3 Things Involved with Discipline in Order to Change

I talked about finding the “why”, finding the motivation as the first step to focus on in taking action to reach a goal. It provides the drive and passion for reaching that certain goal and completing those propositions. With that in mind, I will discuss three intertwined points in order to have an attack plan that draw the fine line between success and failure for you. If you can do the following, you have the basics of discipline down.

Learning Habit – Make something a part of yourself
Often time when you will think about learning or trying something. You consciously or sub-consciously also associate the fact that it is just something extra. The idea that it’s something exra leads you to think that it is not “as important” or dispensable even, which is very very bad. Take for example, you would like to become healthier and thus, need to exercise (and include a balance diet). When you consider it extra instead of a requirement, you will most likely just continue to go home and sit in front of TV. Instead of thinking it as something extra that needs to be done after work, you need to consider it as a required part of your life. Humans ARE animals and thus, daily activities should involve a certain amount of movement to sustain livelihood, just like breathing/sleeping is a part of us. It is not something extra that we can stop doing.

Another example can be that you want to improve your communication skill and for that, it involes becoming a better listener, which involves understanding people and not just hearing words. So instead of practicing and learning tips and tricks on listening to keywords and doing feedbacks, you need to make the principle of always trying to understand other people a part of you. By making the best effort to keep that as a habit, only then you become so natural at it and thus allow you to become good in communication.

Learning a habit takes time, it’s like learning a new sport where we have to drill certain movements into our muscles. Make it a requirement as a part of your being and have patience for yourself to learn it as a habit.

Being Persistent – Focus on the end and don’t give up
As previously discussed, learning a habit is by no means an easy task, nor is reaching a certain long-term goal any easier. They usually involve an extensive amount of time that will take steps after steps to get to it. The beginnning is especially a tough step, which is the reason we need the “why”. Heck, I’ve always doubted myself in learning piano in such an “old” age, but staying persistent and continue to practice is the only way I can get where I want, albeit the frustration and feeling like a failure sometimes. By focusing on the end, I will not give up. You will owe it to your persistence to reach most goals.

Fear Not – Let go, trust, and just be in the moment
This relates to the last point very much. As how I would doubt myself in my piano skill quest, I can feel fear creeps up on me that actually holds me back from practicing at times. It is very strange but that is what fear does to us. “Where is the end? I don’t see all the steps that take me to the goal.” With many possible failed steps in our path to reach a goal, staying persistent is one thing. One thing that will back up the persistence is to let go of the fear and just be in the moment of taking the step, trust that a new step will be revealed, which is somewhat analogous to having the end in mind and having persistence to kee you going. Trust in “the end” and don’t let fear steer you away from reaching it (but this is not saying we don’t take advice from otehrs).

The ideas I talked about is a little difficult to articulate, so you can somehow grasp them and make use of them.

Originally posted 2007-03-23 23:50:29. Republished by Blog Post Promoter