I was working with a client recently on creating time blocks for creating more focus in his work. It’s not exactly a groundbreaking idea, and we had talked Cal Newport’s Deep Work before, but he admitted that he hadn’t actually tried it yet. He was worried about being too rigid – i.e. too consistent, too structured — the scary story of self-discipline becoming a prison.

Here’s the metaphor that I gave him: when you consciously create your routines (vs trying to mimic what someone else does or what you think you should be doing), following them is like following the GPS in your car. When it’s time to start something, your routines help you start it. When it’s time to rest, your routines tell you to rest. When you’re interrupted, your routines tell you what to do.

But what if you make a wrong turn? What if you miss a day? What if you get distracted? What if something unexpected happens?

Well, when you make a wrong turn the GPS simply responds with:
​“Recalculating…”

Hearing that word, the client visibly relaxed, face softening and shoulders dropping. He dropped his guard against an opponent he just realized didn’t exist.

The GPS doesn’t give up. It doesn’t criticize him or punish him. It doesn’t leave him floundering to figure out how to get back on course. It says “Recalculating…” And a moment later it gives him a new next step. He’s free to ignore that one, too — and again will be met with “Recalculating…”

You see, discipline gets a bad rap. It has been culturally intertwined with pressure, rigidity, perfectionism, intensity, ego, and never having enough willpower to make yourself do all the things you really should be doing.

Two topics that I help a lot of clients with are discipline and wisdom, and usually when I’m helping them with one they’re worried about losing the other: If they have discipline, they don’t think they’re allowed to follow their knowing in the moment. If they’re following their knowing, they’re not allowed to create consistency in their life.

Fortunately, that’s hogwash. But it’s an innocent concern, and it’s often part of the journey of realizing how discipline and wisdom harmonize with each other.

Discipline, as I approach it, is structure. It’s making a chair to sit on. It’s knowing when an appointment begins and ends. It’s taking a break for my noon ‘reboot’ routine every day. It’s focusing on one thing at a time. Well-designed discipline creates just the right amount of consistency and flexibility, and can look totally different for different people and in different contexts.

If discipline is the only thing you had guiding your life, it would naturally feel like a matter of life and death. You’d be pushing yourself to check each box, to never miss a day for each of your habits, and attempting to shame yourself back into action whenever you fall short. That’s a scary world, because it’s a world that has forgotten about wisdom.

Wisdom is your inner knowing. It’s your wisdom that knows how much structure will be helpful for you. It’s your wisdom that knows it’s time to let a habit go or to start a new one. It’s your wisdom that has you follow through on your systems, and it’s your wisdom that has you do something different. Your wisdom helps you make the rules, and also know when to break them.

When, god forbid, we don’t perfectly execute our discipline, we are still swimming in an ocean of wisdom. If we don’t get it ‘right’, we still have access to our inner knowing before we ever made up ‘right’ and ‘wrong’. And it always knows what to do!

So next time your discipline doesn’t fit, let your mind quiet to listen for the inner GPS of wisdom, and you might just hear the words “Recalculating…”

Michael McDonald :: Transformational Coach :: authenticintegrity.com​

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