One person I interviewed regarding self discipline and addiction added a dimension that was interesting. "As you work on building self discipline," Steve said, "don’t become obsessed with it. Make sure you have moments for luxurious time for yourself."He also suggested to see Christ’s model of self discipline as directed to two arenas – Christ’s discipline was people oriented not production geared, and was focused on the advancement of The Kingdom.
My experience counseling those who lacked self discipline was that unless they became obsessive about scheduling and structure to begin the growth process, they didn’t make the switch. It seems to break the addiction to ease, one has to obsess on self discipline for a time – say, 30 days – until it becomes the beginnings of a habit. Then back off some and allow oneself to enjoy the luxury of spontaneous time. This regimen may not be a necessity for all people. Starting easy and building up discipline worked for some. But obsession for 30 days is the approach that I’ve observed that brings the quickest change.
Regarding Christ’s motivation for discipline being relational Kingdom building, I must confess that my high discipline score has for most of my life been production oriented for approval and recognition. I suspect there‘ll be a smidgen of that contaminating the rest of my life, but the preponderance of self discipline now is relational oriented. And the results are so much more gratifying – a shift from “see Ray run. See how fast Ray runs.” To “who could benefit from Ray’s love and encouragement today?” Not perfect, but growing in that direction.
1 comment:
Well Ray, I have been trying to work on balance and discipline for several years now and I can not seem to get balanced yet I have achieves some discipline in trying to achieve balance. It has to do with whether one puts on both socks and then adds both shoes, or if you start with the left and finish with the right, or if you do each foot separate or work independently. I think I have balance in that I try all approaches evenly and I have discipline in that I try to vary to find the correct methodology, ....BUT I can not conclude that one approach is better than the other. No matter what I do, for that particular session one side wins and the other side loses! I have tried to let left win for a whole day but then I always compensate by letting right win the next day. This is definitely a lesson in discipline and in balance but I seem to be no closer to understanding which is right and which is wrong. Perhaps this is as it is with all of life, we must just remember to be fair and allow both sides to have their victories. Perhaps I did not learn the lesson right, IS THERE as right answer??
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