Reality is scary this is why nobody really wants to accept it for what it really is. Intelligence comes at a huge price, because human beings are the most intelligent animals on the planet this makes self preservation a lot harder.
Even if you get everything you need for your immediate survival you still know that you could fail in a horrible and unexpected way, or get sick, be a victim of a violence act and eventually die. Our great intelligence comes at the cost of our peace and sanity, it is true that ignorance is bliss.
When this anxiety is unmanaged can cause a great amount of dysfunction, this is why self-discipline is necessary. As mammal animal we are wired to avoid pain and seek pleasure, unfortunately pain is not completely avoidable, self-discipline minimizes your pain doesn't eliminate it. Because we live in a bipolar world you will experience both in your life, self-discipline allows you to don't get stuck in the negative for more than what is really necessary.
Like any other virtue it is between two other extremes, that if you are unbalanced and live by will create deficiency or excess in your life. In the case case of self-discipline the deficient extreme is avoidance and the other extreme that creates excess is obsession.
Being under a certain threat disrupts your normal function of your body, and triggers the fight or flight response, which creates a purposeful unbalanced in you in order to help you survive. You can think of the two extreme as expression of your stress response, when you are in flight you will avoid and when you are in fight you will attempt to overcome something by being obsessed about it. For someone that is very avoidant can create the illusion of being lazy while for someone that is obsessive about certain things can create the illusion of a very motivated person however both of them are vices sub-optimal ways to live your life. If you avoid life you will hardly achieve anything and if you become obsessed with certain things you will spend to much time in a certain area of your life and neglect other important areas.
Energy is in constant motion, this makes it impossible to remain in any of the extremes of your behavior. This makes staying in balance a dynamic process, where you will find yourself in any of the other two extremes and slowly finding the equilibrium. Think of it like setting the right temperature in your shower, you have to slowly increase the flow of both hot and cold before you can find the most comfortable temperature.
When either of the left or right is being rejected, by the person being confused and thinking that there is something wrong that he is in a state of avoidance or obsession then you will tend to get stuck in the extreme that you rejected and it becomes impossible to find the equilibrium between them. In order to get unstuck you have to get in to the other extreme before you can find the middle.
