Building Self-Discipline
It seems self discipline is a theme or a topic that has been appearing pretty regularly in my periphery these days, what with seeing it on tv on Morgan Spurlocks 30 days of being a muslim , and reading about it in Steve Pavlina's Blog on How to Become an Early Riser.
Now, I'm going to slowly start building my own 'self-discipline' muscle... though what am I going to build with it? I suppose a start will be to wake up each morning at a fixed time of day. 5am seems early enough to allow me to start my day, on a regular basis, so I'm going to focus on doing one thing consistently, and then slowly start adding things to my daily routine, that I stick with consistently.
Clearly it's all a matter of seeing what happens to my self-discipline, when I start to push myself, and reach those challenging borders in life, that make you want to go back to your old way of doing things. But when you want to build towards a specific goal in your life, then it makes it a lot easier to start with something simple, and specific, and to accomplish it.
Often, to have a measurable goal makes all the difference between training yourself to have the self-discipline to behave in a particular way, or to have the laxness that many people seem to have in life, simply because that's the way that life is. I suppose it goes back to that old argument about allowing things to happen naturally and making things happen.
When you just sit back and watch, life happens to you. When you step forward, and take action, you create your reality. That subtle difference also reflects in the way in which people experience life - is it in control of you, or are you in control of it? Sometimes, people like to imagine that life is in control of them, so that they can be the victims, and claim that something else is responsible for their daily traumas or challenges in life. But truth be told, what's the really empowering state to engage with? One of cause or effect?
Thanks to a great teacher, Topher Morrison, I learnt a fundamental difference between being the victim, and being at cause. The victim state means that I'm not responsible for what happened to me, I can't do anything to change it, and the only way that I can change this state is when the external circumstance changes.
The cause state, where you put yourself at the cause of the world you've created, means that you see the exact same situation, but from the eyes of someone who's responsible for the reality that's been created. That means that you created the results that you're experiencing, and in order to change your results, you have to change the behaviours, or your actions in order to change the outcome. Imagine being able to then choose when you change the world you live in. It puts you slap bang in the centre of everything you've created, and it will change just as easily, as you're willing to allow your behaviours, or actions to change.
I know which state I would rather live out of - imagine the feeling of a blade of grass being blown by the wind, and imagine that same wind current lifting an eagle up high in the sky. I think the eagle inspires me more, to soar, than that blade of grass, and so I'm going to choose to fly, instead of be blown about.
The difference between knowing how to fly, and learning to fly is a seperate matter. It's like a skydiver, learning to get more airtime from his drop, by being able to slow down his descent... But like the sky diver, if you don't choose to get on the plane, you're not going to know any difference between jumping off a plane, and jumping off the ground!
So I invite you, today, to decide for yourself, who has created the world that you live in... and in doing so, make the decision to start exercising your muscle of self-discipline. It might be challenging, it might be tough, and you may find yourself falling back as you move forward. But it's only when you start to move forward that you'll be able to experience the challenge of a setback. So embrace it, learn from it, and then continue to keep trying. It's only when we stop trying to accomplish something in life, that we ultimately start dying, since if we're not creating, and not moving towards living, then clearly we must be doing the opposite, which is moving away from life, or dying. The only reason I say this, is because one universal constant that I've learnt to recognise is change. It is never certain what the change might be, or in what direction it will take you... but change is inevitable, in every moment of life. So accept it, rejoice in it, and harness it for the constructive creation of the world you choose to live in today.
Now let me go set that daily alarm for 5am, and start building my own self-discipline muscle!
Now, I'm going to slowly start building my own 'self-discipline' muscle... though what am I going to build with it? I suppose a start will be to wake up each morning at a fixed time of day. 5am seems early enough to allow me to start my day, on a regular basis, so I'm going to focus on doing one thing consistently, and then slowly start adding things to my daily routine, that I stick with consistently.
Clearly it's all a matter of seeing what happens to my self-discipline, when I start to push myself, and reach those challenging borders in life, that make you want to go back to your old way of doing things. But when you want to build towards a specific goal in your life, then it makes it a lot easier to start with something simple, and specific, and to accomplish it.
Often, to have a measurable goal makes all the difference between training yourself to have the self-discipline to behave in a particular way, or to have the laxness that many people seem to have in life, simply because that's the way that life is. I suppose it goes back to that old argument about allowing things to happen naturally and making things happen.
When you just sit back and watch, life happens to you. When you step forward, and take action, you create your reality. That subtle difference also reflects in the way in which people experience life - is it in control of you, or are you in control of it? Sometimes, people like to imagine that life is in control of them, so that they can be the victims, and claim that something else is responsible for their daily traumas or challenges in life. But truth be told, what's the really empowering state to engage with? One of cause or effect?
Thanks to a great teacher, Topher Morrison, I learnt a fundamental difference between being the victim, and being at cause. The victim state means that I'm not responsible for what happened to me, I can't do anything to change it, and the only way that I can change this state is when the external circumstance changes.
The cause state, where you put yourself at the cause of the world you've created, means that you see the exact same situation, but from the eyes of someone who's responsible for the reality that's been created. That means that you created the results that you're experiencing, and in order to change your results, you have to change the behaviours, or your actions in order to change the outcome. Imagine being able to then choose when you change the world you live in. It puts you slap bang in the centre of everything you've created, and it will change just as easily, as you're willing to allow your behaviours, or actions to change.
I know which state I would rather live out of - imagine the feeling of a blade of grass being blown by the wind, and imagine that same wind current lifting an eagle up high in the sky. I think the eagle inspires me more, to soar, than that blade of grass, and so I'm going to choose to fly, instead of be blown about.
The difference between knowing how to fly, and learning to fly is a seperate matter. It's like a skydiver, learning to get more airtime from his drop, by being able to slow down his descent... But like the sky diver, if you don't choose to get on the plane, you're not going to know any difference between jumping off a plane, and jumping off the ground!
So I invite you, today, to decide for yourself, who has created the world that you live in... and in doing so, make the decision to start exercising your muscle of self-discipline. It might be challenging, it might be tough, and you may find yourself falling back as you move forward. But it's only when you start to move forward that you'll be able to experience the challenge of a setback. So embrace it, learn from it, and then continue to keep trying. It's only when we stop trying to accomplish something in life, that we ultimately start dying, since if we're not creating, and not moving towards living, then clearly we must be doing the opposite, which is moving away from life, or dying. The only reason I say this, is because one universal constant that I've learnt to recognise is change. It is never certain what the change might be, or in what direction it will take you... but change is inevitable, in every moment of life. So accept it, rejoice in it, and harness it for the constructive creation of the world you choose to live in today.
Now let me go set that daily alarm for 5am, and start building my own self-discipline muscle!
posted by magitam at 1:43 pm
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