Being Responsible - A disciplined mind

As proposed by Viktor Frankle and many other psychologists, the most optimal way of being is to be responsible in one's thoughts, and action.
But, "being responsible" is something which is role-based.
What is being responsible for a person being in the role of a friend, might be something very different when the person operates being in the role of a boss in a typical corporate setting.
A human in its constant dynamic state of changing roles from one to other, must eradicate the way of beings which are not appropriate in one role, and gradually consolidate a mode of behavior that is appropriate for the new role.
This ability to think in a particular way based on what is currently functionally needed, is termed as having a "disciplined mind" by Howard Gardner.
For an optimum functioning of an institution, its members should keep graduating to different thinking hats based on what is needed by the current role the person is playing.

Here are some illustrations as described by Howard Gardner, where humans fail to graduate to a new behavior as demanded by the new role (un-disciplined minds). This inability of disciplining the mind leads to the person as being irresponsible -
1. Beginning law students, for example, insist on reaching a decision that is morally satisfying; this long-engrained way of thinking clashes with their teachers' insistence that decisions must be based on precedent and on process, and not on one's personal moral code.

2. Rookie journalists prepare a coherent, well rounded story, as if they were trying to hold the interest of a captive audience. They are unable to think backward, writing a story in such a way that it will immediately command the reader's attention while also surviving the blue pencil of the editor or the sever space limitations of the new front page layout.

3. The worker who has just been appointed to a managerial position attempts to retain earlier friendships as if nothing had changed; she does not understand that her new job requires that she listen, be listened to , and be respected, rather than that she win a contest of popularity or continue to exchange gossip or intimacies with former peers. The new board member fails to understand that he must now behave in disinterested manner vis-a-vis the very CEO or president who courted her for months and then invited her to join a select, prestigious group.

The point here is not just about being context specific, and act as per context. But having a disciplined mind calls for something even more profound. It is about using the mental faculty to apply already learnt concepts from different contexts, and use them optimally to achieve a given result in a new context. According to Howard Gardner, "It is about attempting to elucidate a discovery or phenomenon with which a person is not familiar but which lends itself to explanation in terms of a concept or theory that has been already studied."

In today's workplace as well as in the academics, there is a dire need of having a disciplined mind. I agree with Howard Gardner in which he boldly states that the survival of mankind in the coming ages depends among others, how well we can discipline our mind.

It is not that simple to discipline one's mind. Howard Gardner says, "My formal discipline is psychology, and it took me a decade to think like a psychologist". He further says, "Today when I encounter a controversy about the human mind or human behavior, I think immediately about how to study the issue empirically, what control group to marshal, how to analyze the data and revise my hypotheses when necessary".
To be able to discipline one's mind, one needs to be thoroughly trained in a specific domain, and it requires immense "deliberate practice" (as proposed by Geoff Colvin).
Hence all of us - scholars, corporate leaders, professionals - must continually hone our skills.
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