Our daily lives are meant to obey codes, rules, norms and standards that we actually are all
supposed to know, but that only a few understand. From childhood to oldness,
these rules guide our lives, actions and interactions. We are all (almost all)
supposed to follow the same daily routine led by a sort of universally accepted
discipline.
And if this discipline is something necessary and
officially required for a social and intelligent cohabitation with other fellow
humans, it is not self-discipline. And most of all, it is not and will never
mean neither respect nor self-control which actually are the guarantees of a real
peaceful and respectful social, collective interaction and cohabitation.
Now, the irony is that in the global understanding, self-control is supposed to
result from discipline and from self-discipline, yet it is nothing
but the result of a certain consciousness.
And even worst, the
great things of this world are nothing but a patchwork of billion differences of tastes, mindset, abilities, tendancies, etc.
Yet the system we live in tends to stifle difference, hence tends to stifle evolution.
One day, when
telling a friend I didn’t indend to send my daughter to a conventional school
with conventional hours, conventional ways of thinking, acting and believing in
things, she argued that my daughter would probably lack of self-discipline,
meaning by this that eventually my daughter would be one of those marginal and
wild young people unable to live in society because unable to feel and to give
respect to others, due to a lack of self-discipline.
Well, I am not
certain that social norms and standards are meant to bring whatsoever form of
self-discipline. Rushing to the office or to school in the morning while all of
your senses still are emerging, or being called to follow a certain dress code
and behavior is nothing about self-discipline. Call it discipline, norms,
standards, whatever, but not self-discipline, self-control or respect of others because it is everything but that.
Discipline
is something imposed from the outside. Self-control is the result of
an inner process. And the later is the most efficient in terms of results.
Of course there are
a lot of positive sides to discipline and they even invented a “positive
discipline”, which somewhere shows that the global understanding of the
discipline is rather pejorative in the collective comprehension.
But be it negative,
positive or mega positive, discipline will always be something you need to bow
under as a constraint. This means that it is something that you do not
necessarily want to do but that you have to because this is what is asked from
you without you always understanding why. And even when this is
explained, as long as no cells of your body are convinced about the sense of it
then it does remain a sort of obligation. There even are cases when this leads to a
loss of self-control at any available opportunity because of the lack of a deep
personal conviction about it.
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| Nature is composed of billion of specificities. Only the humankind is not at ease with differences. Credit image: Pixabay. |
Self-discipline is
more related to some rules that you apply to yourself in order to reach a
certain goal, while self-control is something that happens only when you dig
deep enough inside you to know your limits and to develop your inner strength
in order to restrain yourself in some situations or to force yourself in some
other ones, each case being related to the respect of someone and of something.
In other words,
self-control is the result of a deep work on oneself and resulting from a free
will decision. The later is often taken once the understanding step is cleared,
which is not necessarily the case with discipline. And the best thing about
self-control is since this comes from an inner process, it gives like any other
inner process, the most efficient and sustainable results and impacts.
Discipline
is necessary in environments lacking consciousness.
Now, we all know
that constraints and discipline are necessary in a world where this inner work
process is either unknown or not considered as important. And to say it clear,
every environment and context need a certain discipline because for millennia,
consciousness has been stifled by religion, authority, dogmas and laws. These
rules that have been set since almost the beginning of the world, have not
given much space to self reflection and for years, talking about consciousness
has been either associated to esoterism or to the fantasy of some desperate
women and intellectuals. Today fortunately, things have changed since all the
sort of global illness the world is going through has finally led humanity to
look for a deep meaning to their earthly presence. And though only a few go to
the edge of their inquiries because lacking time, energy or answers, there
begins to be a growing tendency to awareness. Yet, discipline, rules, standards
and norms remain the keywords.
There is not much
utility trying to go through against the system unless there is a specific need
of it, but there nevertheless comes a moment when, in terms of education, we
need to ask ourselves if we really want our children to do things because they
feel obliged to or if we would rather have them understand the hows and whys
which will teach them to think and to decide by themselves, in a totally sane
and respectful social and growth process with will undoubtedly profit to
humanity.
If you are not
convinced about it then try to ask yourself crescendo questions
about the use of the hour system at work and at school, about what it really
brings in terms of profits and well-being, in terms of productivity? Notice all
these little ersatz of pleasures which have finally generated an addiction or
an uncontrolled use for a majority (social network, TV, cigarettes, alcohol,
gambling, sorts of games, etc.) that humanity has invented in order to be able
to deal more silently with the daily stress and fatigue and with the global
mental and moral loss which are nothing but the impacts of these norms and
standards set as rules.
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| Difference is what enriches. Valuying our children's differences will undoubtedly benefit to humanity.
Credit image: Pixabay.
|
Note that none of
these ersatz and pleasures is bad in itself, and yes, I wrote NONE, as long as
they remain a controllable pleasure and not an addiction. But now, if these are
just a way to adjust one’s deep wishes to the daily discipline and to the
standardized routine of a work and school system that are eating your time and
energy, maybe is it time to begin to think seriously about it. But what happens
is that these norms have dictated our whole life to a point that both adults
and children finally come to live a borrowed life because what they fill this
life with is made in majority of things and situations that they didn’t not
deeply wish or accept, but that they had to follow anyway... in the respect of
norms that tend to become social “discipline”.
Shaping children’s minds and souls to some core values.
Children’s souls
and hearts are naturally and deeply connected to justice, to equity, to what is
beautiful, true, and most of all, they are totally mentally free, thus entirely
connected to hope. But children are unfortunately growing in this system
shaping their minds to accept a reality that their once child-soul didn’t
understand. And this leads to create some adults totally brainwashed with very
low standard goals (and sometimes values) because they are being based on what
the rules and norms set as standard instead of being based on a deep inner
connection.
Now, children’s
brains still are very flexible, so the period of their childhood and youth should
be a period during which their brains are filled with valuable principles and
examples of construction (which again is barely the case because of the system
they grow in).
Now this is not a
reason to take children out of the educational system. The school system is an
existing system, hence a resource. And all the earthly resources, be they
already existing or created by humans, are to be used, valued and to be given
consideration since they are being the result of some efforts. Having
resources at our fingertips and deciding not to value them to the best is
waste. And if nature doesn’t like vacuity, its hates waste
even more since this is considered as an insult to what is being given to
humanity and an insult to the efforts that have been spent on it.
Furthermore, this
resource helps us parents to bring knowledge and instruction to our children.
This knowledge and instruction are a person’s value added, not talking about
the fact that the longer the studies, the more structured and connected the
brain cells (normally).
But on the other
side, this doesn’t mean that there isn’t a way to improve today’s educational
system in order to make it give to children and students the most appropriate
education.
What appropriate educational environment for your children?
It there any system
adapted to the needs, to the capacities and to the development of children,
knowing that globally, children should get enough space, time and opportunities
to understand things at their own rhythm and to learn about the nature and
about the life’s process?
When we see how
children are unfortunately been taught too early and too much about pressure,
blind obedience, ranking, fashion, etc. that makes them believe that there
necessarily are in life some people above and some others underneath, some
people would wish there were adapted educational systems that wouldn’t kill
children’s individual specificities.
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| Children need space, time and opportunities to discover things. Credit image: Pixabay. |
Now, it obviously
is difficult to create educational systems which will give to each child and
student an accurate and adapted environment and context. There are nevertheless
more and more educational systems beginning to see education differently,
learning for instance from the Northern educational system in which education
system begins at the age of 7 and with a period of a least one
year of travels oversees after the high school. This 1 year
(sometimes more or less) period allows young people to get a life experience
and to learn and understand some foreign realities and functioning, which as
you know it, brings them more mind openness. These young people come back to
their country more motivated in their studies and they often develop better
abilities to stand back in front of certain situations.
Now, no educational
system is better than another one. But there objectively is in these Northern
countries less violence than in any other part of the world and the local
economy and the daily lives are relatively well structured in terms of
cohabitation and life organization.
Apart from this,
there also are more and more concepts of free education systems functionning
out of the standardized hour system, without a pre-defined scholar program,
without a ranking system, etc. and where the key word for the student is
“motivation” (Frenet, Montessori, Steiner, etc.).
On the ground, this
often gives exceptional school results and most of all a particular mindset of
children feeling particularly good with themselves, self-respectful because their
natural rhythm is respected and because they know much more about themselves,
which allows them to be in a position to know, to understand and to respect the
difference of other people. There are a lot of reports confirming the positive
results of this kind of educational system on the children on the net,
unfortunately the ones I have are all in French.
Painting
everyone with the same brush is not the best way to respect unicity and
difference.
Again, I have
nothing against conventional educational (and professional) system. And again
this is more than useful in a society where loss of mental and moral landmarks
is becoming a cruel reality. But if productivity which is among the
basis of a company’s or country’s growth and, is the result of our best
physical and mental aptitudes, how could we naively expect productivity from a
body and mind that have been wildly shaken up every morning by a yelling clock
when the physical and moral rhythm still is a deep cycle of rest and trying to
softly find its way natural way to the day? How can we expect children’s
attention to reach their summit this way and make them more performant?
You might answer
resilience, habit, necessity, and lack of choice... And you would be totally
right. But then the question back would be: is it really the kind of
lifestyle humanity is destined to?
Now, there is of
course a huge logistic and organization issues to this free mind daily life
system. And I hear some question rising like: what would our world look
like if everybody was supposed to wake up at her/his own rhythm, going to work
or to school at the time that would please him/her, leaving when s/he would
want to and just simply doing what s/he pleases?
You could as well,
ask what the life of a person would look like without this basic discipline?
Well, the answer
is: a maybe much better environment.
Crazy? Yes, totally!
Wrong? Not so sure…
All
these things that we benefit from today were created by specific abilities…
that yet are not properly valued in the standard system.
There is a good
reason for which nature made each one of us different, with different cycle of
attention and productivity, with different aptitude and abilities, and with
different passions and centers of interest.
Trying to paint all
these differences with just one standard brush and giving the same rhythm to
all of these differences obviously makes little sense. And creating millions of
little environments adapted to each one’s specificity would make more sense
either.
But respecting all
these differences within a collective system, in order to value each one of
them for a collective goal actually suits more to the laws of nature, because
each one of these specificities is meant to have a specific purpose later on.
And this specific purpose is mean to benefit to the collectivity. Thus, what
is the point of creating and accepting a system which kills (or does not
respect) specificity when this specificity is what the collectivity will be
looking for later on?
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| Peace, just like success and progress, are based on the valorization of each one's difference. Credit image: Pixabay. |
The point is not
about reorganizing society, companies or educational system or to make them
adapted to each person’s rhythm and needs. The point is about
how to value each one’s rhythm and specificities in order to get more
productivity and efficiency in a collective system.
I can understand
how standardized hours, dress code or way of thinking might be a sort of
competition and pressure that sometimes might raise the general quality of
results. And if a certain pressure is necessary for productivity,
we all know what too much pressure does to efficiency on the long run.
And as far as the
professional aspect is concerned, someone liberated from external pressure (n
the internal one is necessary) and respecting her/his own natural rhythm is
more likely to understand what self respect, others respect, responsibility,
results-oriented work and impacts really mean. In addition, more and more
scientific reports agree with the fact that freedom added to pleasure
is a magic mixture which professionally develops empowerment and involvement.
Aren’t these among the most important qualities required in a personal and
professional context?
And the same
applies to school systems.
If a child called
to be a future responsible citizen, grows up in the values of respect,
especially in the respect of his own differences, there obviously are more
chances that he grows up in the respect of other people’s differences. In this
mindset, extremism (in politics, religion, etc.), violence and any other
current society disease based on lack of respect, will have less impact on him
as a future adult.
Doesn’t this worth a certain try? ©
Make It
Happen!Mada
Personal &
professional motivation-mentoring program.
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Should you look for a personal or professional motivation
accompaniment in order to reach some specific life or performing goals, please
contact us.
In the pleasant perspective of this exchange!
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professional motivation-mentoring program.
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