OBSERVATIONS & OTHER ACCIDENTS

Discipline: it’s not about what you say’ll do. It’s about what you actually do. 

“I learned to find equal meaning in the repeated rituals of domestic life. Setting the table. Lighting the candles. Building the fire. Cooking. All those soufflés, all that crème caramel… These fragments I have shored against my ruins, were the words that came to mind then. These fragments mattered to me. I believed in them…I could find meaning in the intensely personal nature of life.”
— Joan Didion

Discipline is a word that appears frequently in my vocabulary. I don’t use it lightly, nor do I utter it in the context of self-development — a field so overused it’s lost nearly all weight and credibility. Discipline isn’t something you learn; it’s something you practise. The other day, in one of those YouTube videos that the algorithm insists on suggesting — because, in fact, I am genuinely fascinated by the mind — a “coach” was unfolding and promoting tips on how to develop this practice. In truth, she never actually developed the subject, since the real purpose was to lead people to buy her short didactic course costing a few hundred euros. That’s another topic in itself — I even wrote about it some years ago, the so-called “coachmania”, for a Brazilian platform I used to collaborate with. Parenthesis: I don’t believe in coaches.

Having discipline is not something one can be taught. We don’t become disciplined because someone teaches us how to be; deep down we already know exactly what we have to do to remain disciplined — regardless of what life looks like. In that video, the so-called coach appealed constantly to reward systems: “If you want to lose weight, go to the supermarket and don’t buy foods that make you gain weight; replace that dessert with chewing gum; etc.” Anyone who wants to lose weight already knows that having junk food in the cupboard isn’t a good idea. Discipline is not pleasant — the pleasure comes later, with the sense of duty fulfilled and the results achieved. In the moment, discipline is boring as hell. It sucks. You don’t feel like it. It can even be synonymous with a life that seems dull. But it’s about choosing the boredom of now over the regret of later.

But I’ll go further. If discipline is already dull when life runs within the boundaries of normality, it can become a giant you only want to run from when life falls apart. During a particularly bad phase of my life, when my terrible choices were digging me into a bottomless, pitch-black hole, it was discipline that kept me somewhat afloat. The situation couldn’t have been any more miserable. Every day felt like a test I never signed up for, but I realised that if I stuck to certain tasks, I could go to bed at night without feeling like the most useless, pathetic being in the world. So I simply complied: getting out of bed very early, sitting at my computer to write whatever rubbish came out, going to ballet — until a ligament rupture threw me onto the sofa, making everything even harder, because that’s life: when you think it can’t get worse, it does — and at night, doing my skincare routine, yes, a gesture as futile as it was pointless, especially on days like those. I tried to eat the bare minimum within the limits of what was healthy, so as not to keep losing weight and watching my health fade away — physical, mental…

Discipline it’s about choosing the boredom of now over the regret of later.

It’s precisely in moments like these, when willpower seems to vanish, when the body feels heavy and the mind refuses to move, that discipline becomes our greatest ally. It may sound contradictory, but it isn’t.

Discipline is also most required in the mind — and for me, it’s where it hurts the most. I am hyper-disciplined with my daily tasks: schedules, writing, ballet. But inside my head, chaos doesn’t always obey plans. Mental discipline is, perhaps, the most challenging of all. It requires countering patterns of thought, distorted truths that the mind insists on imposing, and the reactions that follow. It’s an invisible yet constant exercise — not believing everything the mind tells you. I work on it every day, with the help of my psychiatrist, certainly, but above all with the commitment not to be carried away by what I think when I’m tired or down.

It’s easy to give beautiful motivational speeches when everything is fine. But when things fall apart, it’s just you and your own ridiculous determination. I can say, with some certainty, that discipline saved me. On those days when discouragement felt like an impenetrable wall, it was what kept me moving. Not always with enthusiasm, definitely not with excitement, but with consistency. There were days when getting out of bed was already a small victory. Others when writing a single line took more energy than seemed reasonable. Still, I did it. Without much conviction, but with the commitment not to give up.

When everything is falling apart, there’s nothing and no one to save us except ourselves and our fight.

Over time, I realised that discipline isn’t rigidity — it’s a form of care. It’s the gesture that repeats what’s essential, even when there’s no will to do it. It’s what keeps us anchored when everything else wavers. But it’s also uncomfortable. It forces us out of our comfort zone, to face internal resistance, to deal with the part of ourselves that would rather postpone. Discipline is, in essence, a form of discomfort — but it’s in that discomfort that the greatest transformations often take root.

There’s nothing beautiful about this. That’s why I have such contempt for New Age narratives with their enlightened speeches that make it seem as though everything can be solved with mantras, incense and light.

It’s the gesture that repeats what’s essential, even when there’s no will to do it.

Discipline isn’t beautiful, nor romantic. It’s what remains when everything else fails. It’s the act of continuing, even without believing. It’s what you do when there’s no faith, no hope, no energy — only the silent duty of not entirely giving up on yourself. And, for me, this is the highest form of self-love.

*The title is a homage to Joan Didion’s essay On Self-Respect, published in Vogue on 1 August 1961, when she was at the beginning of her writing career — a piece that has inspired me for decades and continues to resonate with my reflections on discipline and self-care.