Discipline. Savor the Moment.
Discipline. If not a core principle, is a requisite skill for truly being human.
You can exist. You can walk among us. You can take up space and tap resources. But you are not where you should be.
Without it, you cannot do the thinking, planning, preparation, and deliver the performance necessary to land on the beachhead that you envision.
If you cannot envision such a beachhead. You have no Discipline.
Is this a condition for all time? Is it equal in your life? No. We as humans come and go with our discipline. Some of us get it sooner than others. Some have it in some aspects of our lives and not others. For some, it's a constant battle that they win. Others it's a constant battle that defeats often.
Personally, it's a constant battle. I suffer my own demons. The skill I have developed over time to combat those demons is introspection. I tap into introspection constantly (thank you Hank Rollins for helping me discover that word and meaning when I was around 16).
This internal GPS tells me that I am off course and why. I work on rerouting constantly. The GPS is also wrong from time to time.
A key feature of Discipline is to know when you don't have it. Or when you have ceded it to one of your demons. And the ability and capacity to take that shit back from them. Put them in their place. And bow to them for the good fight it was. You now recover for the next battle. You now get back on the path you need to be. If you don’t; taking space and using resources, not living.
Another key feature of Discipline is the humility to admit that you don't have it. To own whatever is in your way. To, for a moment, set aside a few things so that you can recover. Because if you don't, you are going to slide. You will revert to something only taking space and using resources.
Discipline is really the only feature of achievement.
Do you savor your achievements that your Discipline delivers? If you cannot savor the accomplishment, why do it? Celebrate the chance to be alive and breathing to paraphrase Tool. Again, if you don’t, you are just taking space and using resources. Not savoring is often because you have either decided that achievement is owed to you, you have not truly earned it and know it, you have some demons working against you that you need to battle and are presently not of use to anyone including you.
You owe Discipline respect. Respect it by savoring what you have reaped. Celebrate the win. Celebrate those around you who are part of your drive to stay Disciplined and achieve. Let them say thank you and nod your gratitude.
Savior the moment. Not indulge. Savor. Those are very different things. Indulgence ultimately takes you back to taking up space and using resources versus being human.
Savor pain. It's earned and a helluva teacher and confirmation of arrival to a point. What’s learned and taken from it?
Savor the errors, missteps, miscalculations, and fuck ups. Own those. Deconstruct them to a useful level to learn from them. Savior that moment that you realize you did not have it, assessed that, owned that, developed the lesson learned, and the confidence to share it. Savior the opportunity to teach others through your shortfall. Not failure. Failure comes when are just taking space and using resources. There is always some success in a DO.
DO only happens for the Disciplined.
Savor is only for the Disciplined.
