People look for the shortcut. The hack. And if you came here looking for that: You won’t find it. The shortcut is a lie. The hack doesn’t get you there. And if you want to take the easy road, it won’t take you to where you want to be: Stronger. Smarter. Faster. Healthier. Better. FREE.
To reach goals and overcome obstacles and become the best version of you possible will not happen by itself. It will not happen cutting corners, taking shortcuts, or looking for the easy way. THERE IS NO EASY WAY. There is only hard work, late nights, early mornings, practice, rehearsal, repetition, study, sweat, blood, toil, frustration, and discipline. DISCIPLINE.
THERE MUST BE DISCIPLINE.
Discipline: The root of all good qualities. The driver of daily execution. The core principle that overcomes laziness and lethargy and excuses. Discipline defeats the infinite excuses that say: Not today, not now, I need a rest, I will do it tomorrow.
What’s the hack? How do you become stronger, smarter, faster, healthier? How do you become better? How do you achieve true freedom? There is only one way. THE WAY OF DISCIPLINE. (Jocko Willink, Discipline Equals Freedom: Field Manual MK1-MOD1, Expanded Edition, 2-3, emphasis original)
Created in the image of the Divine Warrior (Ex 15.3; Ps 78.65), you are a warrior. This is the calling given to you by birth about which you have no choice. You are either a faithful or unfaithful warrior, but you are a warrior. Warriors have a mission. I wrote to you about your mission a while back. You can find those letters here and here. The only way to achieve the mission is through discipline. You want your disciplines to become habits, routines and automatic responses to given situations. However, no matter how ingrained your habits become, discipline will always be required. There will always be a pull toward sloth and, consequently, atrophy. You must resist this. You resist through discipline.
Discipline is training to accomplish a mission. This training involves the correction of wrong and unproductive behavior as well as strengthening your abilities to meet challenges to achieve the mission. The two are interrelated. You bring your mind, will, emotions, and body under control in order to direct them toward positive ends. Discipline is not done for discipline’s sake. We discipline ourselves for a purpose, a goal. These goals may be short-term goals with clear, measurable characteristics at a point in time (for example, a bench press 1RM or a certain amount of money earned), or they may be ongoing purposes that are measured by progress over time (for example, staying healthy or becoming a better husband and father). Whatever the nature of the goal, discipline is the process by which you achieve the goal. Discipline is the ability to maintain your focus, not allowing the extraneous and distracting to overcome you.
Discipline is a fight; a fight against a disordered self and creation that is resistant to change. But you are a warrior, called and equipped to fight this fight; to shape the creation into order. This fight begins with you: your body, your mind, your will, your emotions.
In good circumstances, discipline begins when you are children, imposed on you by your parents. Your mother and father are called as parents to train you, telling you what to say “no” to and what to say “yes” to. Parents are to drive foolishness–rebellion against God and his wisdom–from your hearts with the rod of correction and instruction in righteousness (Pr 13.24; 19.18; 22.15; 23.13, 14; 29.15). The calling of fathers and mothers is to set you in order, to arrange your lives according to God’s wisdom.
When you are young, discipline primarily comes from outside of you. But the goal of parenting is to train you in order that you might learn how to train yourselves. Hearing, seeing, and receiving wisdom through the rod and instruction were always aimed at you treasuring wisdom in your hearts so that you would see its beauty, desire it, and seek after it (Pr 2.1-5; 4.20-27). Progressively, as you grow older, you must fully own the responsibility of your mission and, therefore, the discipline to achieve it. This must be the case whether you had faithful parents or not. Sitting around wishing things had been different in your childhood, that you had parents who had trained you is a waste of time and energy. You can’t change the past. All you can do is deal with your present reality and work with what God has given you in his providence. Don’t sit there and mope and wallow in self-pity. You must take up the mission. That is still your responsibility. No one else can do it for you. Others can only give you wise counsel, but they can’t force you to walk in the way. If you do not learn how to discipline yourself, you will not escape discipline. No one can. You will either discipline yourself or you will be disciplined by others. You will mature in wisdom, growing in self-discipline, or you will be a fool and have situations and others beat you in the form of loss of jobs, relationships, criminal punishment, or in a myriad of other ways.
Self-discipline is key to accomplishing your mission. Indeed, self-discipline is a fundamental part of your mission. Remember, you are a plot of earth, created from the dust of the ground. From you will come either good fruit or thorns and thistles. Much of what determines what is produced is how you cultivate the soil. Before you can impose order on the world and make it productive, before you can be trusted with this greater responsibility, you must first learn how to handle what you have. If you can’t order your own person, how are you going to bring order to the world?
Self-discipline is freedom. It is the freedom from being controlled by outside circumstances as well as the whims of others. Even in unpleasant circumstances over which you have no control, you can still be free. Circumstances and people don’t dictate your attitude (cf. Phil 4.10-13). Self-discipline keeps you in control of yourself so that others can’t manipulate you. Those who lack self-control (literally, the ability to hinder one’s spirit/breath) are like cities broken into and left without walls (Pr 25.28). The lack of self-control, the ability to discipline yourself, leaves you vulnerable to attack by others.
Self-discipline or self-control, however, leaves the walls up to guard you against the enemy. You are to be a walled city, a plot of earth with boundaries that protect you from the outside and allow you to move freely inside in order to accomplish your mission. Freedom is not life without limits. Freedom is the ability to be what you were designed to be. You are not free to be a woman, for instance. There are boundaries, walls that must be recognized.
Discipline begins, then, with self-knowledge. You must know who you are and what you were designed to do. (Again, refer back to the “Mission” letters.) You must recognize your limits and work within them to maximize your potential. Knowing your boundaries aids you in determining your focus, keeping you from setting your eyes on the ends of the earth (Pr 17.24), thinking you can be whatever you want. You are wasting your time and energy on worthless pursuits if you don’t discipline yourself to stay within your God-given boundaries.
God sets broad boundaries for men and women and, then through his providence, he sets specific boundaries on each individual that range from physical ability to the place you are born in the world to the intellectual resources with which you have to work. Your limits must be tested to discover what God may have hidden. “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; it is the glory of kings to search a matter out.” (Pr 25.2) You have to test the limits of your strength physically, mentally, and emotionally. Sometimes this will result in injury, pain, and frustration, but then you know your limits. You back off and re-focus.
As Jocko alluded to in the opening quote, there is no hack, no shortcut, and no magic formula to self-discipline. You know who you are and what your mission is. Everything that contributes to the accomplishment of that mission you say “yes” to. Everything that doesn’t contribute to the accomplishment of that mission you say “no” to.
“It’s just not that simple.” Yes, it is. The concept of discipline is simple. It’s the practice of discipline that is difficult. It is difficult to say “no” to what you want to do at the time. I have dealt with many people through the years who, when it came right down to it, just don’t want to do what is necessary to get the results they desire. They want to keep doing what they are doing with different results. They will whine, complain, and moan, not because the answer is complicated, but because the work is difficult. The way you overcome this is just do what is necessary; tell your body what it will and will not do. Paul, speaking about self-discipline, says this to the Corinthians,
Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. [Note the mission] Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified. (1Cor 9.24-27)
You tell yourself what you will and will not do. As Jocko says in another part of his book Discipline Equals Freedom, “’How do I get tougher?’” Be tougher. ‘How can I wake up early in the morning?’ Wake up early. ‘How can I work out consistently every day?’ Work out consistently every day.” (12) When people say, “Well, I’m just not motivated,” all they are saying is, “I don’t feel like doing it.” Part of discipline is doing what you don’t feel like doing because it is the right thing to do and contributes to your goal. The farmer doesn’t want to weed the garden all the time. The athlete isn’t always motivated to lift and run. A husband is not always excited about going to a job. A father is not always thrilled about dealing with disobedient children. You don’t feel like praying or reading the Scriptures. You’re tired. You don’t want to deal with it. If you let these feelings dictate what you do, if you let your “lack of motivation” determine your goals, it will be like a creeping disease. “A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come on you like a robber and want like an armed man” (Pr 6.10-11; 24.33-34). Your lack of discipline–slothfulness–will rob you of your goals.
Your emotions must not be what trains you. You must stay focused on the prize. Proverbs deals quite extensively with emotions, especially anger. A man given to anger is one who lacks self-control; he is controlled by his circumstances. He believes his anger demonstrates power. It doesn’t. It demonstrates weakness. His outbursts of anger reveal a feeling of loss of control and helplessness. He is trying to regain control of the situation through force. We feel powerful when we’re angry because it gives us tremendous focus. However, not being able to control our anger, while giving us focus, causes us to lose perspective. Not being able to control your anger will cause you to act foolishly (Pr 14.17, 29) and stir up strife (Pr 15.18). There will be stiff penalties to pay for uncontrolled outbursts (Pr 19.19). However, a man slow to anger is “better than the mighty; and he who rules his spirit than he who takes a city” (Pr 16.32). Anger itself is not evil. Jesus was angry (Mk 3.5). God is a God of wrath. There are times to be angry. But anger must be under control and serve the mission. The difference between sinful, unproductive anger and proper anger is discipline, keeping anger within boundaries and focused on righteous ends. It must be made a servant and not allowed to be the master.
While Proverbs focuses much on anger, the same could be said for other emotions as well. They must be servants. They must be made servants to your mission. Discipline is able to keep focus through the emotions, give them proper expression, while always keeping them under control.
Disciplines of the body will aid you in disciplines of the mind. Body and mind are integrated. The rod can drive foolishness from the heart (Pr 22.15) and “blows that wound cleanse away evil; strokes make clean the innermost parts” (Pr 20.30). There is a connection between bodily pain and the discipline of the heart/mind. Physical pain trains. When you are a child, physical pain comes through the rod. (And if you grow up to be a fool, then the rod will continue to be used; Pr 26.3.) As you grow older and self-discipline, you learn how to inflict pain on your own body. Whether it is the pain of sleep deprivation, physical exercise, eating certain foods and avoiding others, or other areas, physical pain in many forms is a part of discipline. No pain. No gain. Pain is a part of life. Like anything else, it will be your servant or your master. You will either inflict on yourself, using it as a servant, or others will inflict it upon you as your master.
Some will speak of “spiritual disciplines” over against or distinguished from disciplines of the body. Though the category of spiritual disciplines can be helpful in some ways, I am cautious about using the phrase. Spiritual disciplines, especially in our time, tend to be understood as set over against physical disciplines. Weight-lifting is a physical discipline. Reading the Scriptures is a spiritual discipline. One deals with your body while the other deals with the immaterial part of you and your relationship with God. Where this dichotomy is present, the thinking is wrong. As mentioned earlier, blows that wound cleanse away evil. The rod drives foolishness from the heart. The Scriptures know nothing of these divisions. Weight-lifting is a spiritual discipline, and reading the Scriptures is a physical discipline. Training my body, bringing it under control, and keeping it as healthy as I am able, sharpens my mind with which I love God (Mt 22.37). Reading the Scriptures involves my physical body. We are not compartmentalized creatures. Everything we do must contribute to our mission of bringing order to our lives and the creation around us. This includes prayer, reading/hearing the Scriptures, caring for our bodies, as well as other disciplines. You are not fulfilling your mission if you are well instructed in the Scriptures but you neglect to subdue your body. Neither are you fulfilling your mission if you seek to subdue your body but neglect being instructed in the Scriptures. Every discipline contributes to the mission.
The benefits of discipline are numerous. Here are a few. Discipline reduces anxiety. Because you have a focus, you know who you are and what you are doing, you are not being pushed and pulled by every whim that comes along. Anxiety is created when you feel that you are out of control. Discipline doesn’t allow what everyone else thinks and demands of you to control you.
Discipline cultivates strength. The more you practice something, the better or stronger you become. This is true, of course, with physical exercise. The more the muscles fight resistance, the more they grow to adapt to the stress. The same is true mentally and emotionally. The more you discipline yourself, the tougher you become. The more you face your fears with disciplined behavior because they are obstacles to your goals, the more you will overcome them and the stronger you will be the next time.
Discipline makes you productive. The disciplined farmer who goes through the daily grind eventually sees fruit. When you employ positive disciplines in your life, disciplines governed by your God-given mission, you will see results; they may not be immediate, but you will see results.
Discipline yourself. You are a warrior. Discipline is the path to victory and freedom. Discipline yourselves to receive wisdom by listening to good counsel, not being arrogant. Discipline yourself physically to maintain a healthy body and sharp mind. Discipline your minds through reading and listening to that which contributes to your mission. Discipline your emotions, making them your servants. Discipline yourself so that you may be free.
For Christ’s Kingdom,
Pastor Smith
