Gaining self discipline

[TalkingHead]

Meditating oftenly does not help me to concentrate better on things I have to do, maybe because it relaxes me as well. Does anyone have any suggestions for becoming more disciplined; a very general question I guess.

[Korpo]

Becoming disciplined is IMO a question of repetition.

I mean - how do you stop smoking? By saying no every time. (That's how I did it) In every repetition of the choice that required discipline, it enhanced discipline a bit. It got easier to exert discipline.

How do you build discipline in meditation? By restarting and trying to get into it again after something broke your concentration. It's instilling the habit of concentration by making the disciplined choice over and over.

I don't think relaxation and discipline exclude each other, because discipline does not need to be iron-fisted. Will can be exerted strongly without strain, though it may be hard at first.

Take good care,
Oliver

[ButterflyWoman]

It's a bit like working out. You don't immediately develop bulging biceps and a six-pack stomach. You just do the workouts regularly and as well as you can and the muscles slowly tone and develop and eventually you realise you DO have a lot more strength, stamina, muscle tone, and so forth.

Meditation is the same. The benefits of meditation are cumulative, and some take time to show. The relaxation is pretty immediate (very, very good for stress management!), but other things such as increased blood flow to the brain (a documented benefit of meditation) take some time to take effect. The same is true of improved concentration and other mental benefits.

So just keep at it, regularly, and in time, you'll probably notice improved concentration and other interesting benefits and developments.

http://www.healthandyoga.com/html/medit ... tives.html

[LuXFluX]

Self discipline.....lol. I am not very disciplined. However, I am a lot more disciplined than I used to be. Self discipline goes hand in hand with completely honest self observation. Begin recording *in writing* (this is very important!) any failures in self discipline you may have. Start with simple things like maybe skipping shaving in the morning, or not completing a task fully you set out to do, like laundry. Once you have a list of easy things like this, review it. When the time comes when you feel that nagging to quit, or be lazy, on one of those simple things.....don't. The laziness is inertia. Overcoming that is difficult. *Any* forward progress is good. Compile the list, and simply do more this week than last week. Even if you only wash another load of socks, or smoke one less cigarette. If you do this, you will have an easy way of understanding the process of discipling yourself. It works very well.

If you really want to understand the bare bones process of being disciplined, grab a deck of cards, throw them in the air for no reason, and then carefully pick them up and order them neatly by suit and number. Do this once daily only because you want to become more disciplined. The results will probably be interesting to you if you keep the written journal of failures. Quitting trying is an easy to way to avoid the path of self discipline entirely also, if you have the ability. Good luck

[Palehorse Redivivus]

I agree with Korpo's point about repetition. An analogy I like is that a bad habit is like a string. Wrap it around your arms one time, and it'd be easy to break. Wrap it around your arms 50 times (i.e. the entrenched long-term habit) and it gets harder; rather than breaking through it all at once, you're going to have to break one strand at a time until one day you realize you've broken the old habit and/or formed a new one.

I've also had success with a form of self-hypnosis where you go into meditation and talk to the aspect of yourself that holds the habit as if it were a separate person, release it of the old set of commands that the habit consisted of, and give it a new one to hold onto. For instance if you're trying to stop smoking, you thank it for its service, ask it to release its beliefs and patterns associated with smoking, and give it one such as "I am a nonsmoker" (I've found "I am" statements to work well -- as you're redefining your identity here).

This probably won't completely erase a habit, you'll still have actual real life work to do, but in my experience it does loosen up a lot of the resistance.

[star]

Try removing as many blocks around your lower chakras as posible and healing those areas of psyche issues. Than try NOT acting out on your new impulses. Thats some damn School-Of-Hard-Knocks discipline for you right their! Uh.. "There!"

[journyman161]

Meditating oftenly does not help me to concentrate better on things I have to do, maybe because it relaxes me as well. Does anyone have any suggestions for becoming more disciplined; a very general question I guess.

First, I'm not sure meditation is actually any good for helping you to 'do things' - to me, meditating for a purpose, particularly one based in the purely physical, seems a contradiction in terms. Meditation, done right, is not a means but an end.

There are benefits within life to be had from the practice of meditation, but making those results the object of the practice would seem to defeat the reason for doing it. Like fighting for peace, or screwing for virginity, the object seems incompatible with the method.

However, Alpha level rhythms in the brain are a proven way for bringing focus & helping self-discipline. It may be time to investigate the holosync technologies. There's an added benefit - aside from the intellectual boost from Alpha, theta & delta can be used for meditation, & given the right software, you can introduce 'spikes' up to beta to ensure the relaxation doesn't go too far.

[CFTraveler]

I liked the second one. Sounds like a worthy endeavor.

[ejr23116]

I think that there are many ways to become self disciplined. A few that I like are:

1. Meditation. You have found that this one isn't so good for you personally. But it does wonders for me.

2. Chi Kung. I just started practing Zhan Zhuang Chi Kung as outlined in Master Lam' Kam Chuen's book "The Way of Energy". This practice will definitely build self discipline and will have numerous health benefits too.

3. Cold showers. When you frst wake up in the morning, try going to the bathroom, turning the shower on all cold and standing in it for 10 minutes. This would take you only 10 minutes a day and I guarantee would build self dicipline.

Although I have never tried it, I really like the suggestion above about the deck of cards.

Think of self discipline as mental toughness. Anyone can have it. You just need to practice.

[JoEMoNK]

Wow this is a great thread. Discipline is something I definitely need to practice and all the ideas sound very useful. I have had an easy life when it comes to discipline and I know life could be a lot better if I had a little. Imagine what a little discipline will do for my life.

Thanks