Discipline is a precursor to success.
For about the first 27 years of my life I was a highly undisciplined person. Reflecting back makes it easy for me to see now why I struggled to complete things. Certainly my struggles with low self-confidence played a part, but so did my lack of self-discipline. It was a little chicken or egg thing. Did my lack of confidence keep me from being disciplined? Or did my lack of discipline keep me from developing confidence?
I don’t know…but I do know they are tied together. So, what happened? It all started for me with the discipline of exercising and reading. When I made a commitment to do both of those things daily, and I kept that commitment to myself, things began to change. It wasn’t a massive discipline. At first it was 20 minutes of exercise and 15 minutes of reading. Keeping this tiny commitment, became a discipline. Then it became a habit. That was the key.
A small discipline leads to a habit. A positive habit begets improvements in life, becasue all things in our life are connected. We are not compartmentalized creatures…wherever we go, ALL of us goes. Before too long, I developed confidence that I could keep a commitment by taking small disciplined steps. I began applying this to other parts of my life. Over time, every corner of my life began to get better. Business, relationships, and anything else that was important.
Now, I am confident that whatever I pursue, if I just discipline myself to take the small steps, I can move forward. It never fails. It doesn’t mean there aren’t struggles and mistakes. Those are part of life. What it does mean though, and this is the take-away, is that whatever it is you aspire to, it is only a few repeated disciplines from coming to be in your life. And by taking these steps you will then begin to flourish in areas you didn’t even intend to.
“All disciplines affect each other. Every new discipline affects not only the discipline that we have already begun to practice, but also the disciplines we will soon adopt. Everything affects everything else. Some things affect us more than others, but everything we do has an effect on everything else we do. Not to think so is naive.”-Jim Rohn
