Discipline or Desire?

Torn4_025 · 2020-07-25T08:35:59+00:00

Alright I'll give this a crack.

What if you don't have desire?

Can you accomplish something out of sheer discipline?

and

Do you need desire to actually accomplish something?

Desire is what causes a person to act. Be it a desire to gain or fear of loss a persons desire is what always causes them to act. Without a desire of some kind you just won't act. So a desire must be created from realizing and appreciating what you have to gain or respecting what you might lose if you don't act.

Discipline is the will to maintain your desired goal in face of your other desires that crop up along the way. Such as a desire to relax or a desire to indulge yourself with some other pleasurable activity or a desire born from unexpected difficulty. You can't really maintain discipline if your will to stick by what you desired to gain or prevent losing if you no longer have conviction for what you desired.

Should we only operate off of desire?

Christians should operate within Godly desires and enact the discipline to resist impulsive sinful desires because they desire God more. Someone that is redpilled should be of the mindset that short term desires aren't worth acting upon if they can't reach their long term desired goal(s).

Human beings in our weak imperfect flesh however will act upon impulsive desires at some point. Most people however do it far too often and suffer many failures in life because of it. Your goal should be to place what you desire long term over the impulsive desires that crop up.

How much discipline is the right amount?

Is there a point where you have too much discipline?

Is there a point where you are using too much discipline? (Slightly different)

The right amount of discipline is whatever it takes for you to reach your long term goals and maintain the person you want to be or become.

As for having too much discipline I think what you are really asking is when becoming focused on a single objective causes issues with other areas of life. Because a person can't have too much discipline, but they can easily misuse it on goal's that are less than worthy of the effort.

What I mean by this is that having fortitude alone isn't enough for a righteous man to have. Discipline is a very important skill to build up and refine, but like any other skill or tool must be used properly since you can use discipline toward goals that are worthy of the effort or goals that aren't worthy of yielding discipline for.

We should evaluate our goals and what value it has to us. Then construct a plan that weighs that value in relation to other goals, plans and what they must do to maintain the person they are or desire to become.

And if you want some serious brownie points, you could also answer how does this relate to our faith and having a works-based mindset as opposed to a desire-based mindset?

A Christian should have a convicting faith based mindset and by extension of their faith have desire to work toward spreading the truth. For the Christian doubt can easily poison their desire to live faithfully because without believing in their goal of being with a loving God all meaning is lost. The faith and then by natural extension the desire witters away like in the parable of the seeds.

Understand that discipline involves choosing the desire for your future self over current self. To some degree everyone practices discipline just to survive by working, learning what might harm them, heeding authority figures and so on so prevent harm to your future self be it years from now or mere seconds ahead of time. In the Christian faith however discipline goes beyond keeping our flesh alive. Not only that, but we must put it's desires to death for the sake of our everlasting future self.

Paul stresses the point of endurance many times in the new testament because discipline and conviction of faith can not be separated. If you believe the wage of sin is beyond measure, that Christ forgives repentant sinners and offers a perfect never ending life with God then overcoming the flesh should be possible with God's help.

How discipline ties into faith is that prayer is a natural extension of faith. We must use the strength God created us with to display our faith and lean on God for his strength to overcome in this life. Reading the bible gives us the knowledge we need to practice our faith and places the word of God into our hearts to guard us against temptation. Those of God's people who refuse knowledge easily can destroy themselves by the desire of their flesh because of it or be misled by Satan and things of this world.

OrlandoTheAxe · 2020-07-26T05:02:22+00:00

"Motivation (desire) is fickle." We've all heard that quote, and, if you're like me, you've probably read it incorrectly as "motivation is unnecessary." It's true that you can't rely on motivation long term like you can on discipline, but both serve important roles, and neither should be neglected.

The purpose of motivation is to inspire us to pursue something. Motivation initiates our pursuit (even though it's often discipline that gets us to start it right now). Everything is optional; we just have to live with the consequences. All of our choices are initially born of some sort of desire, whether it's to avoid suffering or realize some benefit.

The purpose of discipline is to enable you to realize the benefits of delayed gratification. It is born out of the spiritual fruit of self control, which enables us to overcome our own impulses, emotions, and desires. Motivation is the heart, while discipline is the will.

To draw an analogy, motivation is like a match: it initiates a fire, and while it won't burn very long or very bright by itself, you still need it to get going. Disciple is like a log. Once set ablaze, it can burn for ages, hot enough to melt glass, and long enough to last through the night.

Motivation by itself is unstable and often lacks direction, like a match. Discipline takes the initial spark of desire and directs it into controlled, consistent progress towards a goal, like well-placed sticks in a fire.

A person with motivation, but no discipline can only accomplish short-term goals. Once things get tough, his desire to escape the temporal difficulty exceeds his desire to realize his long-term dream, and he folds. This is where discipline comes in. We build and maintain habits to carry us through the times where our animal, dopamine-addict brain just wants to quick hit of instant gratification, so that we can ultimately attain the goals that we must achieve. It's a situation we as Christians are all familiar with.

The reverse (discipline without motivation) is a situation we may not be so familiar with. A disciplined person with no motivation will have the habits needed for success, but can no longer justify them. He has lost the part of himself that identifies with the goals he once had, and the end result is burnout. This is where motivation is necessary. It reminds us of why we started doing something in the first place. If we don't have a reason why, it all falls apart.

You've seen my OYS, so take this all with a grain of salt. I don't want to reach beyond my qualifications in responding to your post, but I have experienced the discipline without motivation scenario with lasting consequences. I was a straight A student in engineering, but, about halfway through, I realized that I hated the endless office work and analysis that is an integral part of the field. I spent the next 2 years of school getting by on brute force discipline. The good habits I built the previous 2 years were still in place, but I didn't want to do it anymore. I couldn't give a good reason why I was forcing my way through it, other than that I felt that I was too far in to turn back. The end result: I graduated with flying colors, and then burnt out hard in graduate school. My situation changed, and I had to make new discipline habits to proceed, but I no longer had an ignition source (desire) to get going. I had no mission (no "why" to be disciplined for), and so I just aimlessly wandered through life until God intervened and pulled me out.

Even though discipline does most of the heavy, long term lifting, you cannot neglect motivation. I am still dealing with the ramifications of my mistakes in this area. I haven't yet figured out how to solve the problem of dead motivation, but I think the key lies in bringing your long term goals in sync with God's will for you. Find a way to orient your pursuits towards treasure in heaven, and then your faith becomes a source of motivation, and it's based on something real, instead of flawed expectations.

But I don't think there's a way to analyze your way back into a motivated state (especially not where faith is involved.) I reckon that's why Chuck says stuff like "do the next right thing" and "just do something" to folks like me with mission and motivation problems. He's right.

I'd be interested in y'all's take on all that, especially the 'pilled, skilled, and fulfilled folks around here. And call me out if you think I'm spouting off stuff that isn't right.

Deep_Strength · 2020-07-26T13:41:27+00:00

Desire and Discipline

They're never in any way mutually exclusive.

Discipline in the faith is essentially good self control to do the right thing - it's a fruit of the Spirit.

Ideally, we should have both desire and discipline/self-control to do the right thing, but if you only have the latter that's good too. Doing the right thing is never wrong. Just don't let a lack of desire tempt you to become more lukewarm (Revelation 3).

Continuous-Metanoia · 2020-07-24T22:47:43+00:00

[deleted]

Title	Discipline or Desire?
Author	DeChef2
Upvotes	10
Comments	12
Date	July 24, 2020 8:22 PM UTC (3 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askRPC
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/askRPC/comments/hx9acf/discipline_or_desire/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askRPC/discipline-or-desire.716796 https://theredarchive.com/post/716796