The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck — Discipline

• What makes life difficult is that the process of confronting and solving problems is a painful one.

• Yet it is in this whole process of meeting and solving problems that life has its meaning.
• Discipline is the basic set of tools we require to solve life’s problems.

1> Delay gratification

• Delaying gratification…a way to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing the pain fist and getting it over with.
• Love…when something is of value to us we spend time with it, time enjoying it and time taking care of it.
• Feeling of being valuable is a cornerstone of self-discipline because when one considers oneself valuable one will take care of oneself in all ways that are necessary.

2> Responsibility

• I can solve a problem only when I say “This is my problem and it’s up to me to solve it.”
  • Speech of the neurotic…‘I ought to,’ ‘I should,’ and ‘I shouldn’t,’ indicating the individual’s self-image as an inferior man or woman, always falling short of the mark, always making the wrong choices.
  • Speech of a person with a character disorder…‘I can’t,’ ‘I couldn’t,’ ‘I have to,’ and ‘I had to,’ demonstrating a self-image of a being who has no power of choice, whose behavior is completely directed by external forces totally beyond
  • All children have neuroses, in that they will instinctually assume responsibility for certain deprivations that they experience but do not yet understand. Thus the child who is not loved by his parents will always assume himself or herself to be unlovable rather than see the parents as deficient in their capacity to love.
• Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity.
  • Yet in so doing I was also unwittingly seeking to increase Mac’s authority over me. I was giving him my power, my freedom.

3> Truth

• Our view of reality is like a map with which to negotiate the terrain of life.
• The more effort we make to appreciate and perceive reality, the larger and more accurate our maps will be.
• But the biggest problem of map-making is not that we have to start from scratch, but that if our maps are to be accurate we have to continually revise them.
• The only way that we can be certain that our map of reality is valid is to expose it to the criticism and challenge of other map-makers.

4> Balancing

• Balancing is the discipline that gives us flexibility.
• The essence of this discipline of balancing is ‘giving up.’
• What makes crises of these transition periods in the life cycle – that is, problematic and painful – is that in successfully working our way through them we must give up cherished notions and old ways of doing and looking at things.
• In order for genuine novelty to emerge, for the unique presence of things, persons, or events to take root in me, I must undergo a decentralization of the ego
• The best decision-makers are those who are willing to suffer the most over their decisions but still retain their ability to be decisive.