So, how are we all today? Good? Good.
Steve, I’ll understand if you don’t want to answer that. Not wearing a box at cricket can leave most everyone feeling a little cynical about the world.
But for everyone else…
Did you have to make a decision on which answer you gave? Or was it just how you felt right off the bat and you ran with it?
Or are you thinking about Steve and wondering what happened at cricket?
I’ll stop beating around the bush then, shall I?
How disciplined are you when it comes to your actions and behaviours? How conscious are you of them? Do you actually consider what it is you do from moment to moment, day to day, week to week, blah blah blah?
Or maybe a different question…
How happy are you with your life?
Steve’s no happy with a decision he didn’t make.
Are you happy with getting up this morning feeling like the south end of a north bound camel? With a mouth that tastes like toilet water, cat litter, toe jam and the crusty bits from the lid of a shampoo bottle all mixed in together? Tequila will do that, I’m told.
Did you look at yourself in the mirror this morning and dropped that classic Homer Simpson quote “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing…” How do you feel, deep down in your buyers remorse riddled soul, about that decision to eat the “serves 8” meal of rich creamy pasta that sat like a lead balloon in your gut, so you washed it down with a couple of bottles of the paired white wine (thanks for that suggestion by the way Google… 2 for 1 white wine has GOT to be a high quality selection at those unbeatable prices…) only to realise afterwards that feeling pretty sick courtesy of the “washing down” and actually being sick to empty the stomach a bit just aren’t the same thing.
Anyway…
How hard do we really think about those kinds of decisions?
How hard do we really think about ANY decisions?
Do you even make actual decisions any-more?
Or are we so auto piloted that things just happen, and we are inevitably left to deal with the consequences of the universe taking a big steamy dump on us while we painfully attempt to crawl slowly towards normalcy for the remainder of our week/year/life.
Okay, so as usual, I may be being a bit grim and mean here. I’m sure not every weekend is like that…
But, the question remains: How conscious are we in those decisions?
Because that ties in directly with why our life may be the way it is. Why it feels like it does.
How does it feel?
Because, sorry to say, no decision is STILL A DECISION…
It’s just that it’s a decision to make things so un-considered that it no longer feels like a decision. Which is EXACTLY how things stay the same for us. And how it gets frustrating, or draining, or overwhelming, or boring, or humdrum.
If we make no genuinely considered decision about how we want to feel, what we want to do, how we want life to go, then we allow life to continue the exact same way it has been because we have made that unconscious decision to allow that to be the thing that happens.
In case it’s a concern, I’m up to 12 uses of the word decision now (13 if you count this example). I’ll slow down on it in case you feel like it’s being overused. I mean, I’m good, but I’m making a decision here.
Anyway…
This is kind of where discipline matters.
If you aren’t satisfied with how things are, for whatever reason that might be, maybe its time to ask a couple of questions about what you actually want, compared to what you’ve been prepared to tolerate.
The discipline is in asking the question “what’s actually most important to me right now?” before the thing becomes just acted upon and leaves us in that same buyers remorse place of wishing that we’d actually tried on those new leggings we were thinking looked amazing enough to not bother, but unfortunately they were flesh coloured and make you look like you are naked from the waist down and we also own 4 pairs of them now too…
Taking a moment to ask a simple question before the thing.
What do I want right now?
What serves me right now?
What serves my future?
Where is the value?
Is this choice worth that sacrifice?
What is my priority here?
The idea is that you help yourself refine your choices to relatively simple yes or no questions that have answers that become more and more obvious because they offer more and more value to you now and later.
And yes, Dianna, I’m aware that this sounds fucking tedious. But how much of our feelings are said fucking tedious because we DON’T ask these questions.
The discipline is in asking these questions to get the answers that actually work for us, so that we practice this questioning enough so that we are aimed at and can get what we want, feel how we want, without needing to ask those questions forever.
That’s what discipline IS. Practice.
Admittedly, it is likely necessary to be asking questions about what you actually want to be able to answer those relatively smaller questions, but this is where we all start.
And if you’re wrong about what you wanted, you created enough discipline in asking the question that you can realign again later once you’ve figured out what you want.
Things don’t have to stay the same, if you don’t like it. Just start practicing asking yourself the question.
But you’ve got to ask yourself how much you are or aren’t enjoying your life in the first place. A bit of self-awareness never hurt. Promise.
And you don’t need to force yourself to do stuff either. Once the questions have been asked with enough practice, that mental discipline will allow for the physical discipline to follow suit too. Double promise.
You just need to start asking the question “what do I want in this moment” and answer it honestly and with a bit of conviction.
The start is the hard bit.
Ask yourself a question. It makes the decision simpler.
Make the decision. It makes the action simpler.
Own the actions. It makes your life more valuable to you.
What outcome do you want?
What decision do you want to make?
Be kind, be smart, be your best you. No bar fights.
“We all make choices, but in the end our choices make us.” Ken Levine
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