struggle with others?  I don’t have answers...just observe that it is true, for me.

But I guess I do always return to working out, hiking, and eating well.  I come back to it over and over and over again.  My workout routine has been fairly stable for the past five years.  My eating is all over the fucking place.  Definitely need to do some work in that department!  And hiking is also a practice that I do with a fair amount of commitment and discipline.

I know what is good for me.  I know what practices support my life and well being.  And sometimes daily and sometimes weekly and sometimes yearly, I do return to them.  I do return.

So defining discipline as the art of returning, I am doing pretty well.  I have been doing several things for decades:  sobriety, yoga, meditation, vegetarianism, hiking and writing.  All things that support my overall wellbeing and desire to live a peaceful and growth supportive life.

And now in my life I have the time to attend to all of these things that make me feel good about being alive, being present and being here.  And I am grateful.

I like the idea that discipline (such a hard word) is made softer and more attainable by defining it as a commitment to return.  Seems so much easier to do, just return, over and over again.

Again, still...