[Neurons] 2025 Neurons #7 THE COMMITMENT OF DISCIPLINE

[Michael Hall]

From: L. Michael Hall

2025 Neurons #7

February 17, 2025

Discipline: The Personality

Factor You Love to Hate #7

 

THE COMMITMENT OF DISCIPLINE

                             

When you have studied "a course of study" and from that developed "a course
of actions," a regime by which you develop an expertise to the extent that
you are recognized as a 'disciple' of that domain, not only have you become
a highly disciplined person, but in that experience you have demonstrated a
high level commitment.  And because you have, you now experientially know
the commitment of discipline.

 

That kind of discipline usually takes a long time.  It's not achieve over a
weekend training, nor even over a year of specific training.  It usually
takes several years as Anders Ericckson noted in his longitudinal studies on
expertise.  And because it does, that explains the need for a no-matter-what
commitment, a commitment that you make which is not conditional on your
moods, emotions, energy, circumstances, etc.  It is not, "Yes, I'm all in
... unless something more interesting comes up!"  It is more of an
unconditional commitment, "Yes, I'm all in."  Period.

 

The reason this is important is due to what has been called the whirlwind of
everyday activities.  This is also known, as the chaos of everyday life.
That which mostly threatens your discipline, your consistency, regularity,
and persistence are not the big problems and challenges that arise in life.
No, it is the busyness of everyday life.  And that busyness are all of the
things that can so easily accumulate unless you so No and unless you take
charge of your schedule.

 

Stephen Covey addressed this in his book on 7 Habits of Highly Effective
People with his now famous Importance / Urgent Quadrants.  There he talked
about the irrationality of living your life putting out one fire and then
another and another and devoting yourself to the things that make the most
noise and creates the most sense of urgency.  The discipline that handles
all of that is a commitment to what is most important in life.  And that
calls for prioritizing your values so that you know your highest values.
That's the commitment of discipline.

"Productivity is the vaccination against day-to-day firefighting-the urgent
and crisis demands of the day. ... It's possible for a person to have an
overwhelming number of things to do and still function productively with a
clear head and a positive sense of relaxed control." David Allen (Getting
Things Done, p. 3)

 

Now without that commitment, the chaos and whirlwind of busyness will
dominate.  Now you know why we have put so much emphasis on Question-3 of
the Well-Formed Outcome questions: Why is that important to you?  Yet
answering that one time is not sufficient.  Whatever you start with, you
then have to ask it another 5 to 7 times.  In that way, you will elicit your
own personal value hierarchy about the given subject.

 

But don't stop there.  Once you have you two or three highest values that
you say is important- that's your espoused values.  But do you live them?
Do they define and govern and inspire your everyday discipline?  To make
sure they do, you will want to integrate what you know into what you do.
That's where the Mind-to-Muscle pattern comes in to empower you as a
practical way to live out the commitment of your discipline.  Now you're
ready to commitment your time, your money, effort, and mind to that which
you say is the most important.  To be "all in," do that.

 

 

ATTENTION ---- PEOPLE IN SOUTH AFRICA 

AND THOSE WHO WANT TO VISIT

 

There will be a Master Practitioner course in South Africa this year led by
Jason Schneider of Florida --- interested??

              https://nlpmastery2025.com/.


 

 

 



L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, ISNS

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA

meta at acsol.net

 

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