How History can Teach us Discipline

We want our children to be the best they can be, to be supported, motivated and successful in everything they do. But the problem is, they see parents as their role models; and if we aren’t practicing what we preach, how can we expect our new generation to? 

So, rather than a challenging uphill battle of trial and error, in this blog we will delve into what we can learn from self-discipline and ultimately, teach of new generation.  What is self-discipline? Self discipline is more an intangible ideology that will change faces through who is looking through it. The official definition is the following ‘The ability to control one’s feelings and overcome one’s weaknesses’. This can be broken down into three types:

Active Discipline

Active discipline is doing what you need to in that very moment such as eating a healthy meal, limiting your distractions whilst studying, and exercising. You were actively disciplined when you chose to eat healthy

instead of unhealthily. You were disciplined when you took the time to study and turned your phone off.

Reactive Discipline

Reactive discipline is controlling your thoughts or behaviours when dealing with unforeseen situations, such as getting a flat tire and dealing with your emotions in a calm and sensible manner.

Proactive discipline 

Proactive discipline is doing things in advance to better control a situation such as bringing an umbrella on a rainy day, creating a to-do list, and going to bed on time.

Firstly, we are going to look at Reactive discipline..

Dealing with failure

It is a human instinct to have a level of anxiety of rejection and failure. A lot of the reason we experience anxiety and apprehension at the thought of a situation outside our comfort zone is our flight and fight emotions kicking into action.  I’m sure there has been times where you have felt an overwhelming sense of dread at the thought of going to a social event that you’re not comfortable with, or a job interview that you feel inexperienced for (even though you know you are). This is because your brain sees these scenarios has a ‘threat’ and to protect you, it evokes the fear hormone that is then translated to the feeling of anxiety.

With that being said, it can be easy to let that failure confirm those feelings before hand of anxiety and not branch out again. Failure, however; flipped as a learning curve to try again so the best for of discipline you can possibly give yourself. J.K. Rowling, A.K.A the author of the highest-selling series of novel ever; Harry Potter. Her series lead to the success of over 500 million copies, 150 million more than the next-highest selling series. The movie adaptation generated 1.34 billion dollars in just one of the eight sequels. 

This now, billionaire started off in not so promising circumstances. Her manuscript was rejected by 12 different publishing houses before she finally found a publisher. Among the (ostensible) reasons for rejection were too conventional, too long, too weird or too old-fashioned. Living just above the poverty line, she kept on trying at different publishers until it was finally taken. 

This isn’t an isolated case, Steven Spielberg was turned down three times by the University of Southern California School of Theatre, Film and Television. Beethoven was marked as ‘hopeless’ as a music teacher. In fact, it is rare you will finds a success story that does not rejected roots.

It is important to take failure, rejection, disasters, and part of the process. When your proposal at work does not work out how you wanted, tell your child what happened; take it in your stride and let them watch you try again. Encourage big goals and celebrate the failures as well as the successes.