Discipline - Life is difficult

Working through some old note, I came across the book The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck. Peck, an American psychiatrist who was also a professing Christian. He talked of the importance of discipline that has the following "tools":

• Delaying gratification: Sacrificing present comfort for future gains.
• Acceptance of responsibility: Accepting responsibility for one's own decisions.
• Dedication to truth: Honesty, both in word and deed.
• Balancing: Handling conflicting requirements. We need to prioritize between different requirements -- bracketing.

Peck’s book begins with the profound truth that ‘Life is difficult!’. We must come to grips with the fact that life was never meant to be easy. We can either complain about them or solve them.

These tools are techniques of suffering, means by which we experience the pain of problems in such a way as to work through them and solve them successfully, learning and growing in the process. Most of us do not want to wrestle with our problems because of the pain involved. Yet, it is only in grappling with our problems that life has its meaning. In refusing to suffer the pain of sacrifice, we fail to truly grow. It is in giving that we gain more.