Tea with Linda - SELF-DISCIPLINE
Tea with Linda - SELF-DISCIPLINE
Linda Kavelin Popov, Co-Founder of TVP, December 2024.
The nine- to eleven-year-old children in my Virtues Club at VaiTau Primary here in Aitutaki, Cook Islands, love to sing and dance to the rap song “Fruits of the Spirit”, https://youtu.be/mb_wPGgj-6s?si=aezbjXzx4LOGR7Hl which contains nine virtues named in Galatians 5:22 “… the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” They form spontaneous groups of three or more, creating their own choreography to go with the song. Some of the boys have formed a chorus line and do their highest kick, shouting out the last virtue, while the girls tend to do the local hula. It fills them with joy.
Honestly speaking, self-discipline, whenever practiced, does bring surprising joy. When we complete a task that we’ve been putting off, calling on our self-discipline to “just do it”, there is a deep satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment. I find that the fatiguing energy expended in procrastination is quickly dissolved in tackling what often turns out to be a ten minute job. Without self-discipline, the lethargy of putting it off inflates even a small job with the power to drain us.
Self-discipline restores our strength and confidence. When I ask the children how they actually do a virtue, two of my favorite answers are: “You BE it,” and “You just make yourself do it.” Marion Bock, a wise Virtues Project master facilitator, once described the virtue of Self-discipline as “Self-Discipleship” -- honoring your own worth, choosing the high road, and being your own leader.
Our dignity deepens when we engage in self-regulation in the presence of strong feelings, particularly anger. Anger is usually a secondary emotion covering other emotions, such as helplessness. When we willingly engage in agency over our feelings, rather than allowing them free rein in our lives, the self-discipline to choose how we will respond flourishes.
We have far more control than we know over ourselves. Detachment helps us to lean into our self-discipline. It allows us to be like a rock in a turbulent river. Feelings arise around us, yet we stand firm in the trust that we will not be swept away or indulge the ego in venting and tantrums. One of my clients, a young woman of twenty-three, born to an alcoholic mother, has fetal alcohol syndrome, attention deficit disorder and is on the autism spectrum. She has reduced her meltdowns to one or two in the past year from many each month. One of the aids to her self-regulation is the self-discipline of calling on virtues to calm herself down. She is learning to walk away from conflict with her siblings rather than being triggered into a rage at their taunting.
We always have a choice to call on self-discipline rather than to take things personally, to respond mindfully rather than to react emotionally. Self-discipline is not a slave driver. It is our soul leading us to the peace of our holy ground. The key is to love and value ourselves as worthy of respect, especially our own.