#32 - Discipline
In many ways, discipline is the necessary link between goals and achievement. It is training one’s self to do things in a certain manner. It results in habits, controlled actions, and intentional action. Discipline itself is fundamentally important to everything we’ve talked about in this program because it’s the part where we actually make ourselves do something.
Over my years of competitive sports, I’ve invested an enormous amount of time in workouts, travelling, and racing. I used to dream of competing in the Olympics one day. Now that I have a better understanding of what’s required to compete at that level, my enthusiasm has waned—I’m not talented enough, and I don’t have the desire to train full time for another ten years. But all the thousands of hours spent training in the gym and on the trails have taught me two important lessons. First, it taught me the importance of discipline. For most people, improvement doesn’t come without practice and seeing that improvement after all the hours of sweat is extremely rewarding. Second, it taught me that discipline gets easier with practice. Waking up and training for four hours doesn’t happen by chance. Some days it’s really hard to make that happen but over time it gets easier to choose to do things that are hard.
Discipline is a choice between the challenge of working towards the things that are important to you, and dealing with the pain of regret and disappointment. It’s no secret that discipline is hard, but affecting health, fitness, learning, schooling, and virtually every other area of life it’s critically important. A 2013 study found that people with more developed self-discipline are happier. They were able to deal with conflict better, make positive choices more easily, waste less time considering indulgent behaviors, feel less stressed, and made fewer impulse and emotional decisions.
Research indicates that approximately 40% of our daily activity is habit-driven. We’ve all tried breaking habits before—it’s not easy. Stepping away from the status quo, avoiding the average, and choosing to make changes require serious discipline. It might sound like discipline is eliminating all your habits. On the contrary, it is adding new habits and replacing old ones with better ones. Like many of the things we’ve discussed, discipline also improves with practice so habits that reinforce discipline are awesome because they continue to enhance our discipline long after we’ve done the hard work of establishing the habit. Here are some habits that build discipline:
Gratitude
Goal Setting
Healthy Eating
Exercise
Sleep
Organization
Time Management
Perseverance
You’ll recognize that most of these have already been featured in previous segments of Advancing Daily. Some of the habits above like sleep, and healthy eating are doubly important—not only are they habits that promote discipline, they also provide necessary biological support for you to be disciplined (when short on sleep or improperly fueled, it’s harder to make good decisions). Other habits are important because they allow us to focus on being disciplined. If I’m too disorganized, ungrateful, or always running late, I won’t have the time or mental space to be disciplined about things that are actually important. The remaining habits (and most of the ones previously mentioned) are “discipline training.” Setting goals, exercising, and perseverance are like workouts for our discipline muscles. Over time, these habits become easier and easier—building our confidence and allowing us to tackle progressively more challenging tasks in a disciplined manner.
“Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but you never know if it's going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.