by trod1234 | 2025-09-01 20:22:06+00:00
I'd say they weren't addressing the core issues, or they think discipline is something that it isn't, and then kept trying ineffectively.

Here's what discipline is and isn't.

Discipline is an extremely simple concept to develop but few actually know how to do it in any reasonable way because of so much misinformation out there, and malign influence seeking to take advantage and increase suggestability, and by extension addiction.

Discipline just like meditation is really a fundamentally simple practice.

Just like with meditation, where you don't use willpower, but instead simply focus your thoughts back towards a single point, and then relax that focus slowly, which stills your thoughts.

Discipline is simply the repeated practice of limiting when and where you choose to change your initial decision or choice, for all of the choices you make.

You take your time considering before making a choice, and once made you only change it when there is some new information that becomes available after the fact, whether that is a new consequence you didn't consider, or completely new information you received later.

Its a simple rule. You don't give yourself the choice except under those circumstances. When you are tempted, you remind yourself you don't have the choice. When you cave and fail, you don't beat yourself up because that destructively interferes with your psychology which only works towards outcomes framed in the positive. If you make a mistake you examine what led to it right away, and mitigate those circumstances moving forward. You imagine what you will do next time, with a successful outcome a few times that day.

With this repeated ritual comes an understand that willpower is always finite, and you pick and choose what you will spend that on each day. You recognize when its running low, and defer important decisions pigeonholing them for a later time. With repeated practice in everything this become a unconscious ritual with good outcomes.

You do what you say you will do, and you don't compromise yourself, and people recognize that level of discipline. It becomes easier with each successful choice, and its so damn simple.

These two things together make a world of difference in coping with everything. It places the locus of control for your life within your grasp.

> only to discover medication later and find it instantly turned around everything.

First, medication in most cases in psychology doesn't instantly ever turn around everything. You still have the problems that led to your mental state, they are often subtle which have built up over time. You are just better able to cope with them where you weren't coping before, and following the initial euphoria of relief you still have those problems.

I know quite a number of people that have been diagnosed and use medication to cope with professional burnout. Eventually you pay the piper.

Sure you can take a drug, and maybe you feel better, but also maybe you feel like everything is 100x worse and to relieve the pain and suffering you end yourself; (a known sideeffect) or you have a chemical reaction that ends up in sudden death (a known sideeffect). Few actually consider this, minimizing it.

There is no panacea. Soma is just treating the symptoms. What you do, and things you choose to live by are far more important, especially in contrast to the fact that many medications make one more suggestible. For good or ill.