S5 Ep14: Discipline is Active Conscious Awareness in Practice
Discipline and its uses
The word “discipline” gets tossed around a lot. Often, it’s attached to a concept of doing something with full attention, within rigid parameters, and with no room for mistakes. Too little discipline and shit doesn’t get done. Your art isn’t made, your practice isn’t improved, and you leave a bad impression of yourself.
What if I told you that’s not the truth of discipline? What if discipline is less rigid and more about mindful, consciously aware practice?
A different approach to discipline
Discipline is not extreme willpower to get the job done. Instead, it’s an idea of active, conscious awareness to move yourself and your goals forward.
Life is in a constant state of motion. As part of that, change is the only constant. For the most part, there are three ways to live life.
1. Let life live you. Mostly you live by rote, routine, and habit, letting whatever happens, happen.
2. Curl up in a ball and await death. Life sucks, there’s little to no point in anything, the world is coming apart at the seams, so why bother?
3. Take the wheel and drive your life. You do things to live your life, make choices and decisions, and seek growth, change, and so on.
These are not absolutes, other ways fall between these.
Mindfulness is the core of discipline
There are two lies about how art is made that often derail a burgeoning artist. The first is that you must be uniquely skilled and talented, gifted, born to this world entirely to make your art and be a wild success as a bestseller, storied painter, world-renowned chef, and the like. Only those so endowed are worthy.
The second is that only by rigid, strict, ongoing, never-ending practice and extreme willpower can you succeed or be worthy of calling yourself an artist. Only those who give hours of their life, their time, and sacrifice to it are worthy.
Discipline begins with mindfulness and choosing to do your work.
Discipline is active conscious awareness in practice. Recognizing and acknowledging this shows you that it’s easier to act on your goals and create what your heart seeks to share with the world. Practice is important, but perfect practice through strict discipline is not real. Your work - and the choices and decisions that go into it that lead to doing it- is discipline.
This week’s Applied Guidance for Mindfulness Tool:
Is there something that you have desired to do but put off doing? Write it down. Also, write down why you haven’t done it yet, any reasonable or unreasonable reasons behind that, and anything else that comes to mind.
Then, work out how to do it. Write that down, too.
Now – do it. Get to it. Discipline yourself to begin.
Blogs: titaniumdon.com and mjblehart.medium.com
Original cover art artist Fe Mahoney: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TaliasInspirations