Blog - November 14, 2022

Day 14 : The November Happiness Challenge 2022

Discipline

Of course, this had to come on a Monday morning. Don’t we all think Monday is synonymous with Seriousness and Discipline? Right! We are probably on the way to our offices, or there already, or planning how the week would run from our homes among other things. Anyhow it is, we still feel a wave of wanting to set the week in motion every Monday, and this is why this topic had to come on a Monday. My first encounter with Discipline and having a slight understanding of it was at my Secondary school. I had just resumed and it was a popular word with the students. If you do something that isn’t allowed in the school, you’d hear echoes of “The Principal will discipline you”. I initially didn’t get it until someone was ‘disciplined’ in my presence.  Alas, being disciplined by any of the staff meant you would get some strokes on cane on your bum, hands or back. Some teachers even took it a step higher by making sure you get strokes on the three parts, so you wouldn’t escape any pain. I told myself that I’d avoid any situation that would make me get disciplined by any teacher, because it was such an experience I didn’t want to be a part of. Unfortunately, I did get disciplined not once or twice, because you already know that even if you don’t get beaten for individual offences, the group ones will always have you implicated. I got disciplined over and over and it never got easier. Some students would easily ‘dust’ the canes and won’t shed a tear but that student isn’t me. I wailed for the better part of the classes and only learnt to take it a bit better in my senior classes. In all, I don’t miss that ”discipline’ life one bit. As the years went by, I realized that discipline went beyond taking lashes of cane from teachers or anyone alike. It could be a form of discipline of course, but there are lots of other ways and reasons one needs to have discipline in our daily lives. You literally cannot get through life meaningfully and successfully without imbibing some acts of discipline. You could even view it as those strokes of cane that you used to have when young, which kept you grounded and on the right path. Anyhow you view it is fine, as long as you are able to identify that thing that helps you to forge ahead and not derail. In every endeavor we embark on, we have to be very disciplined. It helps with commitment and also helps to keep our eye on our purpose, as discussed earlier. It is what will help us to stick to helpful routines and perform duties that we are meant to perform, among others. This personal discipline that we are able to perfect within ourselves is what then becomes extended to people who are around us looking up to us, such as our offsprings.  Discipline is defined by the Online dictionary as  the practice of training people to obey rules or a code of behaviour, using punishment to correct disobedience. So, yes, those stroke of canes analogy given earlier could be apt. You just have to find your own punishment. It could be you depriving yourself of certain luxuries to remind yourself to not derail next time, whatever works for you. In formal settings, Discipline could come in form of suspensions without pay, or in extreme cases, you could be asked to leave. Some organizations deduct some money from your pay if you aren’t punctual, or they could withdraw some benefits if you haven’t been efficient at your work. There are numerous ways of putting discipline in place and I’m sure many of us have seen it around us or experienced it. For kids, I’d always recommend the carrot and stick approach to discipline. Here, you reward them for good behaviour and withhold benefits from them when they don’t do right. It works more often than not. Again, it’s Monday and you need to set your affiars in motion, while thinking up disciplinary measures for yourself and maybe others around you.  Do it! What does Discipline mean to you? How are you able to keep yourself grounded? Did you ever have to discipline yourself on a particular misbehaviour? How did that go? I’ll be back.