My favourite definition of discipline is: “Doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, even though you don’t want to do it.”
During my time as an academically undisciplined undergraduate, an inspirational lecturer confessed to us that during her time as a student when it came time to commence assignments she was a procrastinator. Her form of procrastination manifested itself in compulsive cleaning. Beds, toilets, walls and sinks were all part of her ill-discipline. With great self-deprecating humour, she told us that the day she found herself cleaning the inside of her kettle she realised she had a problem.
A great teacher and inspiration, she encouraged us all to create our self-discipline and start our assignments early.
To this day, whenever I am procrastinating and need to recapture my self-discipline I repeat the mantra, “Stop cleaning the inside of the kettle”.
Last Sunday morning, having just arrived in Sydney, I was still jet lagged and with my time zones muddled I decided to go to the beach at 5am.
In the redness of dawn, on what was to become an exceptionally hot Australian day, there were 12 young boys, clad in black wet suits, running along the base of the dunes in the soft sand. As they went past me I saw that they were no older than 13. Running on sand at any time is tough. Running on soft sand is excruciating. Your thighs and calf muscles burn with lactic acid as each stride crumbles beneath your feet.
Looking as fit as a school of trout, lean and silent, they were all locked inside their own world. A lone adult was accompanying them at the back of the pack. Occasionally uttering an encouraging word between his hard breathing as he was shin deep in the golden sand.
I watched them reach the end of the sand as they continued to run, then rock hop, as we call it, across the boulders out to the point of the headland. Without goggles or hesitation, the lead runner dived off the furthest rock and began a quality freestyle swim back to the beach. His fellow apostles splashed close behind. The adult stopped for a moment, bent in two and caught his breath before he too plunged in and began his 300m swim to the shore.
Once gathered safely on the sand, many sets of push-ups, sit-ups and squats followed, made harder with a partner’s weight carried as a piggyback. At a certain point, there was a cheer and the mob all sprinted to reclaim their assembled surfboards. They paddled out for a session of waves that was still going when I left the beach over an hour later.
I just had to talk to their mentor.
This rooster was a very fit-looking 50-something. Built like a stocky inside centre with a crooked nose to match, he had been asked to help train the boys by one of the parents. He was not getting paid, he just wanted to help the next generation. A good man.
The reason was that this group, who obviously loved to surf, had decided at the ripe old age of 12 that school was not for them. Collectively they had set their sights on becoming professional surfers. To them, their classroom was in the waves, not at school.
Unsurprisingly, problems at school followed and their academic results plummeted.
Their parents and teachers were less than impressed. A solution was searched for and, it would seem, found. The parents approached our gnarly old fit inside-centre and hatched a plan. It involved some tough love but love all the same.
The parents confiscated their budding world champs’ surfboards. They would only be returned when they had begun to attend these morning fitness sessions, three times a week, including Sundays. Strategically, the feedback from their teachers had to significantly improve before their surfboards were returned.
A side-benefit was that the boys had to learn that to have any hope of becoming a successful professional athlete requires huge amounts of self-discipline, and like all skills, self-disciple can be taught and learned.
The fact that I was watching the boys back on their boards was evidence that their grades and behaviour had significantly improved and the boys were being taught self-discipline.
Doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, even though you do not want to do it, applies to sport, academics, cleaning the inside of your kettle, worming your dog, saving money, and just about every endeavour of life.
Last week as I read that Will Connors was to start for Leinster, ahead of Josh van der Flier for their match against La Rochelle, self-discipline came to mind.
From starting for Ireland in the Covid years, Connors found his career disrupted by a long series of injuries. They forced many months of rehabilitation, a process that can create a loneliness and a sense of helplessness that only those who have endured it can comprehend. All the time watching Van der Flier’s career explode so brilliantly before his eyes.
This would make any athlete question the path on which they were walking.
[ Matt Williams: Be careful not to scare your kids off sport and lifeOpens in new window ]
Yet somehow Connors found the self-discipline to stay the course and do the tedious, repetitive work prescribed by his medical team and the sports scientists.
In a man-of-the-match display against the European Champions, wearing the number seven jersey, all that self-discipline, passion and learned mental strength paid off.
Congratulations Will.
You and those wetsuit clad 13-year-old surfers have provided a valuable life lesson. We can all learn to do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, even though we may not always want to do it.
