What's the point of discipline?

We always hear the word 'discipline', and most times we get the general idea of the word but do not fully grasp what it means to have discipline, or to be disciplined.

When I hear this word it makes me think about who would be considered disciplined, and the answer is- any person who has success. This success could lie in any walk of life, any hobby, any job, sport, lifestyle or whatever, but if the person is considered successful, then they are disciplined. Here is why I believe this:

In order to be successful at something, you have to dedicate some sort of effort to it. Therefore, it could also be said that the more successful a person is, the more discipline they have. For example, look at athletes. All of us have the potential to be a great athlete, some of us may not have the height, or weight, but there are many out there who have proven that your personal characteristics can be overcome by hard work. The ones who overcome those physical barriers do so because they are disciplined. They have the discipline to wake up every morning manage their diet, hit the gym hard, study the game film, take extra cuts off the tee, shoot 50 extra free throws, run 10 extra wind sprints, whatever it may be that they are lacking, they have the discipline to word hard to improve it. This holds business people as well. Someone like Bill Gates is not only truly blessed because he is smart, but he is incredibly disciplined. It is unfair and borderline stupid to believe that Bill Gates knew everything he needed to know when he invented his first computer, no he took his first premonition and researched and tested and repeated this process until he found something that worked. Imagine him trying to do something that had never been done before, there was no manual to follow, no help line to call when he got stuck! All he had was his brain and his discipline to complete the task. He sat himself down every day for countless hours to acheive his goal.

Many of us falter when it comes to this type of discipline. Someone like me who goes to class everyday, shows up for my meetings on time and so on, has discipline, but nowhere near the discipline that the greats have. There are many times where I want to watch tv instead of do my homework, or type on my blog when I have a test in 2 hours. I need to develop that discipline to go to the library, or turn off my tv, or log off my computer and get to work on the things that require my attention. Those who are great know what they need to do in order to reach the success they desire and have the discipline to accomplish it!

Develop that discipline today, no point in waiting to do it

What's the point of waiting?

This post has been a long time coming, and what a better time to do it, then when I taught myself the lesson. It has been so long since I have last written on my own blog and frankly it is embarassing. Why would I make a blog website, and never use it? What is the point? I actually received a phone call from an old friend who said exactly that to me, he asked "What's the point of having a blog when you never blog?" Needless to say I was at a loss for words and quickly changed the subject. So here it is.

What is the point of waiting? Why do we put things off until tomorrow? Procrastination is one of the most common weaknesses you can find in just about any person. We put things off until tomorrow claiming that it will be better done then, and that you do not have time now. But, the whole purpose of having time to do things is so you do not wait until the last minute to complete it. Then when it gets down to the wire, we are all so consumed by all of the things we put off that we don't even have time to do things we want. School work is a perfect example. Even though in the world I live in I am still convinced I know everything, I am starting to realize that some of these professors know what they are doing. When they hand out projects at the beginning of the quarter, they expect you to work on them throughout the course of the quarter. This is for a few reasons. The first is that the material you learn throughout the quarter is intended to be applied to the project and it is much easier to use that knowledge while it is fresh in your mind as opposed to months later. The next reason is that they know your other classes will be doing something similar and you will be overwhelmed with work if you wait until the end to do it. And then there is the most important reason, there is an underlying lesson with these quarter long projects. This is something that I have inferred and probably isn't quite what the professors intended, but everything you do in life is a quarter long learning process just made on a much larger scale. Everyday we are presented with new ideas, new motivators, new things to spark our interest, new goals, new ambitions, new people, new likes, new dislikes and many more. It is up to us at that point to attack whatever it is. Often times we let our lives pass us by for exactly this reason, something comes to our attention that we consider to be interesting at the time, but a week later we forget about it because we took no action. You never know where that small little hinckling could have taken you, so how could we be so quick to write it off. We all need to trigger our spontaneous ambition and begin to live our lives in the "now". When you have a crazy feeling in your gut, follow it! Give it a chance. It might be a business idea, it might be a woman or a man, it might a motivator to go to the gym. Whatever it is, let it ride, go with the flow. We need to start allowing ourselves the freedom to follow our gut feelings, they are put there for a reason, we need to find out why. So my message is, don't wait any longer. Don't put things off until tomorrow when you can do them right now. Motivate yourself and discipline yourself to do the things today that feel right. If you don't start doing that now, you will have missed out on some of the greatest experiences your life had to offer to you. Never live with regret, and never give yourself anything to have regret for.