What does self-discipline mean to you?

I’ve put a lot of thought into this lately. To me, self-discipline is the exercise of will in service to one’s ideals. It’s a tool that I use to help me shape my life. It’s what I use to do what’s right, or change what’s wrong.

It all starts as we’re growing up. Kids don’t have self-discipline. Nobody starts out with any impulse control or willpower! So our parents impose discipline on us, helping to emphasize the consequences of breaking rules or doing things that are fun in the moment but would be bad for us over the long term. (Like neglecting to go to bed on time when we have school in the morning… or never brushing our teeth!) And someday, eventually, we’re mature enough to recognize those types of situations for ourselves. We learn to take over this task. We internalize the disciplinarian, and impose our own sanctions when we screw things up. This might take the form of adding guilt to the natural consequences of whatever we’ve done, or engaging in negative self-talk as a kind of ‘punishment’.

I realized recently in a discussion with a friend that I don’t always do things quite that way, though. The gears in my head don’t seem to follow a straightforward ‘crime and punishment’ model.

I had encouraged my friend to have self-compassion when he screws something up, and he was explaining that it seems dangerous to relax, like if he starts being nice to himself, he’ll get lazy about fixing things he doesn’t like. And it made me curious, about the differences between that approach and mine.

I feel that self-compassion still leaves space for the love you show yourself to be tough love. It’s not about being nice so much as it is about being understanding, and on occasion, forgiving. But being forgiven for screwing up doesn’t mean you get to stop trying to do better. My motivation to do better doesn’t come from trying to avoid pain (self-inflicted or otherwise). It comes from having an ideal of who I want to be and how I want to move in the world. It comes from having an identity anchored in particular positive qualities, and the integrity to strive for expressing that identity as fully as possible. It comes from leveraging shame, instead of guilt.

Wait, what? I’m using shame to effect positive change? Oh yes, my friends. Guilt is generally characterized as the bad feeling you get about the things you’ve done, whereas shame is the bad feeling you get about who you are. Many people assert that shame is always bad for you, because changing your behavior is the accessible leverage point for improving the things you feel guilty about and getting out of those bad feelings, but shame is slippery and doesn’t give you a useful escape. But when I do something that conflicts with my idea of who I am, when I’m not living up to the person I want to be… I am ashamed of my behavior. Not just guilty about it, but ashamed, because in my own eyes and in the eyes of others I am not living up to the person I want to be.

So the shame isn’t directed towards myself, but towards my actions, and that’s pretty critical. It’s not what I would define as guilt, though, because it’s the cognitive dissonance of the gap between my actions in the moment and the actions I identify with the person I want to be that are the key. Guilt, I feel, arises from a simpler ‘I broke the rules’ place.

So I take a clear look at my motivations when I’m faced with this dissonance, and I try to understand why I’ve done the things I’ve done… and forgive myself for those human foibles and frailties. Without understanding how something happened, I have less idea of how I can do better in the future. And then I make a plan about how I can repair the harm done to myself or others, and decide how I want to act differently, moving forward. Step by step, I lead myself forward into being the person I want to be. This kind of shame sparks a desire to do better–to *be* better.

And I get from here to there with self-discipline. Self-discipline, where I exercise my will to make positive change. Where I do what’s right, instead of what’s easy. Where I force myself to face my mistakes, and sit with the pain of that for a while, because sometimes the hard things are what move us forward. But it’s not a punishment. It’s just the process of holding myself to my own high standards. Even when it looks pretty tough, it’s love that I deserve.