“But… how can I have a life? My hair is a mess! ”

There are two sources for this week’s arti­cle, besides my twisted lit­tle head. First, I received a ques­tion from some­one who attended our tele­sem­i­nar. The ques­tion basi­cally asked, …is it pos­si­ble to live the life I want to live?

The writer real­ized that she had some not so help­ful “Rock Beliefs” (from my book, Liv­ing Life in Grow­ing Orbits) around work–

” …that you have to work hard to get by. And that good peo­ple are hard workers.”

The sec­ond source was a typ­i­cally great blog post by Brazen Careerist Pene­lope Trunk, called “How to have more self-discipline.” Here’s an impor­tant line:

“But some­thing I’ve noticed in the last year is that most of our hap­pi­ness is actu­ally depen­dent on our self-discipline.”

So, what’s all this have to do with self-esteem?

Well, talk about buzzy top­ics. Most peo­ple claim to have lousy self-esteem, and this gets the blame for lots that isn’t work­ing. The think­ing is that, if only I felt good about myself, every­thing would mag­i­cally fall into place.

Empha­sis on magically.

The prob­lem with such an approach is that mag­i­cal think­ing, while appear­ing in movies with alarm­ing reg­u­lar­ity, sim­ply does not cre­ate results in the real world. What’s required is a shift in think­ing, and then the dis­ci­pline to enact the new thought.

Used effec­tively, strength­en­ing one’s self-esteem is beneficial.

Most, how­ever, do not work on their self esteem. Most blame oth­ers for their per­ceived lack of it. Thus, most use “I need to develop my self-esteem” as another way to stay stuck, and to have some­one else to blame. My favourite? One woman blamed her inabil­ity to get her life in order on her mem­ory of her father drag­ging her out from under a table when she was 8. Yikes.

A good use of self-esteem is to let go of both judg­ing and blaming.

To get there, every­one and every­thing has to be let go of. What I mean is this: our norm is to look around us both for what is hap­pen­ing to us and how we are react­ing to it. The Bud­dha said, “Life is unsat­is­fac­tory [dukkha] pre­cisely because of desire and aver­sion.” We see a moment in our life, and rather than hold it loosely and let it go, we cling to our belief that we are a poor, per­se­cuted wretch, or we cling to our fan­tasy that, if only I have the right affir­ma­tions, things will change.

Things, how­ever, are neu­tral, and your per­spec­tive about them shifts only when you shift.

Back to judg­ing and blaming.

Have a breath, and look around you, right now. Notice the peo­ple that are in your life (or notice that no one is there,) notice your sit­u­a­tion re: money, “stuff,” rela­tion­ship qual­ity, sex­ual sat­is­fac­tion, career, cre­ativ­ity, life sat­is­fac­tion, depth of self-knowing, etc.

Have another breath. Now, with fer­vour, say: “Absolutely every­thing that has to do with my life, to this point, is due to the choices I have made.”

Have another breath. Say, “The way it is, right now, is sim­ply the way it is. Get­ting down on myself changes noth­ing. Hav­ing cheery thoughts changes noth­ing. Instead, here is what I choose to do next.”

This is approach­ing self-discipline.

I guess what I’m say­ing is that it’s silly to wait around for “things to change.” Typ­i­cally, we get into the “loop” of think­ing that shift­ing where I am requires all kinds of other stuff first (approval, feel­ing good about myself, that some­one other than me to give me some­thing, or behave dif­fer­ently, etc.)

The hard real­ity of life is this:

If you want your life to be dif­fer­ent,
you have to live your life dif­fer­ently.

With­out com­plaint, and with­out judge­ment.

Com­plaint: we are adept at look­ing around and see­ing oth­ers, and judg­ing that they “have it easy.” They have what they want, or appear to. I’ve had clients say, “Every­one I know is in a great rela­tion­ships, except for me.” Even if this were so (Hint: it isn’t) so what? Any­one in a good rela­tion­ship is engag­ing in their rela­tion­ship in ways that work. That’s all.

Oth­ers com­plain that self-discipline is hard. Of course it is! Easy is doing what you always do, and thereby get­ting the same crappy results. The key to all of this is drop­ping cling­ing, includ­ing to complaining.

Judge­ment: A judge­ment is sim­ply another way to avoid doing some­thing different.

Often, peo­ple who stop, for exam­ple, blam­ing their par­ents for screw­ing them up, shift to blam­ing them­selves. It seems to be an improve­ment, but in actu­al­ity, it’s the same silli­ness with dif­fer­ent packaging.

Now, the most impor­tant use for non-judgement is to stop mak­ing prat­falls “bad.”

We all screw up, reg­u­larly. We will com­plain. We will com­pare. We will judge. We will pro­cras­ti­nate. The key is to let such things be. Feel, them, express the feel­ing, move on.

Self-discipline involves actu­ally starting.

One illus­tra­tion of this is some­thing I do to myself all the time. I reg­u­larly notice how sel­dom any­one com­ments about my blog posts. I can get quite down as I think about this, and typ­i­cally decide to stop writ­ing — this hap­pens twice a month. I sulk, and I stew, and often gripe to Dar.

And then, I go to the com­puter and write the next article.

I may indeed stop writ­ing some day, but that will be because I think I’ve said all I want to say. I won’t stop because I’m caught in judge­ments. I’ll just have those, get them out, have a breath, and get on with what I’m get­ting on with.

Next week, a few ideas about devel­op­ing self-discipline.