My Invisible Best Frenemy

How changing my relationship to discipline has changed my life (+ a BK lunchtime rec)

Notes to myself in my journal while learning more about The Tools®

As a queer, autistic femme in my mid-thirties, I’ve been thinking a lot about the D-word.

No, not that.

Perhaps you’ve already met, but if not, I’d love to introduce you to my new friend: Discipline. As someone who grew up in the throngs (and trauma) of a traditional Black Baptist parenting model which meant being “disciplined” for everything from telling a white lie to shaving my legs before my parents gave me permission, I then spent much of my twenties doing whatever I needed to do to “un-discipline” myself, because I felt like I had been restricted and confined for so. damn. long, and at the end of the day— YOLO / we’re all going to die anyway.

But now, within the past several years, I have been developing a much closer relationship to Discipline.

Instead of seeing her as a restriction externally placed on me, I’m seeing her instead as a friendly helper showing up in my life— an invisible best friend who is constantly presenting me with the benevolent gift of an opportunity. An opportunity for me to choose an opening, a deepening. A deepening in my relationship with myself (through an artistic and process-focused relationship to curiosity and learning), and also a deepening in my commitment and reliability to the people I love.

There is a Mean Girl in the picture though, an oppositional force towards my growing friendship to Discipline— and I’ve recently heard it described in a few different ways:

• Phil Stutz and Bary Michels, co-author of The Tools®, describe this force as Part X. Part X is a force whose only purpose is to stop you from reaching your full potential. Learn more about Part X (and the other Tools) here.

• Steven Pressfield describes it as "Resistance,” or “the voice in our head that tells us ‘you are no good’ and ‘you can’t do this’… and also to distract you (‘let’s go to the beach,’ ‘let’s have another drink,’ ‘let’s have an affair,’ etc.). If you decide you want to be in the creative arts, it’s a war. And you have to fight this dragon every morning you wake up.”

• I describe it as my Trickster Self. My Trickster Self is playful and mischievous, she likes getting into distractive things to shake up the energy (usually by self-sabotaging) because she’s borreeeedd and YOLO and “what if we die tomorrow???”

But it’s all the same thing. It’s the little voice in my head that tugs at my restless gemini (sun) heart with distractions and quick dopamine hits. It’s the voice that promises satisfaction (!) now (!)— promises of fleeting pleasure flashing in front of my seeking eyes, in lieu of anything deeper, anything more. Because the world we live in now doesn’t have the depth it used to, because so many of us are opting out, every day. We sit outside on our phones scrolling instead of looking at the changing tree in front of us. We’ve memorized “friends’” Instagram names before we know their actual names, and we don’t know the names of any trees or flowers. But we post pictures of them like they’re our friends on Instagram because everyone likes looking at pictures of flowers, right?

But I know the secret— we really can’t have it all. Our attention, just like our time, is a limited resource. And we are limited beings. So every moment of every day, we make a choice.

And that’s okay. It’s okay that we have plentiful options to say no to in order to make room for our more focused “yes.” In fact, it’s an absolutely bountiful blessing!

Some choices I’ve been making recently look like: Saying no to alcohol in the moment when I know it makes my body feel bad the next day; saying no to casual dating to make space for deepening in the life I want to build within current partnership; doing a gratitude practice in the morning even when I’m feeling down; saying no to prioritizing friendships that lack reciprocity; saying yes to committing to an hour of writing even when I feel like I have nothing to say that anyone would want to read; and saying yes to a nap even when it would make me arrive later to a social engagement.

I talk a lot about “feeling good” in A Recipe for More, and what I really mean is accessing a state of embodied presence frequently. And guess what? It takes work. Active, ego-less work to strengthen the muscle so that hopefully, at some point, it might get a little easier to make that choice. Every day it takes work to choose to commit to using the tools around me to take advantage of this outrageously generous gift that I’ve been given (life), because every day my Trickster self and my shadow self and all of the spirits that hover around me feeding on my energy whisper quietly in my ear that they want me to lay in bed, gorging slowly on my tale, my ouroboros scales getting caught in my teeth, as I eat myself up, inch by inch, until there’s nothing left.

Yes, I die a glorious death and then am reborn (and they love it / we love it because indulging our hunger always feels so good). But each death is not without pain, or most significantly— sacrificial energy and time.

So much wasted time.

Many days I don’t do a good job with Discipline. I reject her. I’m annoyed she’s always there waiting for me to choose her. I talk shit (trust issues). I momentarily think I’m better off without her.

But still there are many days, and seemingly more each year, where I do feel proud of the choices I’m making. I’m noticing small shifts in my ways of being, my level of patience with myself, my focus less on illusionary things that have no significance and in their place: less comparing, more noticing, and a less foggy, more tranquil headspace. I don’t know if it’s happiness, but I know that there’s more peace here. 

So I continue each day, making my small but mighty upward steps, committing to a life of depth and creation and big feelings and loose laughter and cavernous safety and profound connection and, and, and all of the more I can possibly fit for this lifetime into my heart and belly.

“Can You Recommend a Place for…
…a quick but hearty takeaway lunch that isn’t sandwiches?”

Their Smoked Mackerel Prepared Bowl