Discipline – GIYC part 5

Discipline is discipline is discipline is discipline!!!

If you have discipline in sports, you’re well on your way to winning games, and if you have discipline in your life, you’re well on your way to success. In sports and in life, discipline can’t be an occasional thing — it has to be an all-the-time thing. — Robert Luckadoo

Discipline is one of the eight qualities necessary to have grit in your craw (GIYC). GIYC gives you the capability to chew and digest the challenges of life and turn them into nourishment and growth food. Discipline is in partnership with with diligence, tenacity, optimism, flexibility, resilience, confidence, and purpose.

What is discipline?

Discipline is defined several ways:

• training to act in accordance with rules
• activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training
• punishment inflicted by way of correction and training
• the rigor or training effect of experience, adversity, etc.
• behavior in accord with rules of conduct; behavior and order maintained by training and control

Discipline is setting your alarm clock and getting up when it rings, changing your oil regularly, showing up to work on time, stopping after one helping, carving out a time daily to feed your soul, spending less money than you make, and stopping short of saying what you really think.

Discipline is the difference between what you want now and what you want most. ― Unknown

Four Valuable Reasons to Cultivate Personal Discipline

1. Discipline paves the way for the mind to run the body

Discipline is a choice you can make that helps determine what your body and emotions will do. This was so true when running long distance races – you had to tell your body who was in charge and it wasn’t him!

All significant battles are waged within the self. — Sheldon Kopp

Make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. — George S. Patton

2. Discipline builds healthy habits instead of relying on will power

Will power has a shelf life. For example, people have less will power at night because they have used up their supply throughout the day. The disciplines you practice over time become automatic habits which are there for you when the heat it turned up.

Do yourself a favor and embrace the fact that your willpower is limited. Columbia psychologist, Heidi Grant Halvorson

3. Normalize discipline and increases potential

Those who look for ways to reduce or resist discipline lessen their chances of success. Discipline may be hard at first but after the drudgery of discipline comes delight and fulfillment of your desire.

To live a disciplined life, and to accept the result of that discipline as the will of God – that is the mark of a man. — Tom Landry

4. Discipline builds character and a lasting legacy

Sometimes life is about doing what’s necessary, not always what’s pleasing or pleasurable. You may not like the discipline of spending less than you make but if you want to spend time with your grand kids later in life (and have money to spend on them), it’s the path to get there.

It’s not good enough to do our best. Sometimes we have to do what is required. — Sir Winston Churchill

I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies; for the hardest victory is over self. — Aristotle

Final thought

Throughout my journey of recovery and re-entry, I’ve relied on the daily discipline to keep me moving forward. The commitment to get up on time, eat healthy, find a new way to exercise, prioritize activities, listen to mentors — has provided a pathway to digest the personal challenges I face.

If you build into your life the habits of self-discipline, you will have the grit to digest the challenges you face.

*Grit in Your Craw: the 8 Strengths You Need to Succeed in Business and Life, by Robert Luckadoo