Humiliation and shame and unanswered email...
My essay from last week for those that lack discipline seemed to strike a chord with many. I think the idea of discipline as a necessary ingredient for success is baked so deep into our culture that most of us additionally feel like discipline is a necessary ingredient to be a good person.
If you’ve been living under the shadows of a lack of discipline, I want to help you dispel both of those beliefs as emphatically as I can.
This weekend, me and my family (which extends far beyond my wife and son, this year we made the decision to create a commune-type arrangement) decided to enrol in a course called “Enchanting Work at Home”, hosted by my friend Dr Jason Fox (whom I’ve known for many years), and featuring the amazing Cecilia Macauley (who I met for the first time yesterday).
Cecilia is a permaculture expert with an obsession for Japanese culture (in many senses not at all dissimilar to my wife who is a permaculture enthusiast with a healthy interest for Japanese culture), and the goal of the program is to create an enchanting space to work from home. As someone who has worked from home for over ten years, it did occur to me halfway through the first session yesterday that I probably should have taken this topic more seriously a decade ago.
I’ve learned a lot already and I’m sure I’ll talk about the subject directly in future essays, but for now I want to address a point Cecilia made yesterday which resonates with my thoughts about discipline, and which explore the deeper nuances of this important topic.
“The only effort should be in the maintenance of effortlessness”—Cecilia Macauley
On expending effort, Cecilia says:
"The only effort should be in the maintenance of effortlessness; so the pleasure and benefit of the outcome is fuelling the effort.”
This is a wonderful distinction about the relationship between discipline and energy. When I say that we can eschew traditional discipline, I don’t delude myself into thinking you can simply ‘do whatever you want’. The tension between the experiencing self and the remembering self surely can’t be addressed so simply. There are times when one needs to do what needs to be done (which has a meaning which is at least partially satisfied by the English word “discipline”), and so I love the distinction Cecilia makes about when and why that effort should be expended.
Expend effort in order to maintain effortlessness.
Now, she’s talking about it in the context of a space like the kitchen sink or an office desk, but the idea can serve as a metaphor that extends much further. I think we can spend energy in order to create more energy.
One of the primary benefits of my haphazard meditation practice is that I find I notice a lot more. I notice the world around me more, and I notice more about the world within me more. In particular, I’ve tuned in to what if feels like to be enthusiastic and energetic, and what it feels like to feel flat and lethargic. In addition, I’m getting better and better at noticing why I feel that way, and therefore I’m getting much better at addressing it - by spending energy in order to create energy, effort in the maintenance of effortlessness.
Sometimes the relationship between energy spent and energy gained is fairly direct; if you take the time to make and eat lunch, you’ll have a lot more energy available in the afternoon.
Other times the relationship is less obvious, but equally important. Email is a huge one for me.
To be perfectly honest, if the modern world didn’t practically force me to use email, I simply wouldn’t use it. I find email to be incredibly infuriating manner of communication, and yet… well, by far the majority of my income is generated through business for which the initial enquiry (and much of the subsequent discussion) occurs through email. And thus I persist.
Because of my disposition towards it (possibly a future essay will explore the possibility that I could choose a different disposition but for now I’ve saddled myself with my present attitude), email costs me energy. If I’m bouncing off the walls with excitement, you can reliably fix that by pointing me at my inbox. However; I gain energy by:
doing good work, and
making people happy
If I don’t process my emails for a while, I start to lose energy. If I notice my energetic state and explore it a little, I uncover a lingering sense of foreboding. If I explore that dark cloud a little, I discover a sense of humiliation and shame that I haven’t replied to an email from someone who is waiting on my response.
I can become a prisoner trapped on the outside of my own inbox
Procrastination is almost always the child of fear or shame, and so it is that I can become a prisoner trapped on the outside of my own inbox. To describe living in that state as being “far from effortless” would be an understatement of the highest order.
As a result, many of my experiments in energy management have been around email processing strategies. I’m constantly trying to find ways to help myself spend a little energy (sitting with my inbox) in order to gain a lot of energy (the lightness of being that comes with knowing that no-one is waiting on a response).
Is that discipline? Well, yeah, sort of. But it’s discipline with a slightly different character than the word as it’s generally used. I’ll explore that tomorrow, again with the help of Cecilia and some Japanese wisdom.
Photo by Christian Erfurt on Unsplash