This is somewhat of a continuation from my last post, “No Motivation?”
Today we’re talking about the “D” word–DISCIPLINE.
I know, it’s a hard word, a chunky concept that doesn’t easily digest.
Yet, it’s a necessary word. Without sufficient discipline, we start sinking. And if we don’t actually sink, we stay anchored to the same place.
Good ol’ status quo.
For some things in life, that may be just fine. Not everything is important, not everything is a priority.
But for other areas, remaining the same has consequences, sometimes to the point of limiting our quality of life.
Worse, remaining the same may harm us, or those around us.
Let’s define discipline. According to the Cambridge Dictionary (dictionary.cambridge.org), discipline has a few meanings, two of which concern us here:
1- “training that produces obedience or self-control, often in the form of rules and punishments if these are broken, or the obedience or self-control produced by training (e.g., military discipline).”
2- “the ability to control mental activity (e.g., learning a foreign language requires discipline).”
From definition #1, let’s focus on “the self-control produced by training”.
From definition #2, let’s focus on “the ability to control”.
From this, we’ll be creative and say that discipline has to do with TRAINING ourselves to INCREASE our ability to CONTROL ourselves and DO WHAT IS NECESSARY.
Let’s go one step further–in another sense, discipline is exercising our responsibility to rule our lives.
Are you ruling your life?
Not ruling other people’s lives, but YOUR life?
This is not to undermine our appropriate submission to the authorities and institutions that are worthy of our obedience. This kind of thing is required if we are to be good citizens, soldiers, disciples, etc.
However, in a deeper sense, we are to “own” our lives and take authority over our lives.
Ownership leads to Rulership.
Rulership over our unsavory appetites, bad attitudes, harmful behaviors, irrational thinking–we can either “give in” and go along with our more primitive impulses and immature ideas, or we can TRAIN ourselves to resist, fight with ourselves, and take charge of our lives.
This is often a mighty battle.
Let’s use an example we can all relate to–OVER-eating and UNDER-exercising.
We all know what’s best for us in this regard, yet our appetites to either eat too much, or exercise too little, or both, can stab us straight in the heart and defeat us, yet again.
Then the guilt, the shame . . . or maybe at this point it’s apathy–maybe we’ve just given in to the “enemy”, dropped our sword, and no longer care. The enemy is too strong and the fight is too hard.
Indeed, to push ourselves away from that second piece of cake (or even that first piece), or to keep our butts sunken deeply into the couch instead of going for a walk, can feel as difficult as climbing Mount Everest.
Funny–actually sad–how our appetites can so easily rule us, instead of us ruling them. This is part of the human condition. We can all relate.
In order to reach our most important goals–those high-impact goals that end up making a big difference in our lives–we need to discipline ourselves to do whatever is necessary to succeed.
Without discipline, we stay the same.
Without discipline, our lives stay the same.
Demonstrate Discipline Daily.