[Neurons] 2025 Neurons #6 THE STRETCH OF DISCIPLINE

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2025 Neurons #6

February 10, 2025

Discipline: The Personality

Factor You Love to Hate #6

 

THE STRETCH OF DISCIPLINE

 

Discipline inherently requires a stretch.  It requires that you keep
stretching whatever you're dling by taking it up a notch, by increasing the
time, the effort, the weight, the distance, etc.  In his book on Flow,
Csikszentmihalyi (1990) described the stretch of discipline in these words.
"The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to
its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and
worthwhile.  Optimal experience is thus something that we make happen." (p.
3)

 

This describes the design and purpose of a discipline.  That's what happens
when you learn the art of discipline.  Yes, discipline is "a course of
study" and "a course of action," a regime that gives you a planned strategy
for how to do something, and it is also a stretch.  Actually, stretch
defines what we experience as the effort within a disciplined action as well
as life.  When I feel that my reading and research is stretching me, it
requires more effort on my part.  It's the same with lifting weights.
Repeating what I can already do offers no stretch. It's when I push things
just a little bit more, when I put in just a little bit more effort, then I
feel the stretch.

 

Without effort in whatever you are doing (and in everything that you do),
your knowledge and skills will become dormant, taken for granted, and will
become stale.  Keep that up and the skills will begin to deteriorate.  Your
mind and your body needs to be challenged so that you stretch your thinking,
your competencies, and your body.  That's when you grow.  That's what makes
your life richer and deeper.

"The most enjoyable activities are not natural; they demand an effort that
initially one is reluctant to make.  But once the interaction starts to
provide feedback to the person's skills, it usually begins to be
intrinsically rewarding." (Flow, 1990, p. 68)

 

Jack Welch is credited with having invented, or at least popularized, the
idea of stretch goals.  He did that in General Electric; it was his way of
bringing challenge, excitement, and engagement into the work place.  Stretch
goals cure boredom.  They cure disengagement.  They cure depression and
discouragement.  What stretch goals have you set for yourself this year?

 

We all get bored.  Do the same thing over and over and over and you'll
eventually get bored or frustrated.  Conversely, stretch goals brings joy
back into our lives.  They rejuvenate us with a fresh sense of a challenge.
When you disciple yourself to a discipline, it's always hard at first, and
so it should be.  It's new, its different, its challenging.  To perform it
you have to stretch.  Once you learn the discipline, things become easy.
Comfortable.  Now you are in danger.  Well, unless you add another level of
stretch to what you're doing.

 

The Meaning-Performance Quadrants (which includes within it the Flow Zone)
warns that we should only incrementally increase the challenge for a stretch
otherwise we create anxiety and enter into the panic zone.  It also warns
that with every stretch of behavior, be sure to add or stretch to additional
meanings so it becomes increasingly significant to you.  Otherwise, you will
get bored and complacent.  The mental discipline of adding meaning provides
a stretch for your mind.  The physical discipline of adding the next degree
of competence to your performance offers you a stretch in your neurology.
These are the disciplines of stretching forward so that you move forward in
life.

 

Add to all of this the discipline of refusing to give in to moods,
circumstances, or the chaos of everyday life.  Exercise the discipline of
saying Yes to great things by saying No to the urgent, noisy, yet irrelevant
demands.  What kind of stretch does your disciplines need to keep you fresh
and alive?

 

NEURO-SEMANTICS NEWS

.       The Next Trainers Training has an exclusive website: 

https://www.nsttegypt.com 

 




 

 

 

 



L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, ISNS

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA

meta at acsol.net

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20250209/dfd1489d/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 36723 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist8.pair.net/pipermail/neurons/attachments/20250209/dfd1489d/attachment-0001.jpg>