I have no Discipline. Now what?

Two days ago I got a new tattoo on my arm: Areté.  It’s the Greek idea of excellence, involving concepts of fulfilment of purpose, function, and/or potential. 

For about a week there I was living up to my idea of excellence: meditating every morning for half an hour, working out every day, eating a keto diet (I’m trying to lose weight), and working hard at my job.  Also, working on the political thing; posting on Instagram, listening to political podcasts…honestly, that part could have used a little more attention, but I was doing well on everything else.  Plus, I had quit caffeine and nicotine. 

But for the past week, I’ve been a fuck up.  I’ve had a DQ blizzard I think every night for the past 5 nights, I’ve only worked out 3x this week, I’ve been drinking caffeine, and I haven’t done my political stuff.  To be fair to myself, I haven’t had any nicotine, and I’ve been working hard at my job, so points there.

But what’s frustrating is that I really, really want to be doing well at all these things.  I know what I need to do.  But I just can’t seem to make myself do it.  It’s like the farther I push the pendulum to one side (one week of ‘good behavior’) the farther it swings back when I let it slip past my fingers. 

Why can’t I do what I want to do?  Why can’t I make myself do what I know to be good for me? 

These are not new questions, nor is this an original story. Even for me. It’s another iteration. Another display of the same meteor storm as the orbit of my life passes through the same cloud of asteroids called ‘self improvement.’ The political pilgrimage is a new motivation, but one I fear will be easily caught, killed, and consumed by the predator known as … what? Freud’s Thanatos urge?

I’ve been putting a lot of pressure on myself.  They say don’t try to make all the changes at once.  That makes sense.  But I have the time to make it happen.  I have the energy.  I have the free time to enjoy myself.  And let’s face it: if I’m going to make this political pilgrimage happen, I have a lot of work to do between now and then.  I want to lose like between 20 and 40 lbs – I know I’ll lose a lot of weight while I’m out there walking, but I don’t want to start the journey with 200 lbs on my 5’9” frame.  I need to do PT for my knees, so they don’t blow out on me (I’ve got bad knees).  I need to get equipment for the journey – from a backpack to trekking poles to a travel guitar to food, etc.  I need to plan my route – where am I going to start?  Who am I going to interact with along the way?  I need to build and activate my network, so I can plan for places to stay, for groups to meet up with.  And I need to start figuring out ways for people to contribute to my project financially.  Gofundme?  Patreon?  Substack?  Otherwise this journey is going to end before it ever begins. 

So how do I develop the discipline to do all those things, when I don’t even have the discipline to get to the gym regularly?  To not eat Dairy Queen when the impulse takes me? 

What’s got me feeling so…crunched?

The pressure of the political walkabout itself is definitely a contributing factor.

Financial pressure – I owe a lot of debt right now.  Personal, credit card, medical, and let’s not even talk about student loans. 

Nerves – I’m doing a show with my guitar soon, albeit only for some friends, but it’s still pressure.

Work – I kind of burned myself out by working through last weekend, now I’m desperately in need of a break.  Which I’m getting in a couple days here, but I’m feeling burned out now. 

And then there’s a more abstract pressure – I’m proposing myself as a presidential candidate.  A presidential candidate should be able to handle pressure.  So there’s a whole zen second arrow thing going on here: I should be able to handle this.  I should be able to be someone other – better – than I am…even though at this point I’m not. 

Who do I think I am?

I wonder if sometimes Areté means humility. The humility to ask for help.  To seek out guidance, teachers, teachings, lessons, that I clearly don’t have.  To say, “OK, I know x has worked for other people,” and to not say, “but I don’t need to do that.  I’m smart enough to not need that.” 

I need to develop some discipline.  Or maybe talk to a dietician.  Or join an exercise club, or a team, or something.  Because the way I’m doing it – I’m not going to get to where I want from where I am.  I know it’s only been a week of failure, but it’s been so much more than that.  It’s been a lifetime of struggling with this.  Which also means that it’s probably going to be really, really hard to change. 

But I really want to do this political walkabout.

I want to set myself up for success as much as I possibly can.

I have the motivation.  I just don’t have the how. 

Open to suggestions.  Thanks y’all.  Kisses.

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Follow up: I talked with Papa Neuf about this stuff for a while today, and I came to a next step I want to try: community. I learned from 12-Step long ago that discipline isn’t the only way to accomplish hard things. In fact, one of the first things you learn in that community is that your discipline is unsteady, unreliable, and has probably let you down in the past. So what keeps you on the path of sobriety? The book + the meetings + the people = recovery. Maybe I can apply that same lesson to my challenges with exercise and diet: starting with community. The only time I’ve ever been able to maintain an exercise routine beyond 3 months is when I had a team to train with, back in college and high school. So I’m gonna try to find a community to train and cook with. Not saying this will definitely be the answer, but it’s worth a shot.

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Follow up number 2: ChatGPT as a therapist.

I asked ChatGPT to explain Freud’s Thanatos Urge in terms of more modern, subtler therapeutic understandings, and it did a great job. After confiding in it that I experience that Thanatos Urge (or perhaps ‘psychological reactance, or perhaps a need for relief, or perhaps self-sabotage) when on the way to the Dairy Queen drive in, it gave me a great explainer of what might be going on, and a great list of steps to try to manage / redirect / distract away from that urge. Which I screenshot, and am excited to navigate the next time it comes up. I know OpenAI and the AI industry in general has its issues, but as far as my personal interactions with it go, I love it. OK, that’s all.