Why discipline leads to greater happiness

The basic attitude of doing (or not doing) everything just because it feels good or not so good is a problem. In fact, many people don't even set plans or goals because they don't know how they will feel that day, or they postpone plans if they don't feel so good.

Now you may ask why this is a problem? It is important to have discipline exactly when you are not happy with your current course of life and your basic satisfaction. This is because discipline is an essential element to living a fulfilling, self-determined life.

Self-discipline - How to develop free will

When someone is disciplined or has self-discipline, that is a person positioning their consciousness (i.e. free will) as the boss of their emotional and mental systems and their body. Free will is something that moves outside of the body, mind and emotions. It can be seen as an observer and spectator of the game of life. Free will is the consciousness that exists outside of your current form. 

This consciousness is there to observe and analyze the information it receives from the emotional, mental and physical systems. This is so that you can use the information received from the 3 systems to make an analysis of the given circumstances, and then use free will to make a conscious decision. 

This ability leads you to be perceived as a person in control and clear. Or in other words as a person who is able to decide, influence and navigate himself. Someone who is not exclusively controlled by their emotions, thoughts or body.

Conversely, if a person does not have self-discipline, he is almost incapable of making decisions. He is always dependent on what his mind, emotions or body is saying, thinking or doing. People who lack self-discipline use their emotions as guideposts, rather than being able to view them as simply another source of information among many. 

If you engage in seeing, hearing, feeling and understanding what your emotions, thoughts and body are telling you, then you can use that information to make a decision with your free will. This is in contrast to the approach of people without self-discipline, who automatically conclude at the first negative emotion, thought or ache that something should not be done.

The Pièce de Resistance - or the inner resistance

We probably can't talk about self-discipline without also talking about inner resistance. When we talk about discipline, we are always talking about a person doing something, regardless of how that person feels at the moment. They do what is necessary to achieve their goals, regardless of whether they like the activity or not. A self-disciplined person takes action even though no one is telling him what to do and even though no one is watching. All these examples have to do with the fact that this person can organize himself and, above all, that this person does not let go even though there is some resistance.

Inner resistance can show itself in the form of some opposition. This resistance can come from within yourself or it can come from the outside. Often the resistance comes from old traumas or from parts of the person that are blocked. Be it beliefs or blockages, memories of childhood or school days.

To make an example of how such a resistance can look like from the inside. Let's say you made a massage appointment for Saturday. Sometime on Saturday morning you get up and realize that going to this massage appointment takes some effort. You have to get up, take a shower, take the bus and the train, and then walk, all in the pouring rain. All these thoughts and efforts can now be felt as resistance to actually going to that appointment.

A person who has no discipline will say to himself that he does not want to get up and do all these things to get to the appointment and probably will not go. A disciplined person will also have these resistances, but will then, by means of the information available to them from the 3 systems (emotions, mind and body) and by their free will, weigh up whether to cancel the appointment or go anyway, even though the way there is tedious and unpleasant.

Partly it is because the resistance is a message to cancel something because it is not good for you at that moment, or just a whim of the inner state. This inner resistance can be a belief, a behavior pattern, or a trigger from past experiences that should be processed. People with little or no self-discipline often misinterpret resistance. Whether this is resistance thoughts, feelings or even physical resistance, the same conclusion is always made immediately, and that is to stop immediately or go in a different direction.

The important thing to know is that your emotions, body and mind are just giving you information to weigh what you can do. And it is not the total truth, as our upbringing, traumas and beliefs color our perception of reality. You have to weigh this information and then make a decision of your own free will - as best you can. 

Learned self-suppression

People who have great difficulty with discipline often actually have a problem with being completely suppressed, or having been completely suppressed.

They then interpret discipline as not having their inner free will anymore. This is bad and does not lead to good results. However, what is often not clear is that these people are already suppressing themselves all the time, with their own behavior. They are cheating themselves with the avoidant behavior, without knowing it and especially without knowing why. They destroy with their behavior, driven by their momentary feelings, the possibility to reach goals in the future or to develop healthy and well.

Discipline is not the ability to suppress one's feelings, but rather the ability to do things in spite of a palpable resistance. To work with resistance means to feel it, to see it, to hear it, to find out why the resistance is there and then to dissolve it. This can be learned very well in therapy or with a coach. People who have little or no self-discipline lead a very passive life and are victimized by external circumstances.

People with discipline, on the other hand, take active responsibility in their lives and their decisions, thereby making themselves the forger of their own happiness and thus coming out of the victim role of their past.