Tag Archives: discipline

Even he failed – but made no excuse.

15 Friday Nov 2019

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A wise man once wrote, “I personally struggle with much of what I have shared (in this book). But the struggle is worthwhile and fulfilling. It gives meaning to my life and enables me to love, to serve – and to try again. The challenge to live with integrity is always in front of me.” (My italics.)

We all make mistakes. I recently made a monumental one. But the beauty of mistakes made by people with integrity is that (a) the pain is lessened because you know you can and will do better and (b) those who know you, know (a).

And we all make excuses. I have a philosophy on excuses. It goes like this – when you say why something happened and you acknowledge your part in it, that’s a ‘reason’. When you fail to acknowledge your own part in an error, you’re making an ‘excuse’.

The difference is subtle and relates to your integrity. You know when you are making one or the other. If you (normally) have a high level of personal integrity and you make an excuse – you know you’re doing so.

As alluded to by the writer of the opening quote, every moment is an opportunity to start again. Time, being linear, will not allow us to relive and repair the error before or as it is being made. But it does mean we can make a better decision, next time. Another of my favoured authors describes how trying to change the past is like firing an arrow into concrete – it bounces off and nothing changes. But firing an arrow into the future is like launching it into fresh earth – it can stick and be a guide. (I’m torturing the metaphor a bit, but you know what I’m getting at.)

I write on personal development and time management. Occasionally I will use current affairs to illustrate my points but the main focus is on counselling readers on a philosophy that might just improve their lives. Like them, I struggle with living 100% in keeping with the words I put on paper (except in time management, I’ve pretty much got that down pat). I occasionally make excuses for those times I fail to walk my talk as well as I should.

But I’m in good company. The author of the opening quote is Stephen R. Covey who, as you surely know by now, wrote the greatest book on principle-centred living ever written, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, which is NOT a business book, even though it’s usually found in that section of a bookstore. (Still, after 30 years in print.)

If HE found it hard, I’ll live with my inability to do the same. But that’s not an excuse. It’s an acceptance of my imperfections. I’m still going to try hard. And then try again. And again. For as long as it takes and for as long as I live.

And if, on the day before I leave this mortal existence, it suddenly all gels – it would have been worth the effort.

(Blimey. I even impressed me with that line.)

Try hard. Keep trying. Do your best, accept reasons and challenge your own excuses.

The people around you – family and friends – will recognise this when you occasionally err. And that, my friends, is amazingly consoling when you fail.

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Demi and Aragorn tell us how to beat the Bell.

14 Thursday Nov 2019

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Hell Week. A term made famous by US Navy Seal training, when B/UDS volunteers go to the selection course to find out if they have what it takes to be a member of one of the world’s most elite special forces units. Famously immortalised in the 1997 Demi Moore film, G.I. Jane, which also starred Viggo Mortensen (but you might not remember because he wasn’t Aragorn, yet).

There are a couple of scenes where the trainers show the trainees the Bell. Traditionally, trainees who decide part way through the training that this isn’t for them go to the Bell and ring it, announcing their shame-faced surrender.

I recently read a quote from a senior SEAL officer, and the gist of it was that he could tell the ones who’d take to campanology the minute he saw them. They would be very fit young men and women, but there was an air of pose, of mock strength hidden by all the shaped musculature. In essence, he suggested that for all that apparent physical tone, the motivation behind it was narcissistic and would fail at the first challenge. And he’s usually correct.

The true SEAL (and by extension Royal Marine, SAS Trooper, GSG9 Kommando and so on) has all the physical capabilities required of their role, but they also possess deep character strength.

I think they may also possess a mental approach which supports that strength. I think they know that when all is said and done – the pain stops, eventually.

They know that the discomfort, the effort and the pain are all temporary states. They know from experience that it’s hurt before, but it stopped hurting and normality returned. They know that this will be the case again and again, so they accept the agony. And, as we all know, next time the agony takes longer to arrive, takes less of a toll when it does, and dissipates faster afterwards.

If we just keep training. If we just do what have we do, and in doing so get better at it.

I truly gasp when I hear about people who sue their employers because of the stress ‘they’ caused by asking too much of the employee. It seems, more often than not, to be related to the levels of paperwork. When I read that I think of people facing bullets and winder how they feel about administration-induced stress.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no saint. I do try as hard as I can (sometimes!) when training but I, too, fall into the ‘It’s all too much’ way of thinking and mentally stroll towards that Bell. But more and more I am beginning to realise that there is some – a lot of – truth in the expression ‘what doesn’t kill us makes us better’.

I wish I’d learned that 30 years ago.

When you’re in work and feeling the strain of the amount of work you have to do, or its nature, just remember that other, well-known tenet – ‘This too, shall pass’. It usually passes just after you walk out of the door of the office. Furthermore, remember that when you finally go, everyone manages without you.

(I have only had one call since I left work, and that was from someone who didn’t know I’d gone.)

‘Your’ important work gets passed to someone else. The world keeps turning. It’s a bit sobering but it’s also quite liberating. Apply that at home-time – the work can and will wait.

So I have two lessons, today.

Everything (including us) is temporary, including the ‘stuff’ we hate doing. And we aren’t the centre of everyone else’s world, just our own.

And you can’t really ring the Bell on that one.

“You want me to do what? With who? WHY!?”

11 Monday Nov 2019

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I am engaged in a newish hobby. In early 2018, my mate said, “Do you fancy coming on the Cheltenham Sportive with Mark Cavendish?”

I had no idea what a Sportive was, and (sorry) I had no idea who Mark Cavendish was. Turned out he is a Tour de France rider with a nice turn of speed. And a Sportive was an event where thousands of cyclists clogged up open roads and annoyed motorists. My mate went on.

“It’s £45, but if we book now it’s 10% off, so £4.50.” Note that at this point I had no bike, nor had I ridden one for quite a while.

“Go on then,” I said.

(In the event, Mark set off at the head of our peloton and we never saw him again until the end, when I had my picture taken with him. Which I will not reproduce here due to an unfortunate belly- gap in my Lycra.)

Cycling has since cost me about £3,000 in terms of bike, kit, other events and hotel stays, a near-death experience, neck- and bum-pain, hours of painful sweating – and a severe values problem.

I value my friends. I value health and fitness. I like spending time with my mates and I like feeling comfortable.

But, by heck, I find it really hard to cycle. I hate getting ready, I hate how much of the day it takes up when we ride 40+ miles. I’m not overly find of hills, particularly 1-in-14 slopes (‘That’s a cliff, mate’.) And now it’s winter (again), it’s even harder.

But I do it. I’ve committed to it, although it has become evident that I need a little bit more commitment if I am to find it less agonising – after the long rides, my day is gone because I have no strength available whatsoever to do anything meaningful.

I have to discipline myself so that, as Gary Keller and Jay Papasan say in their book, ‘The ONE Thing’, that discipline turns into habit, which is easier.

That’s a GREAT philosophy – applying discipline to something to the extent that it eventually becomes Habit. I write on this precise philosophy in my book ‘The Three Resolutions’, and support the idea that discipline gets easier as time passes. Which is why I bemoan the fact that I wasn’t told this when discipline was applied to me in HM Forces or the early Policing period. That imposed discipline, if accepted and applied, serves self-discipline, which in turn serves us.

And I am not talking about discipline applied to something you LOVE to do – that isn’t true discipline in the sense that you do something you otherwise would not do. True discipline means doing something you otherwise hate, because you know that doing so serves YOU.

And those you love, in terms of being a role-model of discipline to the degree that they don’t see it as (pause for Remembrance Day 2-minute silence*) discipline, just as ‘normal’.

So like many of you, I will do something (cycling) I am ‘not overly fond of’ because it shows respect for my friends, will (eventually) make me healthier and fitter, and gets me out of the house at least once a week.

What do you do, that you detest, that makes you better?

 

*Ironically, one of the ‘other events’ I mentioned was a cycling tour of WW1 battlefields and cemeteries. How coincidental I should write about this just as the world remembered the fallen.)

Choice keeps the wolf from the door.

28 Sunday Jan 2018

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“Unemployment is a characteristic unique to the human species only. All the other creatures and creations seem to know what they are supposed to do.” This was a quote ascribed to an unnamed economist who I am sure had his tongue half-squished into his cheek, but it is a thought provoker. Of course, the human condition means we can demonstrate compassion to those who have not and who cannot, whereas the animal world rarely shows that (dolphins, whales?).

My question, which might invite challenge, is – should we be so compassionate towards those who will not?

As a police officer, I met people of all three ‘persuasions’. I met the poor, the challenged and the disabled, who to my mind represented the have not and cannot and for whom I had some sympathy. But for too often, and presumably because of the circumstances surrounding the ‘call for service’ that resulted in our meeting, I met those who would not.

Those who would not work in case it made them have to get up in the morning. Those who would not because it involved being subject to supervision and rules. Those who would not because of the inconvenience. They would do one thing – they would go and collect their benefits and then pop next door – and it was next door – to buy their beer. Then they would go out and steal and rob ‘because they needed money to live, Your Worship’.

In a nutshell, there are those who can’t exercise the Three Resolutions,  there are those who don’t know how to exercise them, and there are those who won’t.

And there are those who defend the latter by lumping them in with the former. They make excuses and seek evidence to justify their findings. Instead of giving them a metaphorical slap and showing them how to get a grip, they pander to their failings instead.

Fortunately, there are also those who come half way, giving that metaphorical slap and then helping them to discover a new sense of personal discipline, a new and better sense of character and new competencies. And my experience suggests that those who are helped to achieve and execute those First and Second Resolution ethics frequently go on and execute the Third Resolution in ‘paying forward’ what they were given, to the benefit of all.

I love seeing that. I love seeing people rescued from hopeless and useless to helpful and useful. I remain scathing towards those who are useless and hopeless but who revel in it and demand respect for it.

And I feel that way because, unlike animals, such people – all people – have the ability and capability to do and be better because they have a choice. Animals are usually led by instinct. A dog chases a car but probably doesn’t know why. A human who ‘is’ useless is well capable of choosing better and should be encouraged and helped to do so.

Once. Maybe twice. Maybe even three times. But after that – let the wolves have them. Wolves know what they’re there for.

 

For more, got to Amazon and buy the book on Kindle or  paperback.

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You’ve got me all wrong. Probably.

04 Friday Aug 2017

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Gretchen Ruben is an American author and lawyer, and I have enjoyed reading a couple of her books, most notably her last one – which has become an accidental precursor to her next book. In said next book, she will expand upon what she has called The Four Tendencies. These tendencies are four ways in which we can identify our predilection and motivation for action, or otherwise. Three of those are Upholder, Questioner and Rebel. Those of you who know me have already decided which of those three I am.

Guess what? You’re wrong.

According to the definitions and the pseudo-test she has provided and which I have circulated through Facebook (as requested by the test – read on and giggle), I am the fourth type – an Obliger.

Stop laughing.

An Obliger is defined as responding ‘readily to outer expectations but struggle to meet inner expectations.’

To me, that means that when a person is called upon to do something for others, they do it. But when they have to do something for themselves, they don’t.

I see me in that definition. A sense of duty exists at the workplace, of course. Most of the time I go about my business routinely. I’ll plan my time to enable completion of the required work. But sometimes, when asked to do something, I might (do) whinge and bitch and suggest there is a better way. Nevertheless, in the end, I always do it. I oblige.

But when I call upon myself to do something and the only person to whom I am accountable and responsible is me – I waiver. A lot, in my experience. Even if I have seemingly volunteered to join some enterprise, I haven’t created an inner obligation – I have self-created an obligation to another.

A good friend recently suggested something to me, and while he isn’t aware of the Tendencies I think he did inadvertently confirm the solution for an Obliger. I had ‘complained’ that once when I get to the gym I can train – but thinking about going to the gym often stopped me actually doing it.

He suggested that when it comes to physical exercise (and my stated reluctance to go to a gym unless I could go there straight from work without having to think of something else in between) I would improve my chances if I exercised with someone else. Think about that – going alone is a problem, but if someone else was involved, my Obliger Tendency would ensure that I honoured my commitment to that other person.

Thinking through this using the paradigm of the Three Resolutions, any reluctance to comply with the First Resolution could and would be offset by compliance with the Third Resolution, confirming my hypothesis that adherence to one Resolution often serves compliance with another. Serving a friend would also and simultaneously serve me. So, where discipline is weak, service can provide support.

Me and Gretchen – we’re thinking along the same lines.

Today’s joke – Matt Damon’s chicken dinner has gone cold. Bourne’s Supreme’s icy.

Please buy me.

Time to step up – and this time I mean ME.

10 Sunday Jul 2016

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I was reading Black Hole Focus by Dr Isaiah Hankel this week, having scanned it in bookshops and considered the content as ‘readable’. Truth is, it’s a bit Anthony Robbins so far, in that the ideas and methods reflect the Big Man’s methods and ideas. That’s not necessarily a negative criticism because if a method or philosophy works then any personal development book will have the same stuff in it. (Which is why I really must stop buying them….)

(BTW, in my defence there is a systematic structure to the philosophy of The Three Resolutions so it is a bit of a lot different.)

One of the concepts Hankel suggests we use is to ‘Name Your Purpose’, which resonates with me as a proponent of Personal Mission Statements. It’s about creating an identity for what you want to achieve, so that it becomes a little more real to you and to your subconscious.

As you know, the name I use for my long term mission statement is the Three Resolutions, but this week I began to seek an outcome which I also named, called the Mastery 55 Project.

In December I turn 55, and my poorly restrained human failings have led me to gain weight, a whole stone in 12 months. (Mainly over Christmas…..) I’ve also developed a less than frenetic work ethic, so even though I do all that is required of me there is a personal sense that I could be getting a lot more done, as mastery and expertise on the TV programme The West Wing is not necessarily a valuable life skill. And I am prone to impatience. (that sentence is quite long enough, dammit!)

Therefore, despite my preaching about character and integrity, I feel I am not walking my own talk. Hence the project, through which I intend to lose all my gained weight, recapture a higher level of physical fitness, increase my productivity, regain that sense of calm and just become ‘better’ by my 55th birthday.

I am tweeting through @mastery55project and a blog can be accessed through the above link, or here if you can’t go back that far. (See patience.)

The project has a its own name, but it does not replace my mission statement as much as it serves it in specific areas, particularly the self-discipline, First Resolution element.

We all, except the saints, veer off course occasionally. It’s how quickly we are willing to correct our course and get back on the right road.

And one method I am using to reinforce my intent is to review my own book, The Three Resolutions! The best way YOU can keep me honest is to read it and challenge me to live by it.

You are my accountability partners. Thank you.

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Discipline leads to business greatness – ask Jim Collins.

24 Wednesday Jun 2015

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Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth…. That is why I recommend the Statue of Liberty be supplanted by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.” Victor Frankl (Man’s Search for Meaning)

At the moment I am considering the focused application of The Three Resolutions to business and young people, and part of the research includes reading of that classic on successful business, “Good to Great” by Jim Collins – that’s where I saw the Frankl quote and, like many I use, it struck a chord.

I’ve written before about how responsibility is an essential counter-weight to freedom, so won’t labour that point. The reason for this entry is the study of the chapter in Collins’ book which is headed by that quote.

It is about how important the application of discipline is within a successful company, but with the caveat that it is not system-, management- or hierarchy- imposed discipline that has made the difference in the ‘great’ companies. No, the success relates to self-discipline of the staff.

Very briefly, Collins discovered that great companies (defined as monumentally more successful than comparator companies, and over a sustained period) did a few things others didn’t, including getting the ‘right people on the bus’, deciding the vision AFTER doing that, then focussing on what the company could be best at (and ignoring what it could not).*

One point Collins made is that the discipline wasn’t something injected at the 4th point on his Greatness Process Diagram. It was something that already existed at each point.

The right people on the bus showed discipline. Finding the right vision required discipline. Deciding on, and focusing on the core business required discipline. And execution required discipline.

Discipline is an essential in all activity, indiscipline undermines your efforts. Freedom is a great thing to have, but it requires discipline if you are truly going to enjoy it. We expect discipline in those who serve us, so absolving ourselves of the duty to be disciplined (e.g. ‘because we have earned it’) is selfish, arrogant, irresponsible and disrespectful.

Referring back to Collins’ example, the great companies did not impose discipline, they employed disciplined people who had the freedom to work (in a disciplined way) within and around the business’s systems so that the objectives could be properly achieved. Those disciplined people designed the systems but weren’t then confined by them. They were guided, yes, but not tied down.

I often bemoaned the way that organisations I worked with placed the system over and above the purpose – I used the expression ‘process at the expense of purpose’ because of the times I perceived that a success was criticised because a procedure wasn’t followed to the letter – e.g. finding a missing child instead of filling out the forms first. Collins’ suggestion is that the objective is paramount (provided it is ethical, of course) and if a process prevents it, it is the process that is wrong, not the objective, and the authority of the disciplined manager was such that s/he could work outside the procedural box to get things done without having to spend time worrying about the administrative consequence.

But the emphatic point was always – discipline made it possible. Self-discipline, then systematic discipline, and then execution discipline. But in the final analysis, given the ability to work imaginatively – it was self-discipline that mattered most.

See. I told you so.

*I’m still reading it, that’s as far as I’ve got so far. But why wait?

Profound wisdom in two words.

22 Thursday Jan 2015

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Occasionally, we have off days.

In 2010 I was present at an event in London when Dr Covey spoke to an assembly of about 1,000 fans, after which I was able to briefly speak with hi and get an autograph. I was unable, despite an invitation, to spend more time with him because I had a commitment to my wife to collect her from Victoria Station – being strangers in town I wasn’t prepared to leave her waiting while I indulged myself. (I still partly regret that….) Here’s the pictorial proof.

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During the event they sought questions from the crowd, and I prepared to ask a question but time prevented me having my turn.

In 2011 I was at an invitational seminar where he spoke in the UK for the last time. As the attendees gathered outside, a familiar olive suited, bald gentleman walked around a corner straight towards me, and he read my name out loud from my name tag. Like a teenager meeting One Direction for the first time I screamed….. sorry, no, I just blathered a greeting and waited for him to speak more – while he waited for me to speak. After an awkward silence someone dragged him away. Another opportunity missed, and although I grabbed him for another autograph just before lunch I never took the opportunity to ask him the question I’d prepared a year earlier.

Which was, “What would you say to someone who has a mission statement and set of values, but fails to meet his own standards only too often?”

The truth was that I wanted him to say to me what I already knew, but which I could then use as ‘profound wisdom’ because he’d said it and I hadn’t.

So, in my minds ear, he said this. “Try harder.” Ouch.

Carpe Diem.

 

The First Resolution – Why is it First?

26 Monday May 2014

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“To overcome the restraining forces of appetites and passions, I resolve to exercise self-discipline and self-denial.” S R Covey

In his seminal work The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People Dr Covey explained how the 7 Habits worked on a continuum, where self-mastery came before interpersonal mastery because, frankly and concisely, one could not master relationships until one had mastered oneself. You cannot truly be an effective part of a team/club/organisation/family until you have identified your part to be played in that structure, and prepared yourself to enact that role to the best of your ability. An effective individual contributes, provides advice and is able to consider the rights and wrongs of any action taken in respect of things which affect the ‘team’. An ineffective person is one who has not mastered self to any degree, and is therefore often a ‘people-pleaser’, who has no sense of self except to the degree that others define it for them. They tend to act in accordance with whatever the group supports, regardless of the rights and wrongs, because they want to be seen by that group as one of them. Ergo, self-mastery is a precursor to, and positively affects optimum interpersonal effectiveness.
This isn’t to suggest relationships weren’t possible without self-mastery, only that they aren’t all that effective.

To the degree that self-mastery is a pre-cursor to interpersonal effectiveness I would argue that of the Three Resolutions, this first one is a precursor to mastery of all three, and without it there can be no mastery of any of them. In fact, commitment to the Second and Third Resolutions requires adherence to, or application of the First Resolution in some respects, because discipline and self-denial serve one’s character, competence and ability to serve other people and noble causes. Without self-discipline one cannot be a true master of self, and this should be borne in mind by anyone seeking to ignore the benefits, strengths and challenges of self-discipline and self-denial.

To be accurate, Dr Covey’s work appears from its tone to refer only to self-discipline in terms of the physical self – control over ones physical appetites in terms of eating, drinking, rest and exercise. This is because (my readings of Mormon literature would suggest) his particular religion considered that proper respect of the body as the temple through which God’s work is done is an absolute requirement of their faith. I am not overly aware of any other religion that stands on this tenet but then I haven’t read that widely.

I, on the other hand, believe that the First Resolution can be interpreted more widely than that, and can be applied to our entire existence – physically, yes, but also mentally in terms of our application to education, relationships, work and personal lives. Application of the First Resolution is important in the physical dimension, certainly, but that is only part of the equation. It can apply to all four of the human dimensions identified by Dr Covey and whose existence has been supported in various ways by other respected writers in the fields of sociology and psychology; namely the physical, mental, social and spiritual dimensions.

For example, taking each in turn as it may be affected by self-discipline and self-denial:

Physically – do you exercise? Are your eating habits sustainable or are they killing you? Are you a slave to your stomach or to any other physical vices?

Mentally – are you a reader? Do you read pulp fiction or is your focus on non-fiction/quality fiction? Are you up to date professionally? How about current affairs – do you understand them or do you focus on ‘Okay’ and ‘Hello’ magazines?

Socially – do you spend all your time alone or do you mingle? Are you nice to people or do you detest company? Do you like yourself or not?

Spiritually – is your life filled with purpose or are you an example of Zig Ziglar’s ‘wandering generality’?
In all areas, are you exactly where and what you wish to be? If not, why might that be? Is it because you aren’t doing what you know you should be?

This question frequently arises in all of us and in all four areas: Where do you find yourself unable to apply self-discipline and self-denial to the degree that your conscience tells you is having an effect on your personal effectiveness in any area of your life?

I’ll continue on this vein next week.

My Own Mission Statement

04 Sunday May 2014

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Just occurred to me that you need to see it to judge my performance against it. It reads:

Discipline ~ Character ~ Service

I exercise self-discipline and self-denial, exercising Principle Centred Leadership•

• I am committed to the pursuit of health and fitness so that I can and do demonstrate self-discipline and athletic performance. I also do this to increase my personal productivity. I honour my body by putting into it only that which serves its wellbeing. I do this to promote my ability to perform my chosen and imposed roles and to help me comply with my Mission Statement.
• I am committed to personal growth. I study through reading and experiential learning, and I make broader knowledge the objective of my studies.
• I seek out and enjoy new adventures and experiences, overcoming personal doubt and by focused effort.
• I take the time for spiritual awareness through solitude, and through the use of nature as a source of peaceful meditation.

I demonstrate competence and character, doing and being my best.
• I am a congruent model of Principal Centred Leadership to my family, friends, colleagues, and those I serve in all my roles.
• I am an excellent husband, father, friend and colleague.
• As a professional I understand and perform congruently with the productive expectations of any organisation through which or for which I perform my services. I focus on my employers’ vital priorities and I motivate my colleagues to the same end. I maintain my objectivity, I perform at a standard of excellence, I remain current in laws and practices and I comply with the ethics of my profession and my Unifying Principles.
• I demonstrate high levels of skill and patience in driving.
• I demonstrate proactive patience in daily living.
• I am diligent and considered in my use of the English language, and I am a highly competent public speaker.

I serve noble causes, enabling others to do and be better.
• I dutifully ensure that the causes I serve now and in the future receive the best service I can provide by being diligent, enthusiastic and supportive to those institutions and the people within them.
• I make the effort, take the time and seek out opportunities to spread the philosophies and methods of personal leadership and values-based time management whenever possible.
• I make the effort, take the time and properly invest the means required to build a nurturing, comfortable and supportive home environment that all those who live or visit there can enjoy.
• I preach my philosophy constantly and, where necessary, I use words.