Do you sabotage your own happiness?

We're sitting on our back lawn, smoking, and my sister, da'Renegade Mama (dRM), heaves a sigh.

"I don't know why I do this!  I'm at the 11th hour again with my homework, and now I'm dreading doing it because I'll have to pull an all-nighter to get it done.  It doesn't make any sense because I LOVE what I'm studying!  Everything I read for school, every paper I write, every assignment is highly fulfilling and interesting ... and yet I put it off and put it off and treat it like a duty until I resent it and have to grind my way through the task!"

She goes on..

"And if anyone asked me what my number one favorite thing is in the world, I'd answer that it's playing with my kids.  Playing with them - wrestling and dancing and jumping on the trampoline and throwing frisbees.  And how often do you see me do that?'

I shrug my shoulders.  "Like two or three times a week," I reply.

"Right!  But if it's my favorite thing, why don't I do it every day?!?"

We sit in silence for a few moments.

I add, "I love running.  Like, love LOVE it.  And I can't remember the last time I went running."

"So why do we sabotage all of our happiness by avoiding the very things that make us happy," dRM wonders aloud.

That's a good question!

I hear this question quite a bit actually.  At the coffee/metaphysical shop I work at, I chat with customers a lot.  We get into what's going on in their lives and I invariably hear, "I should read more - learning more about this new age stuff is so fulfilling to me!" or "I should meditate more.  When I do, I feel so much better, but I just don't, even when I have the time and will to."  On and on.  Just yesterday, one of my housemates, Papasan, mused that he put off his homework all weekend, and spent the whole weekend drenched in guilt, and when he finally did the homework - which only took him about an hour - he felt light, happy and free as a bird!

Can you think, right now, of things that you absolutely love that you never do, even when you have the time and resources to do them?

What is it in our culture/belief systems, our biology, or psychology makes this sabotage so commonplace?

I have a few thoughts, but I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

First, I think culturally, we give a lot of power to guilt and "hard work" and are veritably terrified of hedonism.  By hard work, I'm referring to forcing oneself to put their nose to the grindstone, use discipline, and dig their way through something.  My dad used to always say when we were little "Great people do hard things".  If something makes us happy and we enjoy doing it it feels wrong to us, or at the very least suspicious.  I can't just enjoy myself day-in-and-day-out reading books and going running - that would make me a hedonist!  Our culture teaches us that too much enjoyment and pleasure is small-minded, wicked, or wasteful.  So we limit our enjoyment, even if limiting it gets in the way of our personal development.

Maybe that sounds far-fetched to you.  But let me ask you this - how often do you choose to do the hard things before the easy things just to "get them over with"?  I do it all the time when I eat.  I always eat my least-favorite part of a meal first, and save the best for last.  Guess what happens?  I feel full halfway through the meal and still haven't even tasted my favorite part of it.  So now I'm in a conundrum - do I stop eating and miss out on what I was most looking forward to, or gorge myself?  Do you do the same thing?  Do you stay up until bedtime doing your least favorite things, and then you have to choose between getting the sleep your body craves or reading that book you've been dying to get to?

I think we are afraid of too much happiness because we are taught to be afraid of hedonism.  I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.

This brings us to my second thought on the topic, which is that we have unrealistic expectations for the things we love.  Because absence makes the heart grow fonder, we begin to believe that the things we love are 100% easy and delightful from start to finish.  That's simply not true!  Let's go back to me and my love of running.  What I love about running is feeling powerful and strong, feeling the blood coursing through my body and my muscles feeling fatigued and still taking me miles and miles further.  I love the power that comes from setting my mind to the task and the physical reward of having a strong mind.  But right now, I'm out of shape, so running doesn't do that for me.  Right now, running makes me feel weak, slow and fat.  So when I go running, it does the exact opposite of what my expectations for it are.  Because my expectations are unrealistic.  Running is challenging and takes a lot of focus and dedication.  And only after consistently applying focus and dedication to the challenge do the rewards present themselves.

Now, returning to dRM's lamentations.  Playing with her kids is FUN ... for about 1/3 of the experience.  But it also includes being out in super-hot or super-cold weather, changing flat tires on bikes, packing around snacks and taking incessant potty breaks, and the kicker, managing 4 beautiful grommets fighting over each other for mom's attention.  And, of course, with kids, if you play with them once, then for the next week, every five minutes they're wondering why you aren't ready to swing from the chandeliers with them again - it sets a precedent that is challenging to live up to.

So yes, the things that make us happy truly do bring a lot to our lives, but they also often require dedication and challenge.  That taints them for us.  Why not just settle for the happy memories instead of dredging through the effort for the payout?

Finally, we tend in our culture to have an all-or-nothing attitude about pretty much everything.  I can't have fun until I'm in perfect physical shape and have the perfect wardrobe, home and appliances to match the level of happiness I aspire to; I can't convince people (or myself) that I'm happy if I'm fat, single or poor!  I have to have it all in order to experience any happiness whatsoever!  And even if I do things I love, because I'm fat/single/poor/etc. I couldn't even enjoy them because I'd know I'm falling short of the dream!

I can't just go running when I feel like it, I must go every day and be continually improving my pace and distance.  We can't just do the same thing over and over with the kids - we have to innovate more fun activities!  And I can't enjoy this book until my house is perfectly clean and my inbox is cleared out and I've prepared a 100% raw, organic, vegan dinner.  Then, and ONLY THEN can I actually enjoy it!

Not true.

We are so overloaded with guilt for what we don't do, that we don't allow ourselves to enjoy the things we want to do.  Is it impossible to "have it all?"  Probably not.  But it's unreasonable to hold happiness at bay until we have it all.  Wouldn't you rather have "some of it all" and every day experience those things that make you most happy - and become a truly happy person - than finally achieve it all and have lived years or decades in stress and guilt?

I say, cook your kids ramen for dinner once a week so that you have time to play with them, if playing with them makes you truly happy.  Eat the dessert you love and gain a little weight if eating dessert rocks your world.  Choose happiness over other things regularly, even if it means cutting corners, and then from a happy place find ways to improve areas of your life that you feel merit improvement.

Does this mean I condone a full-fledged hedonistic lifestyle?  No.  It isn't black or white like that.  Be a hedonist two or three hours a day, and with the time that's left, go back to chipping away at the grindstone.  There's a time and a place for seeking pleasure, and I think that time comes around at least once a day.  Be balanced with where you get your pleasure from - sometimes a fabulous TV show, sometimes skipping through the park, sometimes chatting with a friend for three hours - but not always all of it.  Just dedicate two or three hours to doing whatever it is you love, every day, no matter what.  Inject happiness in your life, then build from that base.

And finally, for those really grueling tasks there are psychological happiness games you can play to make them more fun.  Only do them to music you love.  Do them in your favorite pair of underwear that you reserve for special occasions.  Allow yourself to eat one bite of your favorite food for every math problem you finish.

In our home, with four small children, dRM and Risseroo made one small change of verbiage that changed the kids' entire paradigm about their chores.  "Do your chores," we'd say, "you can't play on the Kindle until your chores are done."  Then we experienced about an hour of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.  So one day, dRM and Riss decided to call chores "life skills."  They told the kids that they needed to practice their life skills every day in order to be ready for adulthood.  The change was astonishing.  The kids started arriving home from school with, "When do we get to do our life skills?"  After dinner, we'd say, "Ok, you can come watch us play Donkey Kong" (because Riss and I play so amazingly that the kids are overcome with joy at simply watching us play ... he he he) and the older girls made faces at us and said, "Nuh-uh!  We haven't done our life skills yet!"  Um, the 7 and 5 year-olds reminded us that they hadn't done their chores yet.

So when it's time to clean your house, are you cleaning, or loving on your home?  How different would it be to say, "I'm gonna show some love to my toilet that I'm so grateful takes our waste far, far away," instead of, "Gotta clean the toilets ... *sigh* ... again ..."  Or, "I get my blood pumping every morning and clear my pores for perfect skin," instead of "I'm gonna go sweat like a pig at the gym."  Try it.  It works.  What chores in your life can become your life skills?

One last thing that I have recently rediscovered.  Do it now.  When something pops into your mind and makes sense, just take action right away.  Don't give yourself time to think through whether or not you want to do it and when you should start.  If it pops in your mind that you haven't played with your kids for a while and you kind of miss it ... stand right up and find your offspring and initiate play.  Even if only for 2 minutes.  If you suddenly get the urge to crack into your work or homework, before thinking about it, stand right up and do it.  I had this happen to me last week.  Risseroo goes to the gym every morning at 7.  One afternoon, I was reading a book, and paused with the thought, "I could totally go to the gym with her and it would be fun.  My biggest holdup with working out is that I don't follow through unless I have someone to go with that I'm just a little bit accountable to, and here's someone right in my house that I adore who goes every morning at a reasonable hour, and I'm not going.  Why?"  Then I decided I'd think about it for another day or two to decide if I really wanted to do it or not.  A few hours later, Riss and I were out back smoking, and the thought popped into my mind again, and I realized that I had no reason to not start immediately, except for pure procrastination.  So I said, "I think I want to start going to the gym with you."  Riss said, "Yay!  Awesome!"  And then I said, "Wake me up tomorrow.  I want to start tomorrow."

And I've gone to the gym with her every day since.

If I had paused to think about it for a few days, I would have not even started by now, or probably ever.  And today I ran 3 miles on the treadmill and we did 45 minutes of lifting weights.  Did you hear that?  I went RUNNING today.  And I clocked a reasonable distance for starting up, so I didn't feel fat or slow, but I felt strong!  Going to the gym with Riss is one of the highlights of my day - even though I wake up a full 5 hours earlier than normal for me (yes, I usually wake up around noon).

So whatever this post is making you think of, do it now.  One small step in that direction you're thinking of - you don't have to take on the whole enchilada, but set it in motion now.  No more planning or contemplating, just step towards happiness.  And make sure five or six times a day you consciously take more small steps towards your happiness.

Because wouldn't you rather be happy than anything else?

Spritual Memoir #10: The Winter of my Mormon Mission

For an explanation of this Spiritual Memoir
blog series, see THIS post.

Radiant Rider Waite deck

Tarot Card: The Hermit

Card number 9 of the Major Arcana of the tarot. 
(See pics in this post from various decks)

My Interpretations of the Card

"Sometimes the path is to stand outside in the cold and hold up our light, unwavering and unafraid..."

Aha!  Ask and ye shall receive ... I've been wanting to do a Major Arcana card, and mentioned this desire in my last Spiritual Memoir post, and I got it on my very next draw.  Hooray!  Plus, I love the Hermit card!  It's one that I can really relate to (because I'm really a bearded old man ... well, maybe on the inside... :) .

The Hermit has a traditional meaning of seeking truth by taking time in solitude and asking oneself the "hard" questions.  I love that meaning, but today, I'm seeing a different angle for him.  As I look at these Hermit cards I have posted in the blog, I get a sense of the silent drudgery that is sometimes the path for truth-seekers.  Sometimes it's magic and sparkles and dramatic senses of connection and power ... but often, as we are on the path of learning about ourselves and mastering our lives, we stand outside, in the cold, alone, holding up the lamps of truth that only gently light the way. And, the tarot teaches us, that is a relevant and powerful part of the experience.

I love the Hermit card from the Tarot of the Magical Forest (below).  I love the bear - I love the symbolism of the bear fattening up so it can go hibernate in its cave.  But I can't help but wonder why he isn't in his cave yet?  Has he not found it, or is he intentionally weathering the winter without turning his brain off during hibernation?  I get the impression he's deliberately stepping outside of normal bear-ness, and standing in his greater truth: "My mind will stay on, my eyes will stay open, and I will consciously weather this storm."  

Tarot of the Magical Forest deck

In general, in the tarot, nine cards represent solitary ventures, and being with oneself.  Both the nine of cups and the nine of pentacles show individual, independent success; the nines of swords and wands depict individual torment.  True to form, the Hermit as card #9 of the Major Arcana represents the Mother of individual quests: that of facing the dark, cold night in solitude, but with the light of truth ever flickering in hope and subtle warmth.

Spiritual Memoir: The Hermit
As I've stated in previous posts, like THIS one, I never wanted to serve a "mission" for the LDS (Mormon) Church, but did, because I didn't know what else to do with my life.  This memoir will tell you a little about the invaluable experience I had during those challenging 18 months, and how feeling totally isolated and alone in a spiritual and emotional winterland gave me a powerful Hermit experience.

To start, I want to make it totally clear that my experience as a missionary was completely atypical!  Almost every other person I've talked to that served missions scratch their head in amazement at how unusual my experience was from the start.  If you don't know what a Mormon missionary is, THIS LINK will give you a quick rundown.  I went to Santiago, Chile for my mission.  Note, that as a missionary, I spent 18 months with every second of every day dictated to me of how I could dress, who I could and could not talk to, what I could read or listen to, when to wake up and go to bed, etc.  

For some reason, I had the understanding that on my mission, I would basically be hanging out with non-participatory members of the Church only, working to entice them to engage back into a "Mormon" lifestyle.  I had no idea that I was expected to approach strangers on the street and ask them if I could come into their home and teach them my religion.  (I thought that girls didn't "proselytize").  Upon entering the Missionary Training Center, both of my teachers were off of work - one was on her honeymoon, and the other injured his knee.  Since I already spoke Spanish, I was basically there just to learn "how to be a missionary", but without teachers, my little class just sat around and drew Ninja Turtles on the white board for three weeks.  

When I arrived in Chile, I was assigned a Uruguayan companion (whom I had to spend 24/7 with and whose side I could not leave under any circumstances) who did not speak any English, and whose culture was very different from mine.  She told me the first day that we were going to walk up to some guy on the street, engage him in conversation, and ask if he we could come to his house and teach him our religion - and that it was my turn to talk, I had to do the whole thing with her standing silently by my side.  

"No," I said resolutely.  "Absolutely not - I'm an introvert, I don't walk up to random people and talk to them." 

She laughed.  "You'll be doing it every day for the next 18 months.  We have to make 20 street contacts a day between us," she replied.  

"Um, no," I responded.  After a few days of being told by the entire missionary system that my refusal to make street contacts was totally unacceptable (especially in the eyes of God), I prayed for help and started making street contacts.  Each and every time I made one, a little part inside of me died.

Crystal Visions Tarot

Enter my desperate, lonely journey into the cold wilderness of the Hermit.  

After six weeks I was moved to a different part of town, and had a new companion.  To this day we are the best of friends.  It helped to have my constant companion be someone who understood my background and culture.  We still obeyed all of the rules and took our work seriously, and it was heaven to be in the presence of such an awesome person (I LOVE YOU KATIE), and I prayed and prayed and fasted and worked with faith to have some type of understanding of why I hated everything about being a missionary (they say that God will open your heart and give you peace if you do stuff like this).  Nothing happened, and when Katie and I were separated, a bigger chunk of me died inside.

For a year of my mission, I pushed and tried and "let go" and obeyed, obeyed, obeyed.  Every time we invited a person to be baptized a member of the Church and they said no, I exhaled a sigh of relief - I felt like the church just complicated the already challenging lives of the good people we taught.  For a year I wandered in the dark cold wilderness of the Hermit, completely alone, and without any light (meaning: I didn't have the little lamp yet).  In fact, it felt like all others had gone into a safe cave to hibernate, and I couldn't sleep, and found myself completely alone and awake in the dark cave.  After a year, I was assigned to train a new missionary as my companion, a sweet gal from Peru.  In this case, I was supposed to be the strong one, insisting she make the street contacts.  She was afraid to, totally understandably.  But with the responsibility of pushing her falling on my soldiers, I had an emotional breakdown.  I began to have extreme social anxiety, and every day would just wander the streets with her in silence, trying to hold in my tears.  We'd go home for lunch, and I'd tell her I was going to pray in the bedroom, and just bury my face on my bed and sob for as long as I could get away with.

I talked to the Mission authorities, and they said, "Pray more, testify more, have more faith!"  So I did.  And nothing happened.  I never entered peaceful hibernation like the others, I never felt myself safe in the hands of God.  I was aware of my hunger and the painful loneliness of sitting in the dark cave.

Then, one day, while I was studying the scriptural canon of the church, I was praying for anything from God, any word of help/advice, and I flipped open my scriptures, pointed at a random verse and read the LDS scripture of Doctrine and Covenants 124:49.  It reads:

"Verily, verily, I say unto you, that when I give a commandment to any of the sons of men to do a work unto my name, and those sons of men go with all their might and with all they have to perform that work, and cease not their diligence, and their enemies come upon them and hinder them from performing that work, behold, it behooveth me to require that work no more at the hands of those sons of men, but to accept of their offerings."

A bell went off in my head, and I felt the warm loving presence of God in my life.  It was like a warm, glowing lantern appeared in the cave for me.  It couldn't be!  Could my answer come in the form of a light (and not hibernation)?  What was I thinking!?!?  So I picked up a Church magazine that had a General Conference talk (or messages from Church leadership) on missionary work.  I was going to read the talk to pep myself up.  I flipped it open, and the first thing my eyes landed on was a sentence by Gordon B. Hinckley, then President of the Church that said:

"...I wish to say that the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve are united in saying to our young sisters that they are not under obligation to go on missions...."

I distinctly remember the quote being from a recent conference talk, but as I am researching it for this blog post, it looks like the quote is from 1997 (I was in Chile in 2004-2006).  So I don't know what that's all about.  But this is definitely the quote, because it goes on:

"We do not ask the young women to consider a mission as an essential part of their life's program. Over a period of many years, we have held the age level higher for them in an effort to keep the number going relatively small. Again to the sisters I say that you will be as highly respected, you will be considered as being as much in the line of duty, your efforts will be as acceptable to the Lord and to the Church whether you go on a mission or do not go on a mission." 

--"Some Thoughts on Temples, Retention of Converts, and Missionary Service"
Gordon B. Hinckley, 1997 October General Conference, full article HERE

Maybe what I read was a different talk that said the same thing - I'm surprised this isn't matching up like I thought it would (time-wise).  Anyway...  The next day I was allowed to check my email for messages from my family, and my mom, who is SUPER-DE-DUPER Mormon and pro-mission had written me a message along the lines of, "Honey, I'm worried that you are beginning to destabilize.  I want you to know if that if you decide to come home from your mission early, I'm totally ok with it - I want you to be happy and healthy, and it seems like you're deteriorating into a dangerous space."

Ok, three witnesses.  Three separate cases of me getting the message to GO HOME.  In the Scriptures it says messages from God come from the mouth of two or three witnesses - my prayers had been answered!  I went to my Mission President with the story.  This amazing man listened to my story and replied, "I can't argue with spiritual confirmations like that - let's get this ball rolling for you."  Yes!  Finally!  I felt like I'd taken up the lantern, and left the cave, and was going to brave the cold winter winds with my little light, and find my way to springtime and warmth.

Soon after, he contacted me and said protocol requires I see the mission psychologist.  

Dr. Hurst asked on our first meeting, "What is the problem?"  

"I think I'm not supposed to be here.  I haven't felt the 'spirit of God' since I got here, I hate everything about it - I think it's a big mistake.  I've been 100% obedient and pray every day asking for emotional/spiritual support ... and I feel worse and worse, like a sense of foreboding.  So I work harder, testify more, read more, sacrifice more, and I feel darker and deader inside.  Then, I got these answers that told me to go home.  I think I need to go home."

He didn't know how to respond to that, so he referred me to his boss.

I did telephone conferences with the head missionary psychologist in Salt Lake City, who informed me that I most likely needed to repent of a sexual sin that I was still holding on to.  That was hilarious to me, because I had my first kiss when I was 18, and after a six-month relationship where I lived in Ohio and he lived in Utah the whole time, and absolutely no sexual anything in our relationship, I had never even dated anyone again.  "You're barking up the wrong tree," I told the guy.  "I'm purer than Mother Mary."

My whole life I've had a tendency towards depression (never at that point medicated), but when I took a psychological profile test thing, I tested only 4% for depression - I didn't feel depressed so that made sense.  They put me on anti-depressants anyway though, because it would probably fix whatever it was inside my soul telling me to GET.OUT.  Um ... ?!?!?!

I was still in the wintery wilderness, I was still alone in my mind 99% of the time, cold and desperate and sad ... but I had my lantern.  And the lantern of God's gentle reassurance and love still glowed.  Nothing was putting it out.

All of this took about two months, and I finally started refusing to go out into the streets anymore.  They put me with several different companions, ranging from a senior couple (whom I LOVED) and another young girl missionary like myself who had health problems and couldn't proselytize for that reason (whom I LOVED).  But as time wore on, there was pressure from somewhere (Salt Lake, the Area Presidency?  I don't know from where) to get me back on the streets.

Finally, I told my Mission President that I was going home.  Period.  He told me that he'd arrange it, but as part of protocol, I need to meet with the Area Presidency for an "exit interview."

I met with Elder Carl Pratt.  I told him the same story, glowing in my delight at getting an answer, and feeling peaceful about God finally answering my prayers in a most unexpected way.  Everything was going to be ok - it was all happening for a reason!

Elder Pratt looked at me and said, "I don't know who you think you are, but this story is approaching blasphemy.  A Prophet of God called you to serve 18 months, to proselytize for 18 months.  Get.back.out.on.the.streets."

I was stunned.  "I can't!" I whispered with tears welling up in my eyes.  "I ... I can't!"

"You can and you will.  Stop this nonsense."

"But ... what about my spiritual confirmations?  What about everything I've been feeling and these physical manifestations of God's voice coming to me, through the scriptures and the voice of the Prophet's talk and my mom...?"

He cut me off.  "True spiritual revelation never contradicts what your Priesthood leaders tell you.  I am your Priesthood leader and I say get back out on the streets and do your work.  If you go home now, it will be a dishonorable release.  There is no back door here.  Get back out on the streets."  He excused me from the meeting.

I rushed back to my Mission President and told him everything.  The poor guy was stuck between a rock and a hard place.  He couldn't contradict his superior in the Church, but he also knew he couldn't put me back out on the streets.

I stood strong, in the harsh cold weather, holding fast to my lantern.  I knew what I knew.  And all that was happening was that the cold winds and icy snow were revealing themselves to me as cold and heartless and icy, as compared to the warmth and light of my lantern.

A few days later, my Mission President told me there was an opening in a PR missionary position at Chile's Church Headquarters, and because of my education in marketing he might be able to get me transferred over to the position.  He fought hard for me, and finally Elder Pratt said if I hit all of my numbers for street contacts and lessons being taught for a week - if I went back out on the streets for a week, he'd let me transfer over.  My sweet companion took charge and did all of the work for a week to make sure we hit our numbers.  I was transferred, and worked the last 4 months of my mission in a position that I enjoyed (though I did see a lot of the ugly underbelly of a bureaucratic, man-led religious institution).

In January 2006, I returned home honorably from my mission.  I stayed active in the Church for another six months, and even worked at Church World Headquarters in Utah for a few months, trying to stay loyal to and optimistic about the institution.  But when I realized that spring was popping up in the world around me, and this institution was holding me in a cold, brutal winter, I followed my inner lantern's guidance to the warmth of personal connection to the Divine.

For a few years, I was really bitter about my mission.  Today, I still see how it was a cold and cruel period in my life, but that it was the perfect opportunity for me to see the contrast between the cold silence of institutionalized spirituality and the warm lantern of a personal connection with Divine Source.  It opened my eyes and experience in a way that nothing else ever could.  I, standing completely alone, completely vulnerable, found and held my own light.

On Discipline

I decided to post outside of my usual tarot spiritual memoirs today, to mix it up a little.  Fun?  Fun!

I have lived both highly disciplined, and completely undisciplined periods of my life.  I've had times where I worked three jobs, or worked full-time while attending school full-time and volunteering.  I've run two marathons, and competed in 5 sprint triathlons and one olympic-distance triathlon.  My mom often said when we were little, "Sometimes we have do to things we don't want to do," to get me to do my chores, and I lived the first 28 years of my life holding tightly to that concept and grinding my way though challenging, and sometimes nauseatingly uninteresting tasks.

Did I mention my training with the Federation?

I've always done this with a belief, an understanding, that if I nobly put my nose to the grindstone, there'd be some kind of payoff.  If I worked hard, I'd not only get promotions, and move into positions of higher authority and respect, but get better pay.  If I exercised and ate well, I'd not only have a strong, healthy body, but would feel vital and full of energy.  If I followed God and said my prayers and read scriptures daily and went to church and served, etc., I'd feel connection and closeness with God.  That's what I believed, so that's why I pressed on.  Overall, I was very disappointed.  My labors never seemed to have a payoff really at all, and when they did, they didn't sate me, they didn't satisfy the debt of effort I'd put in.

So naturally, I became jaded.   :)

I live today with minimal commitments and minimal goals and ambitions.  I don't force myself, for the most part, to do things I don't want to do.  I just do whatever I feel like, and if that means laying in bed all day, I lay in bed all day.  If that means watching a lot of TV, I watch a lot of TV.  And more often than I would expect, I get these moments of energy where I'm up for washing the dishes, scooping the cat box, going for a walk, or playing with the kids.  And, to be totally honest, I still don't feel sated or satisfied.  Hmmm... this isn't what I want either.

A few months ago, I was talking to some friends of mine, and I asked them what they thought of discipline.  These friends and I share similar spiritual perspectives, and I wanted to know, in their opinion, what role discipline played for them in spiritual practice.  Let's say with meditation.  Meditation, by nature, is a practice of discipline.  It's very boring and difficult to sit silent, unmoving, and unthinking for longer than like 30 seconds.  So by engaging in meditation, I'm buying in to the payoffs of discipline.  But when discipline makes me feel like I'm "going through the motions," or I get resentful because I really don't feel like doing the task but force myself to anyway, the whole point is lost, right?  How about when I see no fruits or outcomes from a practice, and I don't enjoy it overall, do I discipline myself to mindlessly drone on, or call bull-shit on the practice to prevent myself from entering a state of brainwashing?  Where's the line here?

One of those friends, Crystal (not my sister), made an interesting point to me.  The root word for discipline is the same as for disciple, and comes from a bunch of different meanings through the development of language, either dealing with military training (yikes!), punishment or correction of wrong behavior (yikes!), or instruction and education (yay!).  Let me just copy and paste the etymological roots from an online dictionary:

discipline (n.) 

early 13c., "penitential chastisement; punishment," from O.Fr. descepline (11c.) "discipline, physical punishment; teaching; suffering; martyrdom," and directly from L.disciplina "instruction given, teaching, learning, knowledge," also "object of instruction, knowledge, science, military discipline," from discipulus (see disciple). Sense of "treatment that corrects or punishes" is from notion of "order necessary for instruction." The Latin word is glossed in O.E. by þeodscipe. Meaning "branch of instruction or education" is first recorded late 14c. Meaning "military training" is from late 15c.; that of "orderly conduct as a result of training" is from c.1500.

Source: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=discipline

Um ... none of that up there seems remotely healthy, except maybe the "instruction given, teaching, learning, knowledge" part... 

But relating discipline to disciple, as I understand the word disciple, feels a little more reasonable.  Disciples follow because they want to.  And because they want to, the payoff is in the following itself, not in the expectations of an outcome down the road.  Let's say you have a furry little kitten rolling around on the ground in front of you, and you can't help yourself, you must pick up and snuggle that kitten.  And whether the kitten mellows out and purrs, or scratches your eyes out, you're not disappointed in yourself for trying because you were compelled to do the action, without an expectation of outcome.  The point was to touch that kitten's furry pelt, not to make a best friend for life.

Tell me you aren't compelled to touch his mutated-extra-toed foot!

This extends to another one of my favorite topics, beyond cats ... food.  We don't eat coconut shrimp sushi with mango sliced on top with a side of sake because we expect it to give us superpowers ... we eat it because the moment it hits our tongue we get our reward.  The reward is the action itself.

I guess this could be called "living in the moment."  And it is actually that same concept, except discipleship also indicates standing for something.  

What are my core values and aspirations?  Take time to identify them.  Then, how do I live those right here, right now?  This is how we differentiate discipleship from hedonism.  Discipleship stands for something, it has core values it uses as a litmus test for every action, for every moment.

I created a graph to show all of these relationships.  (Awesome, right?!?!)

So when it comes to a difficult but possibly meaningful task:

1. Eeyore would say: "It's going to fail anyway.  What's the point?"  Futurized negative expectations, no values to fight that.
2. Laziness would say: "Maybe," then do nothing.  At least they're acknowledging how they feel in the moment to a certain extent, but no values to make that mean anything.
3. The hedonist would say: "How soon will it bring me pleasure?"  The focus on right now says they're living in the moment, and to their credit, a dedication to pleasure is a type of value. 
4. Old-school discipline would say: "I'll do it even if I hate it, because I believe in it, so it's bound to pay off in the long run."
5. The true disciple would say: "What do I really care about in life, and who do I want to be?  Will doing this thing be an expression of those two things or not?"

I think those two sentences are the key:

What do I really care about in life, and who do I want to be?  Will doing this thing be an expression of those two things, or not?

Note that we aren't asking if doing the thing will "bring us" what we care about in life or "make us" who we want to be.  We're asking if the act itself is an expression of who and what we aspire to.

Now, how do I get myself to a place where I ask these questions every day, all day?  It's hard to remember these questions before making decisions, and keep myself focused on what I really care about and who I want to be.

There's only one answer: I discipline myself into it.

Just kidding.

But seriously, I think a way is to maybe put up reminders (or something similar) to ask the questions, and if you get in the habit, it's something that will work for you.  If you don't, don't worry about it.

Here's a paragraph I LOVE from A Course in Miracles:

"Decisions are continuous.  You do not always know when you are making them.  But with a little practice with the ones you recognize, a set begins to form which sees you through the rest.  It is not wise to let yourself become preoccupied with every step you take.  The proper set, adopted consciously each time you wake, will put you well ahead.  And if you find resistance strong and dedication weak, you are not ready.  Do not fight yourself.  But think about the kind of day you want, and tell yourself there is a way in which this very day can happen just like that.  Then try again to have the day you want."

--A Course in Miracles, Ch 30, Section I,  Paragraph 1.

It's not about "discipline" ... it's about deciding where you'd like to go today, what you'd like to see, then doing whatever creates that.  When options come up that would take you in a different direction, if you know what you want, you won't be interested in the distractions.  But if you're not really dedicated to what you think you want, you may find it worth pausing to see what the other options are.  All of this is ok.

The real way to progress, the real key to it all, is to find out what you want: who you want to be and what's important to you.  If you are really clear on those things, the rest comes.

Do I know this because I live it, or because I read it in a book, or because I made it up?  Well, I know I hate old-school discipline, and that my lazy-hedonistic-Eeyore faze is burning out - those two things I know for sure.  I also know that this theme is pretty consistent across most self-help/spiritual books I read.  I also know that when I make my decisions based on where I want to be and who I want to be, I don't feel as pressed to "justify" the decisions, either to myself or others.  That alone brings a lot of peace to my over-caffeinated mind.  So I'll roll with this for a while - it feels good.  It feels right.  It makes a lot of sense, especially in the context of cats and food, so I'm down with expanding the application.

I do have to admit, it's scary to say "who I want to be" and "what I stand for" because it's changed and evolved so many times in my life that I hate going down that path again (Eeyore!).  But I think in the past I was focused more on details than the big picture.  So I'll focus on the big picture, and allow it to stay fluid and open-ended until I feel more settled with it.  Of course, I'll let you know how it goes.