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DISCIPLINE

Perseverance’s essential partner.

Necessary ingredient for accomplishing.

Constantly renewing efforts to make yourself do what you believe is necessary.

Directing your unfolding ‘drama’ by adhering to mental and physical constraints.

Ceaseless exertions to motivate while developing, exercising and improving skills.

Sustaining energy and activity for long periods despite impediments or discomforts.

An encouraged societal practice that vitalizes conformity, cohesiveness and progress.

First setting a goal then overcoming primate passivity with committed, sustained activity.

Repetition with purpose ... usually to improve … embraced by achievers and abandoned by dilettantes.

For animals: An integral behavior in their drives to survive and procreate. For humans: a daily determination that is constantly threatened by distractions, excuses and a reliance on ‘tomorrows’.
 

• Perhaps you are determined by your own determination.
   
• Perhaps improving always requires discipline; perhaps that is why civilization stagnates so often.
   
• Perhaps your potential can only be realized in castigating complacency and embracing meaningful goals.
   
• Perhaps you cannot avoid feelings of guilt and shame in living a life without direction, dedication and accomplishment.
   
• Perhaps without discipline we, as a poet once admonished, “lay waste our power” … to improve ourselves and the world around us.
   
• Perhaps ambition ‘plagues’ the human psyche; perhaps those who succumb to it must resort to practical discernment and sustained vigor to ‘overcome’ it.
   
• Perhaps you will always want more than you need; perhaps attainment however mundane or lofty can be a positive motivator that builds many bridges in the process.
   
• Perhaps your imagination and astounding abilities constantly present opportunities that can only be realized by serious effort; perhaps you must become your own taskmaster in order to progress.
   
• Perhaps mundane habits such as good hygiene and manners require a certain discipline; perhaps they prepare us for developing more complex skills; perhaps without our personal prodder we remain aimless beasts.
   
• Perhaps you are constantly developing your character incrementally with a preponderance of either commitments that have reached fruition or dalliances that have served no purpose other than experiencing pleasure or avoiding discomfort.
  
  Primate penchant for procrastination plaguing you??
   

  ESSAY ON DISCIPLINE by EDWIN O’SHEA

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