In this month’s scripted episode, I dive into the topic of discipline. Today’s show is sponsored by: Seasons of Life Memorials Music Credit (except theme): Karl Casey @ WhiteBatAudio.
If you’d like to read along:
Media Pod Smash Episode #106:
Discipline
By: Jeremy Jordan
PART 1 – Introduction
You wake up to a familiar sound. You could’ve changed it to anything you wanted, but instead, you decided to keep the same old, generic alarm noise. This morning it is more annoying than usual. The weather outside, according to the weatherman, a brisk 40 degrees. Unfortunately though, he lied; it’s actually ten degrees less than that. You want to roll over and snooze, but you know that you must get up and do all the fun things that an adult like yourself must do. What are you going to do, and how can you take this morning head on?
Crate of Red Bull or Bang? Maybe. Finger in the outlet to shock yourself awake? I’m no Doctor, but I wouldn’t recommend that. I think the most obvious and practical answer is that, you take this morning on and succeed through practicing discipline.
When I used to think of the word, the image of a person in a leather outfit, in an S&M dungeon used to come to mind…just me on that one? I always used to associate punishment with discipline, but as I grew and learned, I found that it was quite the opposite. If you listen to or read any self-development stuff, you’ll often hear that discipline actually equals freedom.
For me, the deep dive on this topic couldn’t have come at a better time. I am currently in the middle of working on my biggest and most ambitious projects yet. 31 days of content for the month of October. The Halloween dreams of years past coming to fruition at last (and I swear this isn’t going to just be one long plug for that). It’s my hope that this writing not only inspires others, but continues to keep my own flames burning. It’s been quite a bit of time since I’ve written a “meaty” journal entry, quite honestly. So, if nothing else, this will be very therapeutic.
For the purposes of creating sections for the writing, I’ll break discipline into two chunks of meaty infotainment. How? You ask. Good question.
Part 2 – Zen-ing It Up aka The Mind
As I began to think about what I would write for this month’s episode, I toyed with the idea of tackling the topic of living a zen life. The older I get, the more important it becomes for me to identify stressors and try my best to remain zen. I started outlining for a bit when it struck me. Being zen is great, but it falls under the umbrella of something much greater. Zen suddenly became a section instead, and here we are.
When I first decided to start making major positive changes in my life, one of the key things in helping through this journey, was the act of keeping a journal. I detailed a bit of this process in some past episodes, but just as a quick refresher: I would basically start out by writing a short message to myself, then recapped the day’s events, and would list some small, manageable goals to achieve for the day. The list often included chores and projects. Simple tasks, but tasks I could feel good about having completed by the end of the day. At a certain point in doing this, a specific goal made its way onto the list and would become a permanent fixture.
The goal was “Zen It Up”. That was my zany way of writing, practice mindfulness. Prior to writing out goals and journals, mindfulness was a practice that I never really dabbled in. The closest that I can recall was back in the early college days trying to listen to self-hypnosis via YouTube before bed. At the time though, I was just desperately grasping at any method that I could, to try and get to sleep; this just happened to be a method I stumbled upon. There were no other motives, and if I’m being quite honest, I’m not sure I would’ve even been able to define mindfulness back then.
Cut to: 2019; the year that I decided to give up nicotine. The early days were a challenge. I would toss and turn at night while my mind would run with anxious thoughts. During the day, I would try my best, but sometimes my emotions would bubble up and get the better of me. I knew in those moments that the way to cope with my lack of feel-good chemicals, was not to rage against people and objects, but sometimes things would still happen.
As I would journal more and reflect in the hot tub after a long day, I thought a lot about my feelings and emotions; not just during this particularly challenging time, but throughout my entire life. I dove way deep that evening.
A beautiful, bright, sunny day. The year unknown, but I believe it was late elementary or early middle. I’m standing on the deck outside of my friend’s parent’s home. A beautiful and charming old home that became one of the main bases of operations for my friends and I growing up. It had a pool, plenty of yard to run around in, and an awesome 2nd story in the garage that we turned into a super cool clubhouse. The place was our little slice of heaven on Earth.
This day started just like any other day. We met up, came up with an idea for what to do, and went for it. No worries about a job or bills or other responsibilities…oh God, take me back there! Anyways, most of the time it was just our core friend group hanging out at the house, but every once in a while, we’d get some outsiders. This day happened to be an outsider day. Normally, I have no issues at all with people from outside the group. It would take me a while to warm up to them most likely, but that’d be about it. This day was a little bit different. I don’t recall the days activity, but I do know that things got heated between myself and one other person; the outsider to the group who we will call Theodore. I’m sure I don’t know any Theodore’s in real life, so this dudes identity is safe.
Through out the day, Theodore and I would exchange words. I’m sure it started as just a minor disagreement that just ended up snowballing out of control. Close to the end of the day, we were both at our breaking points and something had to give. Like I said, I don’t know what we were doing, but I do know that I was holding a cheap, plastic racket. And of course I remember that detail as what would come next was Theodore getting smacked with the racket and the racket breaking in to two pieces. That was not very zen.
To be fair, young people in general have a difficult time controlling and keeping emotions in check. Theodore and I would eventually makeup after the little incident. Heck, I’m sure he probably doesn’t even remember it. Point is, I didn’t have to do that.
Back in the hot tub, I continued to reflect. I flashed to a more recent moment; the very first morning with no nicotine. I started my day out dragging a bit, but tried to stick to a decent routine the best I could. I tried a bit of activity right away, and I really mean a bit. Once that was over, I walked into the kitchen to eat breakfast. The kitchen in the house has an island in it. On top of that island is a banana holder that must’ve been invented by some real sadistic person. The thing is multi-tiered for storing other things and the weight of the fruit never seemed to be evenly distributed at any given time. This damn thing would always be too top heavy and tip over whenever you’d go to grab something from it. It was annoying but never gave me all that much grief. Today was a different kind of day though. I reached for a banana and immediately, it began to tip, spilling out whatever contents were also being stored. Needless to say, it tipped, I smacked it to the floor, and screamed a ton of obscenities at it. Poor banana holder.
That was not very zen.
Moments like this one and the racket incident replayed in my brain. I knew that I needed to do something. I couldn’t just go through life destroying fruit holders all the time, I mean, I guess I could, but that’d get pricey. I knew that what I needed to do was discipline my mind.
I didn’t realize in the moment, but the very act of me sitting there with my thoughts and reflecting in the present, was practicing mindfulness. As weeks went on, I would continue to do this routine and also practice a more traditional type of meditation. Day after day I would continue to write “Zen It Up”, and day after day I would complete that task by taking at least 20 minutes to meditate.
At first, I didn’t think it would lead to any positives, but after a while I really did start to notice some changes. For one thing, I was definitely less anxious and rage didn’t seem to bubble up in quite the same way. It also helped that I was progressing further in my nicotine-free life and becoming more comfortable. I was also finding myself more focused and really able to engage better in conversations. It was an in the moment-ness that I hadn’t felt in quite sometime.
The process of mediating was simple. I sat in the water, listened to the tiny waterfall flowing into the tub from the top side of one of it’s walls, and I let my mind go. Of course, at first the mind is all jumbled and veers off in many directions, but that’s okay. Like any other skill in life, this is a practice that takes time and effort.
As I sit here today, I would like to say that I am at my most zen state of mind. I’d like to but that’s unfortunately not the case. My peak zen-ness was at the end of 2019. When the following year came, a flurry of events and circumstances entered into my life. Disciplining the mind became a little bit more challenging for me. It started to become much easier to let my mind start to wander through out the day again at times and I found myself slipping back into some old habits.
I’ve come a long way since the days of busting plastic rackets, and while I’m not at my peak of zen anymore, I can identify more clearly when my mind starts to wander or if I am starting to spend a little too much time vegging out, not aiding my brain. I find that now I have to be especially careful as I’ve been spending a lot more time in front of a screen, editing footage for our 31 Days of Halloween Special (last plug, I promise). It can be very easy to get sucked in and let the mind switch to autopilot whenever technology is involved.
I know that I’m not 100% at this thing yet but that’s never a reason to get discouraged. I know that every day that I’m able to manage my emotions in a good way or order my brain to stop autopilot and do the right thing, is a win. That, I believe, is exactly how you should feel too.
Part 3 – A Well Oiled Machine aka The Body
You may not be able to tell by looking at me but I really love food. My relationship with food is a familiar one. It very much parallels the relationships I used to have with booze and other substances, though not quite the same extreme levels. On certain days, with certain foods, once I get going on something that’s really tasty, my brain goes into autopilot and it can be an UN-governed chow-fest. Obviously, this is no surprise as a lot of people experience this and it is exactly what the snack companies want you to do. I’m not here to rally people against the corporations though. Really the focus is still on discipline, and you might be thinking to yourself that I’m not the one who should be dishing out any more discipline talk after just having said I’m no longer at my peak zen and now professing my undying love for food. Well first of, fair point, but we are all humans remember. We are growing and learning, and there will absolutely be some stumbles along the way; I won’t lie to you. Also, despite all the stumbles, I’ve managed to come a pretty long way.
When I was younger, I was nonathletic and ate whatever I wanted. Last month was pretty much centered around that whole topic so I won’t bore you with the details, but we’ll just say I was probably at a D in terms of wellness. I feel that a lot of my behavior came from the fact that it really didn’t ever catch up to me. I was able to maintain a manageable figure in my youth. The key word of course being manageable. I by no means, ever had an in-shape body back in those days but I found my situation do-able.
That was until about the summer of 2016 when it wasn’t so doable for me anymore. I hit my all time highest weight from consuming a variety of delicious summer foods and drinking a variety of delicious summer beers. I hit a point where I really needed to make a change in my life and luckily for me, I did.
Again, I spoke on this a bit before, but during the time of my weight gain, I was introduced to the Keto diet. It is a low carb diet that got pretty big for a while, similar to the Atkins diet. There was a bit more involved than just limiting carbs, but generally, that was it. Early on, like many things, it wasn’t easy to stick to. It took a lot of discipline early on, to avoid certain foods that I loved to eat. It didn’t take long to realize that some of the best foods in life were foods that were high in carbs, and not on the list of recommended foods. It wasn’t always fun, but as the results came in, it certainly got easier for me. The weight loss and a variety of small rewards for myself throughout the process helped me to stay disciplined and eventually shed all of the weight that I was looking to lose.
Eventually I would come to realize that this diet was not a long term solution for me, which brings us to a nice takeaway; a person can be disciplined in something that is the wrong fit for them. You may want to take a step back every once in a while and re-calibrate if needed. Having the ability to live a disciplined life and get things done is fantastic, but if there’s a better way of going about things, then figure that out too.
For me, I re-calibrated my diet and gave myself more options while still keeping it as healthy as possible. Currently, I live a pretty disciplined life in terms of wellness. I will make some pretty big slip-ups from time to time, however, I know that tomorrow is another day. Just as easy as you strayed off the course, you can get back on. Through the continued practice of discipline, you will have the ability to get back into your routine as if you didn’t just eat that half a cake last night.
The other thing provided by discipline is the continued ability to stay active. This is very helpful in that if by some chance you eat that half a cake and can’t get back on track as quickly as you’d like to, you’ve now got a bit of a backup plan.
Part 4 – The Wrap-Up
Today’s inspirational person of the month is, Brenae Davis. She’s a music studio engineer from Tennessee who, in response to a violent year, decided she need to do something and opened up I Love Waffle Cream. The shop sells ice cream and looks to employ young people. Brenae hopes that this is a way that she can help keep kids of the streets and instill some valuable lessons that they can take with them into adulthood. In the article, she credits the programs that she was involved in that helped her and she wanted to return the favor.
Brenae is providing a wonderful service here and seems to genuinely care about the youth in her community. By providing kids with an opportunity and teaching lessons (discipline being a topic covered, no doubt), Brenae is doing what she can to make her little corner of the world a better place. That’s pretty damn inspirational to me.
As for the homework, how did it go? Last month’s focus was all about getting active. Hopefully you were able to get out and move in some way. Personally, I stayed on track very nicely with this homework, but the homework from Habits & Rituals still gives be some struggles. I still snack every once in a while at night, but it has gotten better. I’ve definitely gotten better control of it since last month. I find that the best solution for me has been to just not allow the things that I like to eat at night in the house. It ties into discipline and really wraps this whole thing up into a nice little bow.
Lastly, this month’s homework will be to pick one of the two areas that I spoke about (body or mind) and determine if there’s an area regarding either that could use some more discipline. Once you figure that out, go to work! Get after it. I’ve said this many times in the past, and I’m sure it’ll continue to be repeated, if it doesn’t work right away, that’s okay. You and I are trying. Along the way there’s going to be some nights of cake eating, or some words exchanged, or even some broken plastic rackets. You may veer off the course, but that’s what humans do. What matters is that you apply the discipline and other skills that you’ve been practicing to get back on that course because there’s another thing that’s really special that we as humans do. We overcome setbacks and never, ever quit. See you next month.
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