Discipline can be a very charged concept. Growing up as the child of immigrants who joined the military, I have always had very strong ties to one definition of discipline. In my home, it was:

• Maintaining the will to do whatever is necessary to produce a better future for the next generation
• Adhering to demands exactly as they were given without questioning the methodology or the value of the task to begin with
• Conforming under threat of corporal punishment

Discipline was suffering, persevering as an act of care, and deprioritizing emotion to feed the machine. I saw it as a cold metal buoy that we were meant to cling to in order to fulfill our side of the bargain for safety and stability.

As a creative and as a neuroexpansive mystic, I had to redefine my relationship to discipline for my own emotional survival. Additionally, as a person with a uterus, even science has proven that routine was never meant to be linear and unchanging in this body. Though to be honest, looking at nature alone should tip us off that no human was built to operate in a straight line. I decided I want discipline to support me, and that required changing how I perceive it.

Unfortunately, there are so many useful concepts that have been warped into something cruel by the time it reaches us. Absent of all the imperial capitalist overtones, it’s easier to see discipline clearly.

The value of discipline to life is exactly the same value of a skeleton to flesh: it supports and gives structure.

Through 8 years of experimentation, I’ve had many definitions of discipline – and it still at times evades verbiage. As of this writing, I’ve settled not into a single definition, but instead into a set of standards to keep our relationship valuable and sustainable. Below are the conditions I need discipline to meet in order for us to work together.

Discipline has to feel:

• Activating – a framework that excites me and facilitates growth
• Reward Centered – linked to an immediate (positive) result to sustain me on the journey through the long term vision
• Flexible – adaptive to match my seasonality and modular to adjust to highest and lowest capacity
• High Leverage – one decision or one focal effort that makes 1000 other things fall into place
• Supportive- feel like a warm hug from someone who sees your maximum potential

Using this framework has really helped me to reclaim the concept of discipline and see how it can be useful without the trappings of abuse.

I will share more about my story and how you can implement your own supportive framework at the Neurodiverse Entrepreneur Summit on July 24th.

I hope –if nothing else– you have a chat with your current definition of discipline to determine what you need from it. Once you decide how you want discipline to show up for you, I guarantee your life will change.