Tag Archives: discipline

Stephen Covey taught me Scepticism… (bear with me).

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I have always been ‘intelligent’ in the sense I could pass examinations, but I don’t think I became really intelligent until I started studying the works of Stephen Covey. He didn’t make me any cleverer in IQ terms, but he did open my eyes to a new mental approach to things. He showed me how people – you, me and an awful lot of politicians and celebrities – are psychologically flawed, and in recognising those flaws I realised just how much what we are told is ideologically biased. Not necessarily on a political ideology – just a set of ideas about which the speaker feels certain, even though they have no empirical, objective evidence for the firmness of that certainty. It is, to use a Markleism, a ‘lived truth’ and is therefore subjective.

I hear a ‘fact’ now, and I realise that it is rarely factual. It is routinely an opinion. It is an opinion honestly held in the sense that the person stating it (usually) genuinely believes it, but it is rarely an absolute, objective truth. I now question everything I hear, because I know about Values. They believe what they are saying because they want it to be true. And anything which challenges that ‘truth’ is not only wrong, it is an absolute lie!

Attaching emotion to an argument colours it, so when I hear emotion – anger, passion, hate, fear – then I also hear bias. And just because I disagree with you doesn’t mean I am right, either. Objectivity requires acceptance that you may also be biased.

Covey taught me many things, but one of them was to see things not through ‘my eyes’ but through ‘principles’. The main principle of debate and learning being – ‘have we heard ALL the facts?’ So I accept nothing, believe no-one and check everything.

For example, when I hear someone on one side of the political divide start insulting the other,  I remember Desmond Tutu’s advice that when in debate, instead of raising your voice, raise the quality of your argument. Try explanation and a quiet, considered voice – and I’ll hear you.

When I hear ‘There is no evidence to show …….. (whatever the speaker does not wish to believe)’, I ask, “Have you even looked?”

When I hear ‘something terrible IS going to happen’ (e.g. Brexit), I recall Hyrum W. Smith (author of What Matters Most) saying ‘ Results take time to measure’ and recognise none of us can tell the future. Try ‘might’ happen – and I’ll listen.

When I hear ‘you MUST do it this way’, I look at the background material and frequently find that ‘this way’ is not the ‘only way’. Indeed, it is occasionally the wrong way. Question what you are told – even if the answer remains the same, you will understand it to a far more informed degree.

When I hear talented actors, who I’ve watched grow up from their first childhood films to mature individuals, telling me their opinions about politics I ask, “When exactly did you do your—–ology degree?” They have a right to an opinion – but all too often they have no ‘authority’ behind it. (And as I get the impression that ‘creatives’ are almost consistently left-wing, I also ask how that stands up, statistically?).

And when I hear an academic’s opinion that is based on their expertise, I remember that they may have found the evidence they sought, but was it objectively tested? And you can get a degree with a 40% pass mark, by the way. Having letters after your name may just be confirmation of a bias!

In essence, what I am promoting, here, is to live a life of healthy cynicism, where you question what you hear – even your own experiences. The last thing this world needs is to move from objective reality to ‘lived truths’.

Listen, but assess. Could they be wrong – because if they are and you act on that, you’re wrong too.

Make the Hard Choices

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When I set out my plan for what is my 60th year, one of the tenets I elected to live by was the expression “Make the Hard Choices.”

What is a hard choice? In a nutshell, a Hard Choice has to be made when, in Three Resolutions terminology, one often has to choose between a short term preference, or a ‘fight or flight’ kind of response, where the immediate temptation is to take the easy option. Or one really thinks about it.

I have made several hard choices over the fairly recent past. Two stand out because the first impacted the latter. In 2019, I was accused in my workplace of some thought crimes. One was a silly joke I made, which in the current climate really was silly. The rest of them – well, let’s just say I dispute either the recollection, or the existence of the event. My Hard Choice was – fight, or flight? During the internal hearing, where the number of pages exceeded the number of days I’d worked, I found myself wondering if the next allegation would be that my striped tie was phallic in nature. I decided that the relationship between the people involved was such that, for the sake of the organisation, I would resign. I didn’t need the money, nice as it was. The organisation didn’t need the bother and, quite frankly, neither did I. So I left.

Two years later, an agency with which I am registered asked me if I wanted a role with that organisation. As I am lockdown-bored, I suggested that if they’d have me, I was willing. The agency said they’d contacted them and they were okay with me, “Would you like an interview?”

I actually panicked. I had the shakes, concerns about ‘them’, concerns about the work.  My blood rushed to my head; I was mentally all akimbo. And then my mantra kicked in – “Make the Hard Choice.” I replied, “Yes.”

During my interview it became clear that my past hadn’t been passed on. So I told the interviewers (as an answer to the question as to whether I’d ever made a difficult choice, ironically enough). No point in hiding what they needed to know, after all.

Those examples represented the making of a ‘hard’, Hard Choice. But I have made another one every morning this week. To get out of bed and exercise first thing, or (weather permitting) to go out on long/hard road cycling expeditions. Some people love doing that – I am less enamoured. But as I lay there in the morning gloom (roll on Summer), I remind myself – Make the Hard Choice, and I rise, dress, set up my tablet and watch Talk Radio and other videos as I use up the calories I will take on later in the day.

You may have a range of Hard Choices to make. Divorce, marry, date, dump. Take or refuse an opportunity. Eat a salad or a cake. Give up a vice or accept the consequences. Write that e-mail, or delete it once drafted.

Of course, some of your hard choices may affect others. Promotion/resignation affects those who rely on you for survival, after all. Facing or escaping a danger may result in the difference between saving a life or making sure you stay around for your loved ones. (I’ve often wondered why, when they DON’T leap into danger, coppers are often criticised. If it’s courageous to throw yourself into a river to save a stranger, it is ‘normal’ and expected NOT to.)

What Hard Choices do you make? If there aren’t any, are you living to your full potential? There is no doubt in my mind that it is the Hard Choices that bring out the best in us. And sometimes, that choice may seem self-centred – but might actually contravene our values in preference to the needs of other people.

Even the ones who tell tales about you.

Emotional Control – and Two Fights.

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Years ago during my policing career, two colleagues arrested a criminal who had a reputation for violence. On arrival at the Custody Unit car park, and just outside the Unit entrance doors, the officers alighted and invited the detainee to get out of the car. (It was before the use of vans was routine.) He declined their invitation.

Using ‘minimum force’ I used a technique I had learned in training, I put the blunt end of a pen against his earlobe and putting the two between my fingers, squeezed. He got out, at which point my two colleagues pinned him against the wall and tried to cover all his limbs and torso at the same time. I observed two things – one, he was trapped, and two, he wasn’t actually resisting any more.

“Flipping heck Dave, help us!” yelled one of my mates.

“He’s not resisting anymore.” I calmly responded. And he wasn’t. he meekly accepted his fate once the two sweating coppers eased off and the rest of the process went easily.

For 24 hours the two colleagues thought ill of me. The following day, they apologised. The emotion of the moment had taken over.

Another day, same unit. A well known and truly violent prisoner, with a history for acting up in the Unit, was asked to remove his clothes for forensic examination. Predictably, off he went. Yelling, demanding, threatening. It was going to take the world to get his kit off.

“Oy, ******,” I shouted. “WHAT?” he replied.

“Has behaving like that ever actually worked for you?” I asked.

A moment passed and he started undressing.

I’m no saint. I lost my temper now and then. Which doesn’t make today’s lesson less impactive, it merely reinforces it.

When emotions are high, when stresses are present, when losing your temper and abandoning all emotional control is ooohhhh so easy,

Don’t.

There are two reasons for this. First of all, it makes you feel good afterwards. Your keeping control is emotionally satisfying.

But second, it means you keep control and are able to deal with the event better. While I’m not proposing you will ever need this advice, my experience has always been than in a fight it’s the one who loses control that loses. I was attacked many times during my career but I always (somehow!) managed to keep my cool – even when a criminal bit into my leg and I let him stay there because it meant he wasn’t running off – and I literally tied them up in an effective controlling hold because they had lost control and I hadn’t.

You may not be involved in fisticuffs, but the same advice applies to those verbal confrontations we all, occasionally, find ourselves starting or trying to finish. Maintaining emotional control is key to resolution, and it is a truly empowering characteristic that those who wish to be principled leaders should seek to adopt.

All it takes is a moment to decide – who’s in charge here? Me or my emotions.

Choose ‘me’.

The Daily Win.

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I’ve said it before, so I’ll say it again. All those Californian, rich(ish) personal development speakers and writers and their ‘Rise at 5AM and exercise’ freaks are invited to come and live where I do in South Wales, where it’s easier to pick up the dog eggs in the garden at 6AM because they’re rock hard with ice. Where the idea of a home gym is fine if you live with a spare room big enough for a running machine or static bike, said room being centrally heated to at least ‘bearable’ for that early effort. And where going to bed early so as to get a decent kip before getting up at 5AM isn’t easy because the road and neighbours aren’t 100 yards away and are living their noisy lives while you try to drop off. And fitness clubs remain an expensive luxury.

Which is not to say that exercising is impossible. So far this calendar year, with the exception of the 1st and the 9th, I have exercised daily. Furthermore, with two exceptions, I have done so as soon as I got out of bed. Which, lucky me, is 7.30AM because I ain’t got a proper job.

I have a spin bike, a relatively inexpensive yet reliable (3 years so far) model. I have a mount (thank you Santa) for a 7” tablet through which I watch YouTube videos which inform, entertain or anger depending on the day’s choice. And a garden shed to put it in. There simply is no room in the main dwelling. You see, I am not a financial success like all those 5AM loonies. I am a moderate professional success on that I have always been employed doing work I enjoy, on the public purse in their service. So none of that ‘earn twice as much, work half as hard’ twaddle that Brian Tracy and Jack Canfield promote – which is valid for the entrepreneur or commission-paid individual but not the vast majority of us. If I wanted to earn twice as much as a copper I’d have had to work 76 hour weeks AND ask permission, first.

Each of us loves in his or her own circumstances, which do not necessarily reflect those described by such writers. Some do. Lucky them.

Back to me.

What gets me out of bed at 7.30AM, or more specifically onto the bike at 7.40AM, is The First Resolution. ‘To overcome the restraining forces of appetites and passions, I resolve to work on self-discipline and self-denial.’ I don’t want to ride a bike first, but it would be rude of a promoter of such a concept not to try. So that’s what gets me up. My Integrity. Doing the things I don’t like to do because (a) they serve me and (b) I said I would. If only to myself.

I should also be up front and state that it doesn’t work every day. If I don’t sleep well I’d make the next day worse, not better, if I self-flagellated with exercise before starting work. (I can always exercise afterwards, if I feel up to it.) But here, the point isn’t to apply self-discipline to the point of self-punishment. That’s a route to failure.

But I will also add that doing that exercise first, and educating myself while I do so, sets me up for the day exactly as Stephen Covey promotes in his books. He calls it the Daily Private Victory and to be fair, that’s as good a description of that process as any. It is (as he also puts it) mind over mattress. Long term gain over short term discomfort. Many cliches, all accurate.

I get up. I go out into the cold shed and exercise.

I win. The rest of the day is a breeze.

So much so, this took 15 minutes to write. In the flow. And with integrity – nothing I write is a lie to myself or to my reader. Whoever you are.

Be disciplined. But be disciplined early. Ish.

When over-focusing won’t work.

08 Thursday Oct 2020

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“The key to meeting an unmet need is in addressing, not ignoring the other needs.” Stephen R Covey.

It is widely acknowledged that we humans have four needs. Various writers have jiggled with them, added some, changed the terminology and so on, but for the purpose of this article I’ll use Covey’s four – the physical (food, drink, rest, exercise), the social-emotional (relationships), the mental (intellectual growth) and the spiritual (meaning). Covey opines that so often, when one of these needs is unmet we tend to address that gap it by only focusing on that area – for example, by exercising passionately when we need to lose weight. This can work, of course it can, but what about the other needs that are being minimised or even ignored while you sit and sweat on the exercise bike? Are you ignoring your spouse? Are you moving forward on your other, important goals? Are you ignoring professional development? Are all these areas suffering because of your manic focus on the ‘one problem’ you have identified? The answer is often Yes.

To the same degree, I decided to explore The Three Resolutions. In my book I describe how they present a progressive self-development from self-discipline and self-denial, through competence and character, to the achievement of a self-identified purpose through service to others.

I consider they confirm Covey’s thinking. My life’s experience is full of examples of people who focus in one or two areas identified in the Resolutions, and yet remain oblivious to the fact that their singular focus in one area prevents them becoming the best that they could be. (Of course, I also have examples of great successes who, coincidentally, demonstrate compliance with all three.) Athletes who excel – and then we find they used performance enhancing drugs. Amazing singers – whose hypocrisy about green issues gets laid bare when they buy a plane ticket for their hat. Dedicated politicians – whose expense claims render them untrustworthy.

For me, as for Covey – and I’ll be candid and say I ain’t no perfect example either – the finest expression of greatness is seen when all Three Resolutions are addressed, and when all three are addressed simultaneously. When we utilise our self-discipline to empower our competence, which is founded in great personal character, and serve others for a worthwhile purpose.

You can train in each area separately, but success in each enables success in all of the others.

So, just as Covey suggests with his needs, consider this: when you have a problem or personal challenge, don’t just think which ONE of the Three Resolutions you need to address: think how you could address that issue with all three.

Not fit enough? Don’t just hit the bricks (discipline) – research fitness (competence), train with and help others (service), and do so with dedication (character).

Don’t know enough? Don’t ‘just’ study (discipline) – carefully identify what you need to learn and set about it (competence), resist others’ invitations to take unnecessary breaks (character), and teach as you learn (service), which enhances that learning.

Want to serve others but don’t know how? Consider and understand your needs, capacities and competencies (character/competence), identify what service you can provide (purpose) and then learn ways of using that before allotting time (discipline) to providing the optimum service to the best effect.

You can be the buffest, prettiest, strongest, fittest, shiniest narcissist in the gym – but you won’t get the respect you’ll get if it’s all about you.

Exercise all the Resolutions. The best among us have shown you this works.

Here we go again? GREAT!!

23 Wednesday Sep 2020

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What have you achieved during the ‘first’ COVID Lockdown period?

How you define ‘achievements’ in the question I leave up to you. You may choose work-related successes, which will include how you adapted your working practices to address the restrictions and the (yuk) New Normal; you can list any charity or community efforts you undertook; you can rattle through the personal development you made.

Or.

You can consider the lack of initiative you might have displayed in any or all of those areas. You can now consider what you could have done. You can think ‘I could’ve’ (not could OF) and ‘I should’ve’ and ‘I might’ve’. And you can wallow in the self-pity that ensues if you did nothing to take advantage of the developmental opportunity that this pause could have provided.

But GREAT NEWS!

In my area, several local authorities have been re-locked down. (In fact, Cardiff is technically under siege as it is surrounded by locked down unitary authorities.) There are constant rumours, even expectations that another national lockdown is a-coming our way. A second pause-button that you can press and decide ‘What can I do in this period of change?’

I’m lucky. I have no formal occupation other than writing and blogging so I had massive amounts of discretionary time. Oddly, I still have a 9-5 mentality and regularly ‘pack in’ at tea-time. Weird.

But in the period since March I have:

  • Lost 35lbs.
  • Increased my cycling – time and distances travelled.
  • Attended umpteen free webinars to stay on top of my game.
  • Sorted out some home-environments.
  • Written The Way.
  • Edited Three Resolutions. (Okay, I finished that just before it started but it needed a proof read.)
  • Rewritten Police Time Management (still doing that).
  • Had two mini-breaks with the extended family during the eased-off hiatus in the Pandemic Panic.
  • Refocused my mind.

And here we find ourselves at the cusp of another, allegedly 6-month lockdown opportunity.

The Three Resolutions ‘commitments’ provide a framework for consideration of exactly what you can do to take advantage of the gap. You can reinforce your self-discipline by choosing to eat less and exercise more. You can redefine your personal values and your congruence or incongruence in terms of how you behave in their respect. You can learn new stuff, or you can study the old stuff you need to know in order to do an excellent job. You can revisit your sense of Purpose and decide if what you are doing is right for you, while simultaneously considering what service, or what better service you can provide to others – either through work or in a voluntary capacity.

Or you can just accept the entropy that doing nothing engenders. You can actively pursue the self-redundancy that ‘just doing enough’ causes.

Which is the right choice? You KNOW it.

Now DO it.

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.

 

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