Discipline

I was thirteen and I needed discipline. I didn’t know what I needed until I started actually talking to my next-door neighbor. This man with a physique that Apollo might have wanted if the deity were actual flesh took one look at my skinny ass and told me I “look like shit.” I started working out at his house at least three times a week.

My neighbor taught me more than physical conditioning and discipline. I learned how to communicate effectively, motivate myself and treat my life with urgency. I also learned how to control my emotions by redirecting my negative feelings into positive acts or to drop the pain completely. I may have been a little robotic until I grew up more and learned through life experience why we have emotions, especially the positive ones. But, the upside was achieving, on my own before the age of twenty, two milestones that few teenagers achieve: the first house and first brand new car.

I bring up the learning experience at the hands of my neighbor to bring home that while I may write several volumes about discipline that help people understand the concept there is no substitute for learning from the right teacher. Humans need to learn from good teachers, because we aren’t born with the means to defend ourselves or to contribute to the tribe. A baby is easy meat for any predator not kept at bay by either a bonfire or a twelve-tumbler deadbolt lock set into a solid block of oak.

As the child grows up, the need for discipline and learning grows exponentially. We learn to feed ourselves by going shopping with Mom and her fistful of coupons, or crazy Uncle Frank takes us into the woods and teaches us to sharpen sticks for use on the squirrels in the park. My neighbor was the more modern version of crazy Uncle Frank and I learned how to be a complete human being.

If I believe in healthy and positive mentoring relationships as being better than any old book, why did I write this and my other books on discipline? Well, good teachers can’t reach everyone and bad teachers abound, so the legacy I want to leave behind is that of books that teach the basics of the principles needed to survive a world with 500 channels and nothing on. Or put another way, it helps for the teacher to have a book from which to start the discussion about discipline, or conjugating verbs.

So there was a long period, starting 30 years ago, where I took my education and sense of order into the Information Technology industry. The high-pressure deadlines and cooperative environment in the office meant the self-disciplined always led the pack. I thrived on writing tons of IT books, more than I have fingers and toes. And I learned the techniques that work on writers.

But, I kept being called on to fix, order and create discipline in the office. The light bulb went off and a side business was born. There wasn’t anything at the library except the occasional phonebook using four-syllable Psych 101 words. I mentored people and organizations using my neighbor’s wisdom and what I had learned speaking to other successfully ordered people.

Early on I was glad of the scarcity of discipline books because there was less noise to get in the way of the lesson. People knew about Sergeant Stryker or R. Lee Ermey yelling at recruits to teach them proper bayonet techniques. They even sort of knew about the discipline dished out by...well, stereotypically, her name is Helga or Veronica and this discipline requires costumes and safe words. This last type makes people laugh when they hear the word.

But, when I realized it was time for the teacher to write books to start the discussion about discipline so that other teachers and students had the right tools, I dreaded visiting the self-help section in the library. Imagine my surprise to find that the books were still phonebooks and the jargon was up to five syllables (progress, I suppose). Even my first three books on discipline were a little too long, when I wanted a reference work with a sheet of principles that could be hung on the refrigerator next to the report cards. And I knew this time out I wanted a partner…

Adriana came to me as a client and immediately impressed me with her wit, charm, intelligence and most importantly sensitivity; a quality that for me only shows up in my coaching, but less so in my writing. Thirty years of ordering other peoples' existence has actually turned me into a drill sergeant. You call me avert disaster, but my latest book has to provide those principles with juuuussst a liiiitttle bit more sugarcoating than I normally do for myself.

What held my interest was seeing how Adriana with her nice and sensitive personality incorporated the principles of self-discipline that I had taught without becoming a drill sergeant. I suppose the real purpose of partners is to spark new ideas.

Without further ado, Adriana and I present Discipline: Take Control of Your Life with the Ten Commandments of Life Mastery…