DISCIPLINE

AND

SELF-

CONTROL
HOW TO STAY CALM AND PRODUCTIVE UNDER PRESSURE TOM MILLER, Ph.D.

PART ONE

1994, 2006 Career Track Inc. All rights reserved. CareerTrack and CareerStore are registered trademarks of CareerTrack Inc. Registered U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and Canadian Trade-Marks Office. Except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, no part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from CareerTrack.

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Preface
About this program
Self-Discipline and Emotional Control was recorded live during a series of CareerTrack seminars. Every effort has been made to retain the spontaneous flavor of Dr. Tom Millers presentation. At times the unedited language is both colorful and earthy.

About the workbook

Because of the visual and interactive nature of Toms presentation, we felt the development of a new workbook was an essential element of the total program. As part of this concept, new explanatory pages have been added and parts of the original workbook, as used in the live seminar, have been expanded. Since the workbook is used quite extensively in the seminar, this presented a problem with the numbering sequence. We have addressed this by using a numbering and lettering system that we hope you will find easy to follow. Any page that is part of the original workbook is either a number or a combination of a number and letter (11, 11A). Any lettered page (A, B, C) is an addition to the original seminar workbook and contains necessary and illustrative information.

As Tom says ... Its all there in the workbook, so please, dont skip any pages.

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Program Overview
Why is this program so important?
Learning to change your behavior, permanently, is one of the most important skills that you can develop. Without that ability, any other self-improvement program, seminar, audiotape, videotape or book will be essentially useless. You will not change your behavior patterns unless you know how. And that is what Self-Discipline and Emotional Control is all about.

Program objective
There is only one objective of this program: Dramatic performance improvement

The Tom before the storm.

The two most important variables in behavior change

1. Forcing yourself to behave differently from how you feel Putting aside the discomfort 2. Generating the power and intensity within yourself to: Turn your intentions into reality Make the changes you want in your life

Rational-emotive behavior therapy: Developed by Dr. Albert Ellis, this is the formal name of the system contained in this program.

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

How It Begins
There are four parts to any experience
1. Event 2. Meaning/interpretation 3. Feeling 4. Behavioral response
Thats not a hard question.

What you will know at the end of the program that you did not know before
After this program, you will know, now and for all time, that events, whatever they may be, do not cause the reactions you experience. You do! Less than 1 percent of 1 percent of all the people in the world understand this essential point.

Who causes you to feel the way you feel? You do!
No one has the power to determine your emotional and behavioral reactions but you.

Two myths of normal behavior

1. It is an option to have others change. 2. If others wont change, you can transfer them or transfer yourself.

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Program Keys
Premises
Anything that can be learned can be unlearned. The way you behave is directly influenced by how you feel. The way you feel is always and only created, controlled and maintained by the interpretations made in your mind. The way you feel and behave is never caused by the way others treat you or the events that happen to you.
Dont worry. Youll catch on.

Two keys to dramatically improving your performance

Getting reasonably upset instead of overly upset will give you: 1. Choice 2. Control

The importance of repetition to learning

Your horse does almost everything ... except when you are learning a new skill. Your rider handles learning. It is only through conscious repetition of new, desired learning that the horse takes over (eats the thought) from the rider and generates a new, automatic response (both feeling and behavior).

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

How It Begins
Program concepts 1. Rider
The neo-cortex of the brain. The conscious center that hears what you are thinking and can intellectually control your behavior which is just the first step in the change process.

The Rider

2. Horse
The lymbic system of the brain. Stores and uses learned, not-conscious information and actions, and controls your feelings.

The Horse

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Your Horse
Important facts to know about your horse
Whenever your horse runs into something new, it codes it as wrong. You can have opposing thoughts in your horse and rider (conscious and unconscious) at the exact same time. You will always get the emotional reactions that are logical for the way your horse is talking. The example of driving in England

Sometimes it means bent. Sometimes its personal.

The goal of your horse is to remain unchanged until you die. Horses almost always win. The way your horse talks to you determines how you feel. Your horse knows all the right phrases to drop your pants. The thought processes of your horse never improve. Power is the only thing that your horse understands.

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Your Horse
Behavior change
In learning how to get your rider to control your horse and eventually get the horse to eat the new learning, you had better keep in mind your objectives:

Time

Tone Face

Get rid of unwanted behavior. Install desired behavior. Pass the new interpretation from the rider to the horse so that the behavior and the emotions become automatic. By the time you finish this program, you will finally know how to break your horse.

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Your Horse
Program note: Dont say up!

During the course of this program you will hear this over and over. And you will, no doubt, be asking yourself, What the heck is this all about? So, here it is. Essentially, by attempting to substitute the gesture pictured above for the word up in any sentence in which it would normally be, and then noting how difficult that substitution is, you can understand how hard it is for your rider to overcome your horses habits, no matter how often this new behavior is reinforced and, in the case of Tom, how loud that reinforcement is.

Besides, its fun.

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

How It Begins
The four irrational thinking styles
1. Demandingness 2. Awfulizing 3. I Cant Stand It-itis 4. Condemning and Damning

Reasonably upset

The sentence that drops my pants

That event (whatever it was) shouldnt have happened, its awful that it did, I cant stand it, and somebody around here needs to be condemned and damned as rotten and worthless lets see, is it me, is it you or is it the way the world works?

Overly upset

We have to suffer the results of the lies our horses tell us.

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Awfulizing
Program assumptions
In order to understand this system, it is essential to realize that what is said is exactly what is meant. Here are two fundamental assumptions: 1. 100 percent = All 2. Negative = Bad The logical deduction: Bad (negative) things that can happen to me range from .001 degrees of badness up to the maximum 100 percent. They cannot go over 100 percent.

A list of bad things that have happened or could have happened to me*
l. 2. 3. 4 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. Frequent 12. Worst ever 13. Worst possible * The only restriction is that those bad events cannot happen physically to your body.

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Awfulizing
Transforming awfulizing: the Johnny Carson Scale
As a reasonable person, you may be asking yourself, What in the world does Johnny Carson have to do with this scale business? During the monologue. Johnny would invariably bring the audience in on a joke by saying something such as, Boy, it was hot in California today. The audience responded, How hot was it? When something negative happens to you, ask yourself, How bad is it? If you have a sensible scale to measure how bad things are, then you can decide that some event (A) is approximately a certain percentage bad. After you train your horse to use the scale, it will automatically give you a response thats logical for the percentage. Then, because you wont be over- or underreacting, your behavior will be reasonable for the situation.

THE BODY SCALE 100% 95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 1 0 worst 4 limbs cut off 3 limbs cut off 2 limbs cut off dominant arm cut off non-dominant arm cut off 1 hand cut off 1 foot cut off 3 fingers cut off 3 toes cut off 4 broken limbs 3 broken limbs 2 broken limbs dominant arm broken non-dominant arm broken badly sprained ankle laceration (4 stitches) cut bruise small bump

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I Cant Stand It-itis

Please read, sign and date the following
I fully realize and accept the fact that Im living proof that Ive stood everything thats ever happened to me. Im going to be able to stand and handle everything thats going to happen to me except the one thing thats going to kill me.

Signature

( / / ) Date

Demandingness A key point

Every time you get yourself overly upset, you are DEMANDING something. Please read, remember and sign the following: I, being of sound mind and body, do fully realize and admit that I do not, havent ever and wont ever RUN THE UNIVERSE.

Signature

( / / ) Date

The sentence that keeps my (pants)_______up.

That event (whatever it was) should have happened, and its about ____ percent bad, and I can stand a ____.

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Demandingness
The bi-level split
Demandingness is the inaccurate use of the six partners: Should Got to Have to Need to Ought Must

This is not a tough question!

Nondemandingness, on the other hand, is composed of some selection of: Wishing Wanting Preferring It would be better ifs Practicalities Sensibilities Ethics Morals Values Etiquette Probably Expect Desiring

Demanding words and phrases are only used to describe reality. Things should have happened because they have happened.

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4A

Notes

4B

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

DISCIPLINE
AND

SELF-

CONTROL
HOW TO STAY CALM AND PRODUCTIVE UNDER PRESSURE

PART TWO

Self-Esteem
Self-esteem
A system that attempts to measure your value as a person or your self-worth.

The clothesline
To examine the system of self-esteem, imagine there is a room, divided in half by a fat cable; it looks and works like one of those old-fashioned clotheslines with pulleys on each end. The two parts of the room represent the two parts of the self-esteem system.

The two components of self-esteem

1. What you think other people think about you ... or how much you think these other people care about you. 2. What you think of the behaviors or traits you do. This is called the doing side of the room. Traits are things such as brave, clean and thrifty. Behaviors are more specific, such as how fast you run the hundred, or how well you cook eggs.

the people side of the room

the doing side of the room

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Self-Esteem
The wires
In this room, there are also many thinner wires running from side to side, adding additional areas of division.

Each small wire represents

A person you know (A-E) A behavior/trait you do (1-5)

E D C B A

1 2 3 4 5

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Self-Esteem
The kegs
In your room of self-esteem, each wire has a miniature beer keg on it. The keg looks like this from the side and this from the front, and has a hole drilled through the middle . This allows the keg to slide along the wire.

The rating system

In order to use the room, the wires and the kegs as an organized system, assign the left wall of the room to zero on the scale and the right wall, 100. Between the two walls are the range from zero to 100.

25

50

75

100 E D C B A

1 2 3 4 5 0 25 50 75 100

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Self-Esteem
Action step
1. Pick five people you know and write their names by the letters. 2. Pick five of your behavior traits and write them by the numbers. 0 25 50 75 100 E D C B A

1 2 3 4 5 0 25 50 75 100

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Self-Esteem
Where do the kegs go?
The next essential step in examining the process of self-esteem is to figure out where the kegs are placed on the scale closer to zero, or 100? Starting with the people side of the room, take Wire A and ask yourself, On the average, how much do I think this person cares about me? If the answer is a lot put the Person A keg somewhere in the 90s. Keep repeating this process for the remainder of your people wires and draw in the appropriate keg positions. 0 25 50 75 100 E D C B A

1 2 3 4 5 0 25 50 75 100

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Self-Esteem
How the kegs work
Assume that Person A gets very upset at you* and says Get out of my life I never want to see you again! A normal reaction would be for Person As keg (how much you think Person A cares about you) to go down, in this case, 50 points. Since the keg started at 95 on the scale, after the drop it would settle at 45. Your room would now appear like this:

25

50

75

100 E D C B A

1 2 3 4 5 0 25 50 75 100

* Who really gets the other person upset? Right he or she does.

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9A

Self-Esteem
The equation T.V. + D.T. = T.
0 25 50 75 100

25

50

75

100

The only variable?

You have changed one variable in the intricate and interdependent system of self-esteem. And yet, because that one, uncontrollable variable changed (how you think someone else cares about you), your self-esteem has fallen to the same level of the barrel of Person A.

You completely forget about anyone or anything else!

10 Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Patterns of Thinking
Tunnel vision
Seeing only that which is directly in front of our noses. With so much pressure and emphasis on what happens there, it is easy for your nose to get bent. Tunnel vision is caused by your horse putting the blinders on.

Dichotomous thinking
This is thinking in all-or-nothing terms. Things are either very good or very bad; all black or all white. In dichotomous thinking, there is nothing in between and no shades of gray. If you think this way, then in the example, Person As keg does not stop at 45, it keeps right on going all the way down to zero. And your self-esteem goes right along with it. This is a literal translation of putting yourself down! This is what you get when you allow yourself to be drawn in by tunnel vision and dichotomous thinking. You may have been wondering what the T stood for in the equation at the top of Page 10. 0 25 50 75 100

25

50

75

100

The T stands for trouble, and now you understand why.

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Emotions
Emotions
Your horse has the ability to bring out these powerful, and extremely negative, emotions in you with a simple flick of the hoof: Hurt Inadequate Depressed Anxious Guilty

The male equivalent

The male horse has the unique ability to take all of the negative emotions listed above and instantaneously translate them into one powerful, but still negative emotion: anger.

Remember, the purpose of the horse is to interpret what things mean.

11A

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

My Top 40 Sheet
The specific instance keg
Around each of your kegs is a dotted keg that responds to a specific instance of behavior. Whenever anyone gets upset with one of your dotted kegs, ask: Is this person on my Top 20 VIP list? If the answer is No ... If the answer is Yes, ask, Did any of the other 19 kegs move? Remember, dont trust your feelings. Be hard-nosed, literal, precise and accurate.

25

50

75

100
T S R Q P O N M L K J I H G F E D C B A

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

25

50

75

100

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Notes

12A

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

DISCIPLINE
AND

SELF-

CONTROL
HOW TO STAY CALM AND PRODUCTIVE UNDER PRESSURE

PART THREE

Self-Acceptance
The assumption of self-esteem
It is possible to measure, rate or evaluate a person and assign a value level to that individual. In order to do that, you had better know the following: Present behavior Past behavior Conscious motivation Unconscious motivation Consequences to others Consequences to you Really know how much other people care/think about you.

The definition of self

The sum total of all the experiences, both internal and external, encountered by any person during his or her lifetime. A person averages one billion experiences in any 20-year period. On average, and with a great deal of motivation, most people are aware of 40 percent of their total experiences. Out of that 40 percent, the average person can actually recall only 1 percent.

The true question

Knowing what you know, and what is required that you know, is it really possible to rate your self on an arbitrary scale? Obviously, the answer is no!

12A

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Program Notes on Self-Acceptance

What you can be
The three questions of self that can be addressed are: Aliveness Existence Beingness You either are, or you are not. To be are not is to be dead, in which case the rest of this program will be of very little interest to you.

A concept that works

You are far and away too complex to even begin to think about trying to know the all of you. And because you can only really know a small fraction of your experiences, motivations, conscious and unconscious behaviors, consequences and, most unknowable of all, how others really think or care about you, then you had better accept that you, as a person, cannot ever be rated!

The two-room model

In the system of self-esteem that you explored, you began with the assumption that it was possible to measure self. You used approximations to determine how much you thought others cared/thought about you and how well you behaved. Somehow, you added these two things together and came up with an educated guess as to how worthwhile you were. Since you probably thought in a dichotomous fashion, you came to one of two conclusions: Either I am worthwhile, or I am a worthless piece of stuff.

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12B

Program Notes on Self-Acceptance

Homework: a room with a view
Take the room that youve constructed for your attempted measurement of your self-esteem and construct another room on top of it. This is called the upstairs room. The floor is built out of six inches of crystal clear plexiglass. This impermeable layer allows you to look back and forth between the two rooms, but it does not allow any movement from one room to the other. The two-room model now looks something like this:

Upstairs room

Your self

The plexiglass floor Downstairs room

Your self is now sealed in the upstairs room. There is a physical separation. Your self cannot be affected by what happens in the room below. There is no longer any dependent relationship between: 1. How much you think other people think/care about you 2. How well you do on your behavior/trait wires

12C

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Self-Acceptance
The self-esteem belief
In self-esteem, the belief is that you must (need to) get lots of love, acceptance and approval and that you must (need to) behave very competently. If these needs are not met, you are a worthless piece of stuff.

The self-acceptance belief

It is not possible to be worthwhile, worthless or anywhere in between. It is only possible to be! You want to give and get lots of love, approval and acceptance. You want to behave very competently.

The key
The key to understanding and embracing this is simply knowing the difference between a want and a need. Need (must): something without which you will die. Want: everything else

Your horse thinks everything that you want is really a need and will tell you that. Stop the lies.
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Program Notes on Self-Acceptance

Putting it all together Does this mean I dont care about what goes on in the downstairs room?
No. You had better still care. Observe and evaluate, as best you can, how you are doing and how you are getting along and relating with the significant people in your life. This will guide you as you try to improve, something that all of us want to do. A reasonable goal in life is to try to get as many of your kegs as close to 100 as you can. The fun in life is the challenge in achieving small, continual steps of improvement.

Why?
The higher the kegs go, the closer you will get to your five major goals in life: 1.Survival

2.Increasing your pleasure and decreasing your pain

3.Living socially with others

4.Having various degrees of intimacy or closeness with some of those others

5.Having some personally meaningful involvement in your vocational or avocational activities

12E

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

Homework
The ABCs
In Albert Elliss construct, any event can be broken down into: A = activating event B= beliefs C = consequences Cl = feelings C2 = reaction

In the story about the flowers, the way the female feels is determined by what she thinks the males motivation is. As Tom has shown, the males motivation can be one of several things: He could be expressing his affection. He could be feeling guilty over something he has done. He could be trying to get lucky.

How can any one event cause two radically different emotional and behavioral reaction patterns? It cant. Your horse interprets the event and tells you how to feel.

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13

The Yellow Brick Road

Learning and relearning
The essence of self-discipline and emotional control is learning how to relearn. Specifically, you are interested in those beliefs that cause you to overreact emotionally or behave in ways you wish you didnt. At this point in time, you are an expert at causing yourself to overreact because you have been doing it for years. You are at point X on the learning/relearning curve.

learning curve W

relearning curve Y

The broken line is the learning curve. It has no previous learning in front of it. The curve begins at W and ends at X. Point X means that you are an expert at a particular action or behavior in your horse. The dotted lines (X to Y to Z) are the relearning curves. XYZ is the process of changing an existing habit into a new, different, desired habit. Point Z is the goal. This is where and when your horse will automatically give you the new responses that your rider has been relearning. You cannot get to Z without going through X and Y.

This means you have to fight and win the war with your horse.
14 Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

The Yellow Brick Road

A play example
To change your response to a specific situation, you can put the events into a screenplay format and then begin the rewrite. A = (whatever the situation) B= Cl = the feeling you dont like C2 = the behavior you dont like Determining the lines in your screenplay is the same as figuring out what B is. You will see that some of the lines (thoughts) make sense and some of the lines make non-sense. Your horse is unable to tell the difference.

You had better

1. Determine what the lines are 2. Determine what lines dont make sense 3. Understand why these lines dont make sense 4. Get some new lines 5. Understand why the new lines are much more sensible

Play #l A = the situation B = sense + non-sense Cl = emotions you dont like C2 = behaviors you dont like

Play #2 Da = the same situation Db = sense + sense El = more desirable emotions E2 = more desirable behaviors

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14A

The Yellow Brick Road

The first half
Take the sense in Play #1 and bring it over to Play #2. Then, change the non-sense in Play #1 into sense, and also put that into Play #2. With this new combination of sense + sense, a different emotional response will emerge for Play #2. The first task is to get both plays written out on paper. Practice and understanding of the ABCs in this program is very important. At this stage of your practice, it is only important that your rider believes that what is said about and in Play #2 makes excellent theoretical and practical sense. Remember, just intellectually believe. On the relearning curve, you are entrenched at Point X. You are an expert at Play #1. Going from X to Y involves: 1. Figuring out the ABC (Play #1) 2. Identifying the sense and the non-sense in Play #1 3. Understanding why the non-sense is non-sense 4. Understanding why the new sense makes sense 5. Writing the old sense and the new sense into Play #2 6. Intellectually believing the new sense is much more sensible than the non-sense you started with 7. Deciding what emotional responses the new combination of thinking would cause and writing them in El 8. Deciding and writing out what you would like your new behavior to be if your emotions were those written in El This is the first half of the change process, going from X to Y and gaining the knowledge. Now comes the second half.

15

Self-Discipline and Emotional Control

The Yellow Brick Road

The second half
The essential element for winning the second half is practice: 30 seconds a day In the chair Under the covers Practice for 30 days

1. Design a symbolic/funny image to flip your horse Horses are not very powerful when theyre on their backs

2. Start Spock training 90 percent Spock, 10 percent Clint

3. Memorize Play #2 (your horse has already memorized Play #1)

4. Imagery practice/rehearsal A. Picture Da (the event you want to change your reaction to) B. Flash symbolic/funny image to flip your horse C. Picture Spock and Clint D. Think Db (the new way youre going to think) E. Feel yourself feel El (your new desired emotion) F. See yourself do E2 (your new, desired behavior)

5. Biased instant replay Immediately do Step #4 (imagery practice/rehearsal)

6. Real-life practice! Dont wait to feel comfortable.

Fake it til you make it.

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16

The Yellow Brick Road

Getting to Z
With each real-life practice, the anxiety your horse automatically pumps out gets less and less. As you continue with this practice, youll produce the reaction you desire in faster time, eventually bringing your horse under control and having your horse eat the new behavior.

The end of the learning curve: the Yellow Brick Road. Through practice you will reach Point Z on the relearning curve and your horse/rider picture will look like the figure below. Youre at the end of the second half. You now automatically get the new, desired emotion. You have changed your horse so that it is now working for you. Youve fought the war and won.

Z (you made it)

This is how it happens.

The major point is that you have to do it it wont do it for you.

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Self-Discipline and Emotional Control