Self-Discipline: Acceptance
June 6th, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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The first of the five pillars of self-discipline is acceptance. Acceptance means that you perceive reality accurately and consciously acknowledge what you perceive.
This may sound simple and obvious, but in practice it’s extremely difficult. If you experience chronic difficulties in a particular area of your life, there’s a strong chance that the root of the problem is a failure to accept reality as it is.
Why is acceptance a pillar of self-discipline? The most basic mistake people make with respect to self-discipline is a failure to accurately perceive and accept their present situation. Remember the analogy between self-discipline and weight training from yesterday’s post? If you’re going to succeed at weight training, the first step is to figure out what weights you can already lift. How strong are you right now? Until you figure out where you stand right now, you cannot adopt a sensible training program.
If you haven’t consciously acknowledged where you stand right now in terms of your level of self-discipline, it’s highly unlikely that you’re going to improve at all in this area. Imagine a would-be bodybuilder who has no idea how much weight s/he can lift and arbitrarily adopts a training routine. It’s virtually certain that the chosen weights will be either too heavy or too light. If the weights are too heavy, the trainee won’t be able to lift them at all and thus will experience no muscle growth. And if the weights are too light, the trainee will lift them easily but won’t build any muscle in doing so.
Similarly, if you want to increase your self-discipline, you must know where you stand right now. How strong is your discipline at this moment? Which challenges are easy for you, and which are virtually impossible for you?
Here’s a list of challenges to get you thinking about where you stand right now (in no particular order):
- Do you shower/bathe every day?
- Do you get up at the same time every morning? Including weekends?
- Are you overweight?
- Do you have any addictions (caffeine, nicotine, sugar, etc.) you’d like to break but haven’t?
- Is your email inbox empty right now?
- Is your office neat and well organized?
- Is your home neat and well organized?
- How much time do you waste in a typical day? On a weekend?
- If you make a promise to someone, what’s the percentage chance you’ll keep it?
- If you make a promise to yourself, what’s the percentage chance you’ll keep it?
- Could you fast for one day?
- How well organized is your computer’s hard drive?
- How often do you exercise?
- What’s the greatest physical challenge you’ve ever faced, and how long ago was it?
- How many hours of focused work do you complete in a typical workday?
- How many items on your to do list are older than 90 days?
- Do you have clear, written goals? Do you have written plans to achieve them?
- If you lost your job, how much time would you spend each day looking for a new one, and how long would you maintain that level of effort?
- How much TV do you currently watch? Could you give up TV for 30 days?
- How do you look right now? What does your appearance say about your level of discipline (clothes, grooming, etc)?
- Do you primarily select foods to eat based on health considerations or on taste/satiety?
- When was the last time you consciously adopted a positive new habit? Discontinued a bad habit?
- Are you in debt? Do you consider this debt an investment or a mistake?
- Did you decide in advance to be reading this blog right now, or did it just happen?
- Can you tell me what you’ll be doing tomorrow? Next weekend?
- On a scale of 1-10, how would you rate your overall level of self-discipline?
- What more could you accomplish if you could answer that last question with a 9 or 10?
Just as there are different muscle groups which you train with different exercises, there are different areas of self-discipline: disciplined sleep, disciplined diet, disciplined work habits, disciplined communication, etc. It takes different exercises to build discipline in each area.
My advice is to identify an area where your discipline is weakest, assess where you stand right now, acknowledge and accept your starting point, and design a training program for yourself to improve in this area. Start out with some easy exercises you know you can do, and gradually progress to greater challenges.
Progressive training works with self-discipline just as it does with building muscle. For example, if you can barely get out of bed at 10am, are you likely to succeed at waking up at 5am every morning? Probably not. But could you master getting up at 9:45am? Very likely. And once you’ve done that, could you progress to 9:30 or 9:15? Sure. When I started getting up at 5am consistently, I had already done it several times for a few days in a row, and my normal wake-up time was 6-6:30am, so that next step was challenging but achievable for me partly because I was already within range of it.
Without acceptance you get either ignorance or denial. With ignorance you simply don’t know how disciplined you are — you’ve probably never even thought about it. You don’t know that you don’t know. You’ll only have a fuzzy notion of what you can and can’t do. You’ll experience some easy successes and some dismal failures, but you’re more likely to blame the task or blame yourself instead of simply acknowledging that the “weight” was too heavy for you and that you need to become stronger.
When you’re in a state of denial about your level of discipline, you’re locked into a false view of reality. You’re either overly pessimistic or optimistic about your capabilities. And like the trainee who doesn’t know his/her own strength, you won’t get much better because it’s unlikely you’ll be able to hit the proper training zone by accident. On the pessimistic side, you’ll only pick up easy weights and avoid the heavy ones which you could actually lift and which would make you stronger. And on the optimistic side, you’ll keep trying to lift weights that are too heavy for you and failing, and afterwards you may either beat yourself up or resolve to try harder, neither of which will make you stronger.
I have personally reaped tremendous benefits from pursuing the path of self-discipline. When I was 20 years old, I lived in a small studio apartment, and my sleep hours were something like 4am to 1pm. My diet included lots of fast food and junk food. I didn’t exercise except for sometimes taking long walks. Getting the mail seemed like a significant accomplishment each day, and the highlight of my day was hanging out with friends. At the end of a month, I couldn’t really think of many salient events that occurred during the month. I had no job, no car, no income, no goals, no plans, and no real future. All I felt I had was a lot of problems that weren’t getting any better. I had no sense that I could control my path through life. I would simply wait for things to happen and then react to them.
But eventually I faced the reality that trying to wait out my life wasn’t working. If I was going to get anywhere, I was going to have to do something about it. And initially this meant tackling a lot of difficult challenges, but I overcame them and grew a lot stronger in a short period of time.
Fast forward fourteen years, and it’s like night and day. I get up at 5am each morning. I exercise six days a week. I eat a purely vegan diet with lots of fresh vegetables. My home office is well organized. My physical inbox and my email inbox are both empty. I’m married with two kids and live in a nice house. A binder sits on my desk with my written goals and detailed plans to achieve them, and several of my 2005 goals have already been accomplished. I’ve never been more clear about what I wanted, and I’m doing what I love. I know I’m making a difference.
None of this just happened. It was intentional. And it certainly didn’t happen overnight. It took a lot of years of hard work. It’s still hard work, but I’ve become a lot stronger such that things that would have been insurmountable for me at age 20 are easy today, which means I can tackle bigger challenges and therefore achieve even better results. If I had tried to do everything I’m doing now when I was 20, I would have failed utterly. 20-year old Steve wouldn’t have been able to handle it, not even for one day. But for 34-year old Steve, it’s easy. And what’s really exciting for me is to think of what 48-year old Steve will be able to accomplish… relative to my life path of course, not anyone else’s.
I AM telling you this to impress you, not with me but with yourself. I want you to be impressed by what you can accomplish over the next 5-10 years if you progressively build your self-discipline. It will not be easy, but it will be worth it. The first step is to openly accept where you are right now, whether you feel good about it or not. Surrender yourself to what you have to work with — maybe it isn’t fair, but it is what it is. And you won’t get any stronger until you accept where you are right now.
This post is part two of a six-part series on self-discipline: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4 | part 5 | part 6
June 6th, 2005 at 3:34 am
Hello Steve!
Thanks for the great article. I would like to tell you my short story which relates to your articles.
One month ago after your article on 30 day challange I decided to commit myself to something. At this time I thought about doing push-ups every day. However I had no idea how many push-ups I can do at all. So I decided to try. I did 10. It was hard. Then I did 20. It was even more hard but still doable.
Then I turned 30-day challange into something more: To find out my limit. I started with 20 push-ups and did +1 every day. Now I am at 49
I think I will stop with my 30-day challange when I am at 50 (today) but will keep doing 50 push-ups every day. Now I think there is no real limit of doing x push-ups. It would be better to transform this challange into doing x push-ups per time period.
And.. I love the result. And I also know the path to go if I ever want to accomplish twice as much as now.
Regards
V.
June 6th, 2005 at 4:13 am
Thankyou for another excellent article. I’m looking forward to the next 4 days
June 6th, 2005 at 4:29 am
Excellent article steve. First time, i have come across a definition of acceptance in all the years of self-help reading..by the way I am writing from India and have come to your blog via reading & admiring and implementing David Allen’s GTD
June 6th, 2005 at 6:17 am
That was an awesome post, Steve. It’s so true what you say about acceptance being the first step. Years ago I suffered from panic disorder and I was in denial of it. As soon as I admitted to myself that I had a panic problem and accepted that it wasn’t going to go away by wishful thinking, I got to work on a plan to overcome it. 1 year later I had a minimal panic problem. And 2 years later my panic was gone in all but the most extreme cases. 10 years later and my old panic-self wouldn’t even recognize the me of today; I’m doing things now that would have sent my old self to her room for a week.
When you realize that your problem is not going to magically disappear and you get busy working on solving it, you feel empowered. And acceptance is definitely the first step.
Thanks for your post, I can’t wait to read the rest of the series.
June 6th, 2005 at 6:37 am
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June 6th, 2005 at 7:56 am
Thank you Steve!!!!
Great post about self discipline, and in some ways diferent about everything I have read about the subject.
I have just 3 goals: quit smoking, quit useless webbing around (this is hard for me) and quit eating anything with refined sugar on it (some kind of diet I made which really works 4 me).
These are my 30-days goals. Can’t wait to read next posts to help me along the way.
Regards
Daniel
June 6th, 2005 at 8:16 am
since you are using a lot of phyical training analogies, do you thing there is such a thing as overtraining in self-discipline?
by the way, great blog. cant wait for the next posts in this series, and i am another one who is getting up early thanks to you.
June 6th, 2005 at 8:54 am
I very much enjoy your blog, Steve, and feel I get a lot out of it. I don’t understand why TV is such a scapegoat for you. You don’t mention people watching movies or DVD’s, playing video games, reading books, etc.
Yes, I love TV, and TV related websites. But to me it is recreation, just like the things listed above. And I think TV brings a lot of good things to life. I couldn’t give it up for 30 days.
June 6th, 2005 at 9:00 am
At 20 you were directionless, after leaving college early having a killer workload sustained by self-discipline? You must have had an intersting few years around that time. Or, maybe that was before college?
June 6th, 2005 at 10:13 am
It is very important for everyone to understand that, just like body-building, any discipline takes time and doesn’t happen overnight. Right now I’m at 35 and have many of those goals you have currently reached since the age of 20. It will take several years to get many of those goals “checked off”, but the most frustrating thing many deal with is a lack of patience. It requires a strong desire to succeed, not just because you want to, but because you know you HAVE to. I want to lose weight… if I want to live until I’m 70, I HAVE to lose weight. However, I know it will take a long time to lose what I need to lose. That’s why I’m absorbing this blog and hoping that I can start implementing some personal mental changes in order to proceed with the physical changes.
Thanks for all your work here, Steve.
June 6th, 2005 at 10:20 am
@Rich:
At 20 I wasn’t going to school. I had made a half-hearted attempt at college when I was 18 but was soon expelled — they tend to do that when you don’t show up to class and your GPA starts with the decimal point.
It wasn’t until I was 21 that I made a serious attempt at college, starting again as a freshman. I graduated three semesters later with two degrees (math and computer science) and a 3.94 GPA. Shortly after graduating I started Dexterity Software.
Night and day.
Acceptance helped me tremendously because it showed me that if I fully accepted my reality as it was, I could eventually follow a path to something better, even though it was very distant at the time. I remember saying to myself, “Well, if it takes a few years, it takes a few years.”
June 6th, 2005 at 10:41 am
@tymada:
Yes, I believe you can suffer from overtraining in the area of self-discipline. Rest is required just as it is in physical training.
This reminds me that I really should plan a vacation.
June 6th, 2005 at 11:13 am
I have read both this weeks posts on Self discipline. My view , after reading these good sensible thouhts, is that direction is the key. Basic things like planning your day the day or even week before will help to re gain control.
The ability to say no will also help in self discipline.
Brak downs could be forgiven and start again.
Creating zones in your day so that there is rhythm to your day may also help in creating this culture of self determination.
I will put these and your ideas into practise, very exciting to make fundamental change in attitude from confusion of living by the seat of my pants to declaring what my day and priorities will be.
I think scheduling your time investment to your choosen activities will help, since without allocating time ie making appointments with yourself, how can you possibly manage thses activities.
t
June 6th, 2005 at 1:00 pm
Steve: hope you don’t mind me asking, but what time do you go to bed?
Also, do have you any tips for getting a good night’s shut eye with a newborn baby?
Thanks for the blog!
June 6th, 2005 at 1:58 pm
Sluuurp…
Steve Pavlina’s rockin’ the house on his blog this week. Check out today’s post on self-discipline – bring your thirst …
June 6th, 2005 at 3:06 pm
@Tim: Most days I go to bed 10-11pm. 10:30pm is typical.
As for getting a good night’s sleep with a newborn, I’ll let you know that once I’ve learned how to raise the dead.
June 6th, 2005 at 3:56 pm
I can’t tell you how much I enjoy your site and this article. I spend untold hours reading it, sometimes compulsively reading the same articles and comments over and over day after day. Once I break that habit I can really start my other goals…
June 7th, 2005 at 3:10 am
Already enjoying this group of articles. It so refreshing to hear someone say “yes, this may take a long time to achieve”, rather than “read this and you’ll be instantly changed”
Keep up the great work!
June 7th, 2005 at 6:50 am
Excellent article as always. I too have started waking up early every single day including weekends (6AM for now), thanks to your articles. I also have been trying to get in shape for a while but one of your articles hit the nail on the head (you mentioned something along the lines of it not being a priority and thus making excuses for it). So I started biking 8 miles thrice/week and stopped eating as a hobby (nothing else to do? Why not finish up that cake I baked). I have noticed huge differences (pants are not tight anymore and I accomplish lots during the day).
I also enjoy your weight training analogies.
June 7th, 2005 at 8:36 am
steve,
dude, i know where you are coming from when you talk about setting reasonable goals, but my problem is that i need to make a lot of money, hence i had to set my financial goals for the next 2 years to be big, but i’m probably not capable of accomplishing them yet.
what do you suggest for someone in my situation?
June 7th, 2005 at 10:21 am
Ali, goals should be based on a consideration of desire and capability. If you base them on desire (need) alone, the goals may be impractical.
Part of self-discipline/acceptance is having the presence of mind to set realistic goals that you have good reason to believe you can execute. There’s little to be gained by setting goals you don’t believe you can accomplish.
June 21st, 2005 at 12:36 am
Hi Steve,
First of all I would like to thank you for such a nice article. I’m too 35 right now. I too have accomplished many things in life but you know there is still lot to do. For this we need to be Self-Discipline. I don’t have any addiction to any bad habits still I need self discipline to accomplish lot of pending targets.
Thanks again your article has motivated me and shown me the direction.
July 10th, 2005 at 5:17 am
‘A binder sits on my desk with my written goals and detailed plans to achieve them’
Can you give an example of how exactly do you go about this task or tell some thing about goalsetting? Thanks.