Don't Use Discipline To Create More Fear

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Many of the men I’ve coached use discipline without realising it, in a way that the focus of their discipline becomes more important than them. 

I was saying to a client last week that one of the first and prolonged injustices children are taught is that they have no worth until they achieve, obtain and prove their existence through success. 

This is what we were told and then proceed to teach our children the same. 

We take this into adult life and use discipline to mask our own self rejection, created through the idea of not being enough. 

Discipline guarantees a result, an arrival in the future and this becomes more important than the means but obviously the means will determine the end. 

If the means is more important than the individual, then the individual remains in a constant state of lack despite any success. 

If a man feels unworthy, incomplete, less than others, he will cling to discipline as a substitute for his own lack of self-acceptance. 

I did this for many years until I realised that freedom is a starting point, not a result of prolonged discipline. 

Up until this point, discipline for me was a form of self denial and self harming. 

It has been written that discipline leads to freedom and whilst I understand this, it can also suppress our fear of not being enough. 

My own experience has led me to realise that freedom leads to a prolonged self-discipline independent of self worth. 

Self-discipline is an extension of freedom, peace and love. 

 It frees us to be curious and to learn more of ourselves from a position of self-acceptance.