Let's start at the beginning. When I was young I knew that I had none. That was drummed into me at a very early age by my father who was very big on self discipline. I think he believed that since I didn't have any, he would provide it. And he did. A lot. Of course eventually I figured out that it is the basis of maturity but I am not sure when I figured that out.
I think the first time I started to believe I was a failure at the self discipline game was in about second grade. Maybe earlier but that is what sticks out the most. I went to Catholic school (see, no wonder I feel guilty about everything) until I was in 9th grade. And at St. Theresa's the most important grade you could get on your report card was for Conduct. How you behaved. Starting in first grade they had a demerit system that you would get points added or subtracted from your total for a variety of reasons. Everyone started every year with 100 points. Talking in class lost you one point. Making fun of the teacher cost you 5 points. Fighting cost you 10 points. I didn't need the last two as I could rack up a great deal of points off from the first one.
The grade you got for any subject was based on a 100 point scale. Once you got below 95 you got a B. Below 85 was C. Below 75 was a D and below 69 was an F. Getting in an F (or even a D) in my house (with a teacher for a Mom and a school administrator/teacher for a Dad) was tantamount to shooting my younger brother. And most of my grades in grade school weren't that bad. Mostly C's and B's. A few A's (I loved history and geography-still do) and a few D's (still hate math) but my only consistent F was in conduct. I am absolutely sure that I got my first one in 2nd grade. All of it from talking in class. As my father explained to me when he and my mother took me to the convent to meet with the principal (a nun) and my teacher (also a nun),"You just can't keep your mouth shut, can you?"
And that was the truth, I couldn't. Now, I am not sure how many Fs I got in conduct and I have no excuse for getting them but I know that from that point on I was a HUGE disappointment to my father. And it wasn't the F, it was the lack of self discipline. And I had other problem besides talking. I really couldn't stick to anything. This made me a very talkative, fat (I couldn't stop myself from eating or stick to exercising either) little boy.
There were times that I remember I was disciplined by my parents into being a more self-disciplined person (like when I was banned from watching television until I learned all my times tables in 4th grade) but I could tell that it really bothered my dad that all my disciplined stemmed from him and not from within me. My father is the most self-disciplined person I have ever met. He had to be to live the life he lived. He pretty much gave his life over to my mom. You see my mother (who had survived polio as a teenager) had a stroke when I was about four years old. She was in the hospital for weeks. She barely survived it and came out of it without the use of her left arm and left leg. From that point on, my Dad's entire existence was to take care of her and to pay off her medical bills. And he did it. He gave his life to her. When she died three years ago in April, he turned to us kids and said, "Now what am I going to do?" He had been taking care of her for so long, he didn't know what else he was going to do.
So you can see what a disappointment I was to him. He had to discipline himself to give up things that he loved to take care of my mom and to take care of all of us financially and he could not understand why I wasn't more like him.
The first time I can ever remember being self disciplined myself was in fifth grade. I had the best teacher I have ever had that year. Mrs. Helen Gerth. She is still to this day the greatest teacher I have ever known. I can't tell you why but I can tell you that she sat me down at the end of the first quarter of that year and told me that again I had talked my way into a D in conduct. But she was the first person to ever tell me that she believed that I could get an A. That I could actually shut up. That I could control myself. That if I just thought about it before I opened my big mouth, I could do it. And for the second quarter of that school year, I proved her right. When the end of the quarter rolled around I had 100 of those 100 points still on my chart. I look back on it now as one of the most important accomplishments of my life (even today) because it was the first time anyone had ever used positive motivation with me. Someone had believed in me. Someone who I respected and cared very much for. Unfortunately I could not say that about my father. Even today, I don't know if he thinks of me as a failure or a success. We talk often. Since my mom died, we talk weekly. But mostly it's about the weather or my niece, who he sees for breakfast once a week, never about anything really important. I have often wanted to ask him what he really thinks of me. Isn't that crazy? Being 56 years old and still looking for approval from my father.
So back to the self discipline thing. That ties in with my paternal approval thing because his thinking that I had self discipline would be the highest compliment he could pay me. It would be the most approval he could give me.
Do I think I am self disciplined? In some things, yes. In others no. So why are people that way? Let me give you an example. Why can I discipline myself to get up six days a week at 4:30 am to exercise for an hour but I can't stop myself from overeating? Why can I get myself to take a photo every day for an entire year but I can't get myself to give up watching as much TV as I watch? Why is self discipline so selective.
I want to explore that and writing this down will probably only get me to think about it more. And you know what happens when I think about something? Nothing happens. Or sometimes it does.
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