Discipline is dumb.

“Discipline is remembering what you want.” ~ David Campbell

Tis the season to be obsessed with our fantasy futures, and to work diligently to make them happen with renewed resolutions, audacious goals and sticky habits. You know, discipline and self-improvement as the path to personal success and enduring happiness. I’ve spent decades examining that premise and the evidence is crystal clear:

It’s absolutely absurd.

The future is not an idea to embrace. It’s a stifling illusion—a dangling carrot or a raised stick—that separates you from your experiences and blinds you to the energy and potential of existence. A full and vibrant life doesn’t happen linearly, and happiness isn’t planned and achieved. So wake up from the narrow story in your head and come alive to the wide-open world of destiny and possibility!

And what of discipline?

Discipline is dumb. To be disciplined means to be unsure and conflicted. The original meaning of the word is to correct, chastise, and punish. And who are you punishing? Yourself, of course. Think about it. You’re giving away your life, doing things that you don’t really want to do, in order to achieve happiness. Does that make sense to you?

Despite what you may have been led to believe, successful people are not disciplined. They don’t need motivation or willpower. They see things very clearly, without distorting each moment with goals and storylines, and are moved by their inner desires and by what they experience each and every moment.

But our culture is fixated on the achievement of success and happiness through control (I recently bumped into a webinar titled “Mastering Happiness Through an Academic Discipline”). And the irony is that obsessing over those slippery concepts is what moves us further and further away from them. It’s like trying to fall asleep; the harder you try the more anxious and awake you become.

So what's the solution?

Bob Dylan proclaimed you’re a success if you get up in the morning and go to bed at night and in between you do what you want to do. Gandhi said happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. Combine those two ideas and life is pretty simple: Relax, trust yourself, and trust life. Do what you want to do, do it with passion, and do it in harmony with your inner self.

It really is that simple.

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Stay passionate!