the Muscles of Discipline

Someone asked me to talk about how to develop and maintain discipline so that you don't fall into periods of laziness, complacency, malaise, and how to keep your motivation consistent. Well, to be honest, I don't think it's really possible, not in the way that we hope. I mean, even iman increases and decreases. We all have periods in our life where we are relatively inactive, where we don't really apply ourselves, and don't feel particularly driven. And I think that we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves if we can't maintain that perfect disciplined productive schedule day in, out.

I know I don't do that and I don't know anyone who does do that, But I have, and we all have ups and downs in our discipline. Sure. Sometimes you come across some helpful tips or advice on how to better manage your time and be more productive, and you implement that for a period of time and it works for a while. And then you sort of fall out of it and get back into a rut. And then either you come across some new tips and new advice that motivates you again and you get back into a good routine, or you just will yourself to change and become motivated again.

Either way, you go through these phases, and I don't think that that's avoidable, and I don't think it's necessarily unhealthy. I think that the real trick is developing the muscles of discipline, not so much the development or maintenance of a specific disciplined routine. You have to have the talent, the skill, the capacity to basically surrender yourself to a discipline, whether that's work related, diet, exercise, cleanliness, what have you. And I think there are two basic facets to this. One is detachment, the ability to turn off your responsiveness to your own urges, inclinations, wants, comfort, convenience, and indulgence.

And two, having an activity that helps you to do that. And it doesn't really matter what that activity is. I started working when I was seven years old on a paper route. Folding newspapers, rubber banding newspapers, or putting them in plastic bags during the rain or snow, and then carrying this big old canvas bag full of newspapers to deliver them all around the neighborhood. It was repetitive, monotonous work that had a deadline.

I would wake up at 05:30 in the morning and had to finish the route by I think 7AM. So for that hour and a half, that's what my body did. Since childhood, I worked throughout my youth every conceivable menial manual labor type job or mindless clerical work in offices and they were all a variation on that concept. The body performs a task for for a specific period of time usually over and over again during the course of a shift, and the mind is elsewhere. The same applied to boxing training.

Perhaps more than any other athlete, boxers lead a solitary life. Roadwork, shadow boxing, training on the heavy bag, training on the speed bag, doing calisthenics, skipping rope, all of these things we do mostly alone. The only thing you ever really do with someone else is sparring. It's all repetitive. It's all monotonous.

Sometimes you're practicing the same punch or combination of punches endlessly for hours. You end up having large chunks of time during the week, whether it's work related or exercise related, where your mind is detached from whatever it is that the body is doing. It's just performing tasks. All of this builds the muscles of detachment, the reflex of detachment, the habit of detachment. And just like with physical fitness, there's a muscle memory to this, and you can activate it whenever you need to.

You can flip the switch in your head that turns off your responsiveness to your own inclinations, urges, wants, sense of comfort, or interest in your own convenience. To me, this is the key to discipline. It's the ability to not care about what you want or what you're doing so that you can achieve an outcome that you want. I think it's helpful to have a discipline that you're able to be consistent with on a daily basis, but it's not as important as just developing the muscles of discipline. I watched a sixty minutes segment today about the performer Tony Bennett, who's 93 years old and suffering from Alzheimer's disease.

Yet when he hears a piano, he can launch into a one hour repertoire of songs without missing a line, remembering all the lyrics and performing it as if he's on stage. The segment suggested that this was because of his deep love for music, but this romanticizes what I think is actually a trained disciplined response. He does not need his mind to do this. He's been touring for decades, singing the same songs every night again and again and again, basically like doing push ups or throwing combinations of punches against a heavy bag. When he goes on stage, he logs out, he detaches and the trained reflexes take over.

So doesn't even matter that he has dementia, he can still do it. That to me is true discipline. So find an activity for yourself, it doesn't really matter what it is. Some activity that is repetitive and monotonous that you can do without thinking about it and just do it over and over and over again for a specific period of time every day. And this will start building the muscles of discipline, and then you'll eventually be able to utilize this capacity for productive purposes.

And it will also enable you to better deal with difficulty and even pain because it enhances your patience and your ability to detach from whatever it is that your body is feeling or going through. In my opinion, this is more important than any particular discipline routine that you may institute in your life. Building these muscles of discipline, the ability of detachment, the habit of detachment that you can utilize whenever necessary. I think this is a core aspect of being a man.