Category: Gifts of Character

At the beginning of each of our classes we say to ourselves and in the hearing of others, “We are going to control our mind, our body and our mouth”.  From time to time I will ask the students, “Which is the hardest of all of these?” and they will almost always reply, “Our Mouth!”.  When we are young we learn about the need to keep our hands and feet to ourselves, how and when to keep our voices down at the appropriate time, but the mouth is the one that stumps us over and over again – no matter our age.

Most of us – especially me – have blurted something out, said something without thinking that we later wished we had not thought in the first place and if we did that we had not said out loud.  Unfortunately there is no string that we can take the words back.  We do this when we are young and when we are older, and we do it most often to the ones we love the most, our family and closest friends.

The catalyst of most of these words are tones of voice, certain verbiage of others, things that trigger strong reactions.  When we examine closely many times it comes from things that we are not comfortable with and or feel ‘less than’ about (our authority, reminder of something we do not like about ourselves, reminder of past experiences), it can be anything.  But in the end most hard feelings, harsh words, arguments, fights, physical attacks begin with words spoken – that if given the opportunity we would take back, after we thought about the consequence.

I write about these things as a reminder to myself to use self-control, think before speaking, look at the pro and con for saying anything and a reminder to use empathy.  How would I feel if another person said this, used this tone, or acted in this way to myself.  As I work on this, I ask that you join me in our attempt to use ‘discipline’ in every aspect of our life, especially with the most most dear to us.

Each day we make many choices and every choice we make brings with it consequences, either good or bad. For every choice we make we are demonstrating discipline or a lack of discipline. What is great about this is that they are our choices, and they are our responsibility.

Whether we are an adult or a child we have the ability to choose courses of action that will matter to our health, knowledge and success. The rewards for eating healthy, brushing our teeth, studying our lessons, practicing skills, setting and achieving goals, saving money, or telling the truth are seen both short term and long term.

What is interesting about discipline is that the practice is not always seen in immediate rewards. Is that not what can make it more difficult for children to learn? In their world immediate satisfaction is more desireable, because it is difficult for them to understand what ‘long term rewards’ mean. In regard then to teaching the character quality of discipline – what we want to start with is teaching how long term rewards benefit us.

Here is a physical example of long term rewards. This past spring in our classes we started a long term project of being able to do 25 pullups. No one in the class was able to achieve that on the first day. However after 8 weeks about half of the class was able to achieve that goal with consistent 3 day a week practice. This same principle applies to other aspects of our life too. What examples do you have of being rewarded by patient disciplined efforts?

There are two kinds of discipline. One is external and the other is internal. While both are an important part of our lives, most would agree that helping ourselves and our children to develop internal discipline is what leads to the most success in our life. To start this series of discussions off we must first distinguish between the two types of discipline.

If you ask any child if their parents have ever discplined them – they understand it to mean being punished. But their is a big difference between discipline and punishment. When we have any kind of external discipline, we are learning a new way of thinking or looking at a behavior. We may be asked to do something as a result of our own behavior that did not fit with the expectation of the other party. That other party may be a teacher, parent, employer or other person. Learning and acting in accordance within the expected norms of the group we are associated with could be considered ‘external discipline’.

Internal discipline is different in that it is a expectation that we have for ourselves. This is going to be different for every person as all of us have our own values and needs. For instance if we are a person who values order and certainty, our internal discipline may give us a rule that we will follow no matter what that says everything has its place and we keep all of our things in a specific order. If we value our health we may give ourselves rules that demand that we eat healthy, exercise and rest properly. We will discipline ourselves to be sure we fill those needs.

While everyone is going to have different values and needs, there are social norms that say to us that certain actions demonstrate internal discipline like working hard, eating healthy, exercising, etc…, while others demonstrate a lack of discipline like procrastination, laziness, putting entertainment ahead of chores. So what rules do you have that are important to you, that you would like to see your children imitate?

Each month we define and discuss a word of character development and life skill with all of our students.