Everyone knows discipline is a good thing, but most people only know discipline as ‘doing things you don’t want to do.’ Sure, sometimes that’s what discipline is, but that’s not a very useful way to define what you actually have to do to be disciplined. Discipline is a little more complicated than that, and some of us need a bit more direction to understand how to be disciplined.

Dr. M. Scott Peck in his book, The Road Less Traveled, did the work for us. Once again we stand on the shoulders of giants. Peck identified in his vast experience as a psychiatrist that many of his patients had a discipline problem as the root of their many other issues. Working with many patients to solve their mental health issues, he developed the four tools of discipline.

Peck identified the same thing the Buddhists did-that life is difficult, and problems are a part of life that we cannot avoid. The four tools of discipline are what Peck called the means of experiencing the problems of pain in a constructive way. We cannot escape the suffering that comes with life, so we might as well learn to deal with it in the most constructive way: being disciplined.

The four tools of discipline are:

1. Delaying Gratification
2. Accepting Responsibility
3. Dedication to Truth
4. Balancing

Delaying Gratification:

“Delaying gratification is the process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain first and getting it over with. It is the only decent way to live.”

-M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Delaying gratification is the part of discipline that we think of when we hear ‘doing things you don’t want to do,‘ but the mistake often made is in assuming the statement implies absence of pleasure derived from doing things that we enjoy.

Life doesn’t have to be joyless for it to be disciplined. Being disciplined means taking care of business before pleasure. It means not avoiding the painful but important things. It means dealing with issues and solving problems before rewarding yourself with recreation and relaxation. Being disciplined means prioritizing our responsibilities and scheduling those obligations before the comforts and pleasures.

A simple mistake that many make when they have to do something that involves discomfort is trying to ‘trick’ themselves into doing it by saying I’ll do (insert pleasurable activity) first, so that I can (insert excuse to avoid responsibility) before I do (insert uncomfortable responsibility) so that its not as bad.

For example, I get home from work and say I’ll go to the gym after one episode of a show so I can relax after a busy workday. And what happens? Any motivation to take care of responsibilities fades after engaging in pleasurable activities. The responsibility is put off until the next day, and soon days or weeks pass with little to nothing being accomplished.

That process is backwards. Discipline isn’t removing all joy from your life. It’s making comfort and pleasure second in the hierarchy of priorities to your responsibilities. We all have a hierarchy of priorities, and the reason we lack discipline is found in the structure of that hierarchy. We all want to do the things that bring us pleasure, but when we prioritize those things over our obligations or over solving our problems, those issues only grow and fester until they poison everything else.

Sometimes when I get home from work, all I want to do is lounge and read, or maybe take a nap. But I know that if I do, then the likelihood that I will go to the gym or take care of other responsibilities after that will decrease dramatically. Most of the time, if I sink into a comfy spot with a book and a snack, it’s game over.

Now, sometimes I can still get myself back up and do things I don’t necessarily want to do, but I will give them less time and less effort. My brain is already supplied with dopamine, and it’s hard to do anything that involves discomfort after that.

I succeed much more often when I take care of business first and then I sit down and read. And it feels so much better taking care of my responsibilities first because then I don’t have any stress from avoiding them poking at the back of my mind the whole time. My responsibilities are either taken care of or there was progress made towards their resolution, and I can actually relax. It’s common sense, but we mess it up all the time. Delaying gratification is taking care of responsibilities before engaging in pleasures.

Accepting Responsibility:

“We cannot solve life’s problems except by solving them… I can solve a problem only when I say, “This is my problem and its up to me to solve it.””

-M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Nobody is coming to save you. Your problems are your own, and you are your own savior. Be your own hero. If you want to accomplish your goals, solve your problems, change some defect, or develop better habits, accept the personal responsibility to do so.

Life often deals us with hard choices. You can either become resentful of having to make painful choices, or you can own them, make the decision, and move forward with life. We spend so much time avoiding the responsibility to make painful choices or feeling sorry for ourselves for having to make them that the suffering caused by our avoidance is often much worse than the suffering involved in dealing with it expeditiously.

Avoiding or ignoring responsibility doesn’t make it disappear. Blaming others or playing the victim doesn’t change the fact that you own your life, and if your life isn’t what you want it to be, that it’s up to you to do something about it. That doesn’t mean everything that happens to you is your fault, but it’s up to you to do something about it if it causes you distress.

For example, if you want to be physically fit, you have to accept that it is your responsibility to exercise, eat healthy, and get adequate rest. It’s not easy, but no amount of complaining about your genetics or blaming your job for lack of time, or excuses made to avoid exercise will remove the responsibility that you have to do what must be done to get the body you want.

Your genetics aren’t your fault, but you still have to work out. If your job is time-demanding, then you either have to manage your time better or get a job that allows you to have a life. You can make all the excuses you what, but unless you start working out and making healthy choices, don’t blame anyone but yourself if you dislike your body.

Nobody is shoving unhealthy food in your mouth. Nobody is forcing you to stay up all night doom-scrolling. Nobody is stealing your keys so you can’t drive to the gym. The only thing that is really getting between you and what you want is accepting the responsibility to solve your own problems.

Sometimes the problems we face are with other people. When dealing with issues in relationships, it’s important to hold yourself to a high standard and be accountable for how you may be contributing to the problem. It’s easy to cast of the blame on the other person especially when strong emotion is involved and they are being stubborn or unreasonable, but none of us are perfect, and there is almost always something you could do better if you take an honest look at yourself.

Dedication to Reality:

“For truth is reality. That which is false is unreal. The more clearly we see the reality of the world, the better equipped we are to deal with the world. The less clearly we see the reality of the world-the more our minds are befuddled by falsehood, misconceptions and illusions-the less able we will be to determine correct courses of action and make wise decisions.”

-M.Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

When we cannot see reality for what it is, we will continue to make poor choices. When we cannot self-reflect and accept our weaknesses, admit to fault, or be accountable for our actions, we forfeit personal growth. It can be hard to accept the truth and change the way you see the world or the way you see yourself, but until you do, you will stay in falsehood, butting your head against a wall, wondering why you can’t change your life by hitting your head harder.

How can you be a good partner if you can’t take feedback or criticism without starting an argument or bringing up whatever you dislike about them? How can you get healthy when you are so deluded that you’re complaining about being fat after stuffing your face with fries? How can you solve your problems when you refuse to admit that you have a problem in the first place? How can you grow when you’ve been doing everything in your power to avoid your problems?

It’s part of human nature to avoid pain, but our avoidance directly conflicts with our own self-interest. Only by having the discipline to deal with pain can we accomplish that which best serves our own self-interest. If you prioritize comfort over truth, the result will always be more suffering because avoiding the truth doesn’t make issues go away, it only makes you more disillusioned. You have to be dedicated to reality so you can make the right choices and acknowledge problems for what they are: your problems.

Sometimes it can be difficult to fully understand what the reality of situations are. When emotions are high and we are dealing with a lot of stress, it’s even more difficult to see things for what they really are. We all have biases and blind-spots that influence the way we behave, and unless they are pointed out, we continue to operate on false paradigms. Sometimes even after they are brought to light, it’s difficult to understand our biases, blind-spots, and assumptions for what they are, and why we have them.

That’s why it’s important to be grounded. One of the best ways to do that is to have an accountabilibuddy. An accountabilibuddy is someone you can trust and talk to about your problems, someone who cares about your growth and isn’t afraid to tell you if you’re the problem. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our own heads that a trusted outside perspective is exactly what we need to reveal our biases.

It can be discouraging and disappointing to receive feedback from your accountabilibuddy, but you can’t see what you can’t see, and if you are truly dedicated to reality, then you cannot shy away from criticism and accountability. I have one such friend who I consulted on an issue I’m dealing with, and the feedback he gave me hurt to hear. He didn’t justify the way I acted; he held me accountable.

Sometimes when your blind-spots are exposed, it reveals something ugly in you that you would’ve rather kept in the dark. But what is worse, to see yourself as you are and been given an opportunity to change even though it’s painful, or to be ignorant of your defects, continuing to hurt yourself and the people around you?

Sometimes being dedicated to reality is the most painful part of discipline because sometimes the reality is that you are the problem. Sometimes the reality is that you have a bigger, more painful issue that you must solve if you want a chance to solve your current one. But if you can’t see the issue, you can’t solve the problem. It’s like trying to hit a target in the dark.

The second method to staying grounded is to be a scientist. What that means is to ask the difficult questions and to experiment to get closer and closer to the truth.

Say for example, you are having issues in a relationship. Ask yourself the difficult questions: Am I the source of the problem or contributing to it? Did I do the best I could’ve done? Am I avoiding responsibility in some way? Is this problem the actually issue, or do the roots go deeper? Am I actually trying to make things better, or am I being prideful and stubborn because my feelings got hurt? Is this person’s behavior feedback about a blind-spot I have?

That line of questioning will reveal a lot, but taking it to the next level of problem-solving would be to start experimenting. Give the question an honest answer, and then decide on a course of action to prove your theory true or false. Do what is required to answer the question, gather your results, adjust when necessary, and repeat the process until you can see reality for what it is.

Another useful method of experimentation is to experiment with other people’s perspectives. Put yourself in their shoes and ask questions. Is this person going through something that is creating stress and causing them to act out? If I was this person how would they think about how I am behaving? Can they see something I can’t? Do they have a deeper issue that is the real source of this problem?

If you come to conclusions about reality without letting your ideas be challenged, then expect to be deluded. Does a judge issue a sentence before a defendant is thoroughly questioned and the case well-investigated? Does NASA send astronauts into space before testing every piece of equipment? No. They operate in reality, which means they challenge what appears to be the truth until reality is clear. If you want to be grounded, do the same.

Balancing:

“By this time I hope it is becoming clear that the exercise of discipline is not only a demanding but also a complex task, requiring both flexibility and judgement. Courageous people must continually push themselves to be completely honest, yet must also possess the capacity to withhold the truth when appropriate. To be free people we must assume total responsibility for ourselves, but in doing so must possess the capacity to reject responsibility that is not truly ours…. In other words, discipline itself must also be disciplined.”

-M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled

Discipline must be firm, yet flexible. For example, if you take the discipline of exercise too far and you over-train, exercise with an injury, or fail to give yourself the proper rest and nutrition, then your discipline is going to work against achieving the desired results; it is simply Cause and Effect. The Principle of Polarity warns us to avoid extremes, even in good things. It requires discipline to establish a consistent exercise routine. It also requires discipline to be balanced to exercise at the right time, in the proper amount, at the right intensity to inspire growth, and to give your body what it needs to recover.

If you struggle with emotional control, and you are trying to develop emotional discipline, then it will be necessary to suppress emotions sometimes, but it wouldn’t be true emotional discipline if you trained yourself to be a soulless robot. Having emotions is a natural part of being human, not something to eliminate because you often express them poorly. Learn to express them constructively.

Sometimes you need to get mad, and sometimes it’s better to reel that anger in. When someone accidentally crosses a line, maybe you should cool the fire, but when someone is constantly crossing your boundaries, you should be mad. Being emotionally disciplined is using anger and hurt to inspire the establishment of boundaries. Emotional discipline is controlling that anger enough so that when you have to establish or re-enforce that boundary, you do so in an effective way that will ensure it doesn’t get crossed again.

If you crashed out every time a boundary was crossed, you would soon end up alone and with a bad reputation. That is not emotional control. If someone crosses a boundary and that makes you upset, use that anger to inspire you to confront that person, and reel it in enough to clearly communicate the boundary. That’s what earns respect. That’s having emotional discipline. If you freak out every time something doesn’t go your way, people will lose respect for you and treat you like a child because you’re acting like one.

Are you in part responsible for why that boundary keeps getting crossed? Did you ever clearly communicate the boundary? Could the other person be unaware of how strongly it affects you? The suffering involved in confronting that person about the boundary is surely preferred to continuous suffering that comes with having your boundaries crossed. Are you willing to delay the gratification of keeping the peace to solve the problem?

I personally do my best to be disciplined with my spending. Sometimes I end up being a scrooge, and my wife helped me learn how to balance. I love my wife, and I would give her the world if I could, but then I would be broke. So, I have to know when to say ‘no’ to things, and it hurts to say no to her sometimes, but that is discipline. However, there have been times when she has convinced me, mostly by being her lovely self, to spend money on things or experiences that I would’ve never spent money on if I was single, and I ended up having an amazing time.

She helped me learn that money is meant to be spent, not hoarded. I learned that if I don’t use money to enjoy life, then what is the point of working so hard? Having money is good. Saving money by not spending it on things you don’t need is good. But would I know the enjoyment of a sunset cruise dinner and a weekend spent lounging around a Hawaiian hotel pool, eating and drinking to my hearts delight with my beautiful wife if I refused to spend money on things I don’t need?

Some life experiences can only be had by spending money. Balancing is knowing when to be disciplined with your money by saving and budgeting, but also setting some funds aside to get enjoyment from life. Growing up poor, I had a belief that I didn’t need nice things, and that spending money on luxuries was bad because it meant that I wasn’t being wise with my money.

Balancing with money for me meant living by the Seven Cures for a Lean Purse. Being disciplined with money meant I delayed gratification by taking care of necessities before my “wants”, and saving before anything else. I accept responsibility for the fact that I have to be wise with my money to provide for my family because my mishandling of finances could negatively impact us all. I am dedicated to reality by acknowledging the fact that I only make so much and therefore can only afford so much, and I have to live within my means. And I balanced so that I could still afford some of the pleasures of life and give my family enjoyment when I can.

One of the reasons I like the four tools of discipline so much is because the Eclectic Method prizes practicality. Self-improvement ideas always sound good in theory, but unless we can practically apply concepts to achieve real results, then the idea is useless.

When it comes to developing discipline, the four tools of discipline provide a method that has practical applications, and I know so because I have applied them in my own life. I have seen results. But don’t take my word. Trust but verify. Find the truth for yourself. Apply the four tools of discipline to your life and see the change for yourself.

Citation:

Peck, M. Scott. The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values and Spiritual Growth. Simon & Schuster, 1978.

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