Discipline - what is it?
Bronislav Klučka, Oct 26, 2025, 10:07 AM
Today, we finally get to the first real skill needed for change and growth - discipline. Discipline is a necessity, a prerequisite for achieving your goals, for becoming what you want to be.
The word "discipline" itself may sound ominous to many, like something we want to avoid. But discipline is the foundation of growth, and in this article, we'll look at how to make discipline our ally.
Self-discipline is not punishment, but salvation.
What is discipline?
As usual, I don't have a single objective, perfect definition, but for the purposes of this article, I will define discipline as:
Discipline is the ability to consciously control your behavior and emotions in order to achieve a goal based on set parameters.
In other words, you do what needs to be done regardless of how you feel or whether you want to.
Controlling emotions is one of the cornerstones. Emotions happen: something happens, our emotions react to it, often subconsciously. We don't choose them. What we choose is our behavior. We can let our emotions control us, or we can decide to control our emotions.
Controlling emotions is not suppressing them; controlling emotions is understanding that emotions are not facts, emotions are signals. Emotions do not reflect reality, but our interpretation of reality. And interpretation is purely in our hands. Emotions are a reflection of ourselves, not of what is actually happening. But I won't go into detail here. Let's just look at the emotions and feelings that actively work against discipline and growth.
Fear and comfort. Emotions that evolution has been working on for millions of years. Their purpose is our survival. When I see a saber-toothed tiger in the distance, fear serves to make us run away and survive. Comfort - warmth, dryness, and a full stomach - was the reward and goal for the work involved in finding food and shelter.
Fear
As we have already written, the purpose was survival, not growth. For growth, these emotions and feelings are historical software that hinders us. We feel the same fear of a saber-toothed tiger as we do before starting a new project, and we often don't realize how huge the difference between these two situations is: one is a matter of survival and the other is a matter of "the project will fail." In the first case, we will not survive; in the second, it is probably nothing. "What if it fails? What if someone thinks I'm incompetent? What if they fire me?" We draw conclusions based on something that hasn't happened and may not happen. What if the project succeeds? What if it is very successful? The need to "survive" is a hindrance in this context. And it is something that needs to be actively worked on. The need to survive is inherent in us, but we must actively work on growth. Fear will allow you to survive, but it will prevent you from growing.
Comfort
Similarly, we are programmed to seek comfort. This, too, was a matter of survival. We had to get rid of hunger, otherwise we would die; we had to get rid of cold, otherwise we would die. But today? Central heating and supermarkets. And suddenly we are replacing comfort with "Netflix & chill." The need for comfort, which in the past forced us to act in order to achieve it, is now simply laziness.
Both of these feelings get you to the same basic level: you survive. However, if you want to grow, you have to overcome them and give them up.
And that brings us back to discipline - the ability to consciously control your behavior and emotions. Fear often just means that you haven't done something before, you don't have experience with it. Nothing more, it's just a reaction to something unknown. And the need for comfort is a signal from the body, which resists expending energy because for millions of years it didn't have enough.
But discipline is a choice, a choice to act regardless of how I feel.
Okay, nice introduction... but what now? How do I build discipline? How do I overcome my feelings? We'll look at that next time ;)