The Power of Discipline

I was struck today by the power of discipline. I had spent the past week practicing saxophone every day, carefully limiting myself to about 20-25 minutes in order to keep my appetite sharp to play again the next day. Consumed by Father’s Day activities over the weekend, I was unable to practice on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Slightly dismayed at the prospect of missing out on crucial days of playing, I nonetheless dutifully set up the horn Monday evening for some late-night practice. I couldn’t have predicted what happened next.

Rather than backsliding because of my lost days of weekend practice, I found my abilities vastly increased since I last played! I was able to play longer, sweeter notes and run through scales with refreshing ease. Every note was a joy to play, which incidentally is the ideal I strive for at all times on the sax.

I realize now that I had been focusing on the negative effects of missing a little bit of practice, and completely forgetting the positive effect that an entire week of dedicated practice would bring about. Two ideas spring from this realization:

1. Discipline is extremely powerful. It’s amazing what repeated practice of an important or valuable action will do for you. You will become great! One of my favorite authors, Matthew Kelly, compares discipline to water in a creek. He says that practicing something consistently is like the water of a creek, which sends a small amount of water through the creek every second. The creek begins very small, but over time (we’re talking thousands, even millions of years) it carves out a larger space for itself in the rocky bed of the creek. Eventually, the water of the creek wears away more of the rock, and the creek becomes a river. Now if you had taken millions of gallons of water and splashed it onto the creek bed all at once, like a tidal wave, it wouldn’t have carved out a river. It would’ve made a big mess, dried up, and looked as if nothing ever happened. But the dedicated, consistent stream of the creek is unstoppable. Yes, it takes time, but the result is impossible by any other method.

2. Rest is important in any routine. I found that the weekend of no practice actually helped me more than it hurt me. Marathon runners actually build rest days into their intense workout routines. Anyone who exerts themselves greatly must rest, or they will end up hurting themselves in the long run. Therefore, rest is vital to any routine of discipline or practice. 

In the story of creation in the first chapters of Genesis, God creates the universe in six symbolic days, then rests on the seventh, known as the Sabbath Day. This is not just a whimsical detail of the story. It is meant to demonstrate to us the importance of rest in routine. If God Himself rested after doing His work, doesn’t that mean that each of us needs to learn to take a load off? I certainly think so. And for your sake, I hope you do, too, Dear Reader.

 So I close by asking you, what is your discipline that you have neglected?  Exercise?  Reading or writing?  Some form of athletics?  Music?  Whatever it is, I urge you to be creative in how you approach this discipline.  Practice it consistently, making sure it can easily fit into your daily routine.  Practice it wisely, finding efficient (and perhaps new) ways to become dominant at the skill or ability you value.  Finally, practice sparingly.  Be like the water in the creek, just a little bit each day.  Don't overdo it, and you'll often have the desire to practice consistently.  And when you don't?  You won't have the excuse of "it takes too long."

Happy practicing, my friend.

Determinedly,
Joezilla

Why We Fear Habits

Dedicated to the memory of Stephen R. Covey.

It all started with a toothache. Enjoying a lavish all-you-can-eat dinner in the middle of a vacation with my family, I happily chomped into some peel-and-eat shrimp—and discovered I had not peeled as thoroughly as I should have. The result was a sharp pain in one of my molars, that sudden and unexpected kind of pain that scares as much as it hurts, thanks to its uncertain origin.

But in this case, I knew the feeling all too well. This strange toothache likely meant the beginnings of a chipped tooth, a minor dental malady I’d experienced the year before.

My Mom suggested I see the dentist ASAP upon arriving home. I resignedly agreed, reflecting on my decided lack of flossing since my last visit. I have an excellent dentist, and I have made it a sort of personal tradition to try to buoy his faith in mankind by showing for appointments with impeccable flossing habits—the Holy Grail of dentistry. Having kept a dreadful routine of biweekly or—I shudder to admit it—monthly flossing, I felt in no condition to visit the dentist any time soon.

But my Mom replied—and note this well, dear reader, because it is the core of what I have to say here—“Don’t worry. You can accomplish a lot in a little time.” I resolved then and there to floss that very night—which I just did before writing this. I may wake up tomorrow with slightly sore and swollen gums. It will be up to me to work through the initial phase of discomfort and ready myself for my impending dental visit. And if I stick to it, I will be fine. My Mom was right—a lot can be accomplished in just a little time.

We are afraid to revive neglected habits. Why? Because we fear that we will not be able to surpass or even reach our prior achievements. Can the former runner still run that 6-minute mile? Can the high school clarinetist still hit those high notes? Has the history buff forgotten who the 18th President was? It would take a long time to remaster these skills or relearn these fields of information, and always with the looming uncertainty in the background, the question of creeping Doubt: “Could you still be any good?”

The question, though, is irrelevant. People pursue passions because they love them, not just because they are proficient at them. Generally the two go together anyway, but even a rank amateur is still, as G.K. Chesterton pointed out, a “lover” of the thing pursued, because the word “amateur” literally means “lover.”

So if this is your fear, cast it out for the irrelevancy that it is. Perhaps you will only run an 8-minute mile now—but the point is, you’ll be running a mile again! And the same could be said for any revived skill or hobby.

The other fear we often face in reviving an old ability is more absurd, but perhaps even more common: we avoid reviving a habit simply because we fear we might not keep up the habit. Let’s face it, we’ve all been there. We start a habit, it goes well for three days, or maybe a week—and then it all goes down the drain. Something comes up; life gets in the way, as it is wont to do. How is the busy working man or woman supposed to find time to pursue passions?

Hmm. This is a tough conundrum, isn’t it? Well, actually, no. It’s not. There’s a simple solution, and here it is.

Set aside a small amount of time each day (between 5 and 15 minutes) to devote to practicing/building/enhancing/expanding/exercising/refining/reviewing whatever it is that you want to improve. It’s not rocket science, but the two ingredients essential:

1. Small amount of time (5-15 minutes). Less than 5 minutes is so inconsequential as to be nearly pointless, and is easily overlooked or forgotten in a busy schedule. More than 15 minutes begins to be a serious problem for those same busy people. But 15 minutes or less is impossible to refuse. If someone can’t set aside 5 special minutes out of their day, they need to fix their schedule so that they can.

2. Everyday. Fitness guru Jack LaLanne, who died seriously ripped at the age of 96, always insisted that a healthy person work out every day—never miss a workout, even if it has to be a small one. Now for Jack LaLanne, this meant several hours of swimming and weightlifting. For us, it might be a 5 minute jump-rope session, 10 minutes of studying Spanish, or 15 minutes of noodling around on the piano. But the consistency is the point. In his excellent book The Rhythm of Life, Catholic author Matthew Kelly points out that coastlines are changed by daily, repetitive crashings of water against rock. One splash of water, no matter how large, will not reshape an entire coast. Only the reliable, regular waves, rolling in from the deep blue day after day, year after year, century after century, can change the shape of a continent. The force of habit, says Kelly, repeated day after day in a disciplined routine, can have the same effect by reshaping one’s life.

So why worry about dropping a newly-acquired habit? Set a modest goal, and go for it. If you don’t succeed with that, figure out why. If it was a problem of willpower, gather your spirit and try again. If it was a problem of circumstance, address the circumstance or alter the goal.

I believe that the world would be a much greater place if everyone was actively involved in some passionate pursuit of a hobby, skill, sport, art, craft, or otherwise that adds to the world in some way, even if it is just their own world or those the ones closest to them. The human being is a wondrous creation capable of many wondrous things.

So what are you going to start going today? Start a new hobby, or dust off an old one. Give yourself the opportunity you need to, in Stephen Covey’s memorable words, “sharpen the saw.”

Good luck, and God bless you!

Determinedly,

Joezilla

The Solution

Sometimes it's the most obvious advice that we need to hear most often and most repeatedly. So let's sustain that custom with today's brief post.

No matter what problems you are facing, prayer is solace, solution, and the way forward. Whatever is not right in your life, whether you know what that is or not, begins to be solved when you sit in silence and set yourself to commune with your Creator. All will be well. As Boyd Bailey says, "Be still, listen, and let Him love you and revive you."

It is no wonder that prayer is one of the most common characteristics of the saints. Prayer is an immediate way of getting closer to God. We are called as Christians to live our lives so as to bring ourselves closer to God. So why do we waste so much time thinking about the grass of the field, which is thrown into the oven tomorrow, when God is right there waiting for us?

It is quite literally true to assert that God has all the time in the world; He can wait.

But can we?

What Was I Thinking?

I've been thinking a lot lately. Perhaps it is disconcerting for you, dear reader (if, in fact, you exist), that there are times when I'm not thinking a lot. No matter; because, if you must know, I have been thinking a lot lately about the importance of thinking. It has come to my attention yet again just how important it is to keep careful control over our thoughts.

No, I did not come to such lofty conclusions on my own—I was handily conked over the head with them by a book I recently began reading, entitled As A Man Thinketh (by James Allen). It's one of the oldest self-help books I've ever seen (excepting the Bible, of course), a short and delightful read, voiced in that wonderfully dressed-up and wordy style of a long-forgotten and much classier age—it was written in 1902. There is something in this book's message that resonates with me deeply; each paragraph sends an arrow of inspiration straight to my heart, and empowers me. Here's an example from page 26:

Law, not confusion, is the dominating principle in the universe; justice, not injustice, is the soul and substance of life; and righteousness, not corruption, is the molding and moving force in the spiritual government of the world. This being so, man has but to right himself to find that the universe is right; and during the process of putting himself right, he will find that as he alters his thoughts toward things, and other people, things and other people will alter toward him.

You said it, my friend! Isn't that awesome? I think we all have experiences like this—this deep sort of inspiration can be triggered by the written word, the spoken message, or, perhaps most dramatically, in the vibrant poetry of music, which, being indescribable in words, is among the most mysterious and inexplicable forms of inspiration. I think that when we are blessed enough to find one of these sources of individual inspiration (individual, because different people respond to different sources), we need to preserve them, hold them close, and remind ourselves of them constantly.

Now I know what you're thinking: "Really? Remind yourself of it constantly? That seems like overkill." Well, if that's overkill, then overkill is the secret to success. If someone wishes to be good, why not pursue goodness at all times? In fact, how can one possibly attain goodness if he doesn't constantly work to keep it at the forefront of his mind? We know what human nature is like—if we don't master it and use its great potential for good, then it changes according to environment and circumstance.

As human beings, we are wired to be creatures of habit. We are constantly urged by our nature to settle into routines. It's sort of a biological law of inertia. We have the choice, then, to settle into routines that will slowly destroy us, or routines that lift us up and improve our lives (and, therefore, the lives of those around us). Another favorite source of inspiration, the motivational speaker Matthew Kelly, loves to repeat this challenge: "If you can tell me your habits, I can tell you what kind of person you are." He's so right! It's the habits that make or break us. I'm going to be keeping that in mind, hopefully for a long time. I suggest you do the same.

Inspiredly,
Joezilla