Discipline is dumb.
Discipline is dumb.
“Discipline is remembering what you want.” ~ David Campbell
Tis the season to be obsessed with our fantasy futures, and to work diligently to make them happen with renewed resolutions, audacious goals and sticky habits. You know, discipline and self-improvement as the path to personal success and enduring happiness. I’ve spent decades examining that premise and the evidence is crystal clear:
It’s absolutely absurd.
The future is not an idea to embrace. It’s a stifling illusion—a dangling carrot or a raised stick—that separates you from your experiences and blinds you to the energy and potential of existence. A full and vibrant life doesn’t happen linearly, and happiness isn’t planned and achieved. So wake up from the narrow story in your head and come alive to the wide-open world of destiny and possibility!
And what of discipline?
Discipline is dumb. To be disciplined means to be unsure and conflicted. The original meaning of the word is to correct, chastise, and punish. And who are you punishing? Yourself, of course. Think about it. You’re giving away your life, doing things that you don’t really want to do, in order to achieve happiness. Does that make sense to you?
Despite what you may have been led to believe, successful people are not disciplined. They don’t need motivation or willpower. They see things very clearly, without distorting each moment with goals and storylines, and are moved by their inner desires and by what they experience each and every moment.
But our culture is fixated on the achievement of success and happiness through control (I recently bumped into a webinar titled “Mastering Happiness Through an Academic Discipline”). And the irony is that obsessing over those slippery concepts is what moves us further and further away from them. It’s like trying to fall asleep; the harder you try the more anxious and awake you become.
So what's the solution?
Bob Dylan proclaimed you’re a success if you get up in the morning and go to bed at night and in between you do what you want to do. Gandhi said happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. Combine those two ideas and life is pretty simple: Relax, trust yourself, and trust life. Do what you want to do, do it with passion, and do it in harmony with your inner self.
It really is that simple.
🎉 Happy Now!
🦃 Random information for the month of January
* Wordle is 2022’s top Google search term, above both Ukraine and the queen.
* Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year for 2022 is “gaslighting.” Wonderful.
* The first Oxford word of the year to be chosen by public vote is “goblin mode.” It’s a slang term describing “unapologetically self-indulgent, lazy, slovenly, or greedy” behaviour. Lovely.
* For the third consecutive year in a row, the Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny is the top streamed artist on Spotify, earning more than 18.5 billion streams in 2022.
* Jonathan the giant tortoise, the oldest land animal in the world, turned 190-years-young in 2022.
* Viva Magenta is Pantone’s color of 2023.
* Kohler is selling an Alexa-powered smart toilet outfitted with RGB LEDs, speakers, and a customizable bidet. I’s priced at an eye-watering $11,500.
* Mangoes may taste better if you stick them in front of a laptop. Blue light makes the tropical fruit both redder and sweeter.
* Steven Spielberg’s ET model sold at auction for $2.56 million.
* Sylvester Stallone wrote the script for “Rocky” by hand in 3.5 days, and it took 28 days to film. A year prior, he had $106 in the bank, a pregnant wife, and a dog he couldn’t afford to feed.
* As comedian Bob Hope lay on his deathbed in 2003, his wife Dolores asked where he’d like to be buried. His reply: “Surprise me.”
* Scientists made a blood test for Alzheimer’s disease. The test, which still needs to be validated, could get people diagnosed much earlier.
* A US judge ruled that movie studios can be sued for having “deceptive” trailers. The ruling defines trailers as subject to false advertising laws due to their “commercial nature.”
* Defogging glasses has been demystified.
* A pair of jeans from an 1857 shipwreck sold for $95,000.
* Dyson’s air purifying headphones have officially been priced at $950 a pair.
* Los Angeles county granted a girl named Madeline permission to own a unicorn. All she has to do is find one.
* Grandma was right about the cold making you sick. A lower temperature does lead to a lower immune response, which makes me wonder: Do face masks add to their efficacy by warming the air that enters the nasal cavity?
👁 Take a look
Astounding wave clouds surge over Wyoming’s Bighorn Mountains.
It’s a rare phenomenon known as Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, named for Lord Kelvin and Hermann von Helmholtz, who studied the physics behind the formations.
It occurs when two layers of air move at different speeds, with the top layer moving faster and picking up the lower layer.
🤔 Think about this
“The goal of life is to die young — as late as possible!” ~ Ashley Montagu
“A man does not really begin to be alive until he has lost himself. Until he has released the anxious grasp which he normally holds upon his life, his property, his reputation and position.” ~ Alan Watts
“We’re in a freefall into future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you’re going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It’s a very interesting shift of perspective and that’s all it is… joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.” ~ Joseph Campbell
☝️ And don’t forget
I’d love to hear from you. (I read all messages and try to respond.) Reach out with any news, questions or comments, or simply to say hi: hello@tomasacker.com (or use the contact form).
Until next time, spread your ears and fly!
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