The Art of Discipline

There is an art to becoming a disciplined person and achieving your highest goals and visions. Many have learned this art and have walked the pathway to becoming excellent in the things they do and achieve. In this, it is no mystery or rocket science.

1) Set a Goal for the Knowing-and-Doing Expertise that you want. What is the discipline that you want to learn? Early in life I wanted to learn how to write. At first it felt overwhelming and frightful and experiences of ‘writer’s block’ threatened to undermine my goal. But I stayed with it through the uncertainty and doubts.

2) Focus Your Attention on your Desired Discipline. What kept me going was my focus on my ultimate objective. That’s why a strong compelling why as in “Why is it important?” informs and activates your focus and attention. How strong is your focus? How well are you able to deal with the things that disrupt your focus? Are you monitoring your discipline as you are learning it? What is the quality of your focus? Do you need to use the Neuro-Semantic “genius” or “flow” pattern to create your own optimal state of focus?

3) Make a Robust Decision for your Discipline. If you have not made the decision yet, make sure that you make a robust decision that you will become a discipline of that area that you want to become excellent in. Once I learned about modeling, I made a decision to model resilience. I didn’t know it would take me four years to do that. I thought maybe a month or two. It was my decision, and a decision that I made public, that kept me going. I wanted to prove to myself that I could do it and I wanted to demonstrate to others that I could complete the project.

4) Act today in a Proactive Way that initiates the Momentum. If you never take the initiative to start, you will never get started. So get started today. Seize the day! Use the 80/20 principle to get the most value out of what you do. Given that 20% of what you do will generate 80% of the value, identify that 20% and then zoom in on it making it your commitment and lifestyle. Nearly everybody knows that the hardest part of any change or resolution is getting started. We also know that the more we wait and prepare, the more we will wait and prepare and we may never get started. So get started! Do it today. Do it because ...

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” Mark Twain

Once you have started, then feed the momentum with effort and nurture the effort with sustainability, make it your life-style. Momentum is built by one small step, one small push, one small action after another. Count every small action. Say to yourself, “It counts.” No matter how small and insignificant, “It counts! I have started. The journey has begun.”

5) Resist all Excuses. Excuses are seductive and tempting and if you don’t know the common excuses that will seduce you away from your discipline, you won’t be able to mount a resistance. What distracts you from your discipline? What excuses do you commonly use? What tricks you to say, “Well just this one time.”? Whatever it is, decide that you will not live a life that honors excuses more than your goals. Decide to blow out all excuses so that you are left excuse-less so that you just have to go after your desired outcomes and be true to yourself.

6) Talk up and Positively Frame Your Discipline. What can you say to yourself and to others about choosing to live a disciplined life?

• Discipline in my choice for how to focus and act that achieves the greatest success.
• Discipline is my being true to my values, choices, and potentials.
• Discipline is the habit which allows me to manage my focus on what’s truly important.
• Discipline is my strategic means for overcoming obstacles in my way.
• Discipline indicates the degree of control I can now exercise in my life.
• Discipline reveals my integrity; that I do what I say I will do.

7) Update your Modal Operators. In life experience, we get into certain modes of operating and these operational modes show up in how we talk. Linguistically these are called “modal operators.” The verbs describing possibility are “can, able, possible.” The words for choice are “choose, decide, select, pick.” Those for desire are “want, wish, hope, yearn.” Those for necessity are “need, ought, should, must, have to.”

• Use necessity words and you will feel helpless, powerless, and like a victim. “I have to read.” “I should write a report.” “I must go to the gym.”
• Use possibility words and you will feel hopeful and optimistic. “I can go to the gym.” “I am able to write the report.” “It’s possible for me to eat healthy foods.”
• Use desire words and you will feel capable and empowered. “I want to work out.” “I yearn to run after work.”
• Use choice words and you will feel hopeful and empowered. “I choose to read for an hour each day.” “I have decide to finish cleaning the garage.”

Then there is the Maslow must. Do you know that one? “A muscian must make music; a poet must write; what a person can do, he must do.” That’s a self-actualization must, it is a being-value must. It is not the must of pressure, it is the must of potentiality. Today know that one, “I must write, I would be less of who I can be and will be if I don’t write.” Finally, there is this from the Dalai Lama:

“A disciplined mind leads to happiness, and an undisciplined mind leads to suffering.”