Discipline - Keeping you Growing

I struggle. Discipline for me has been extremely difficult to learn and to embody within me.

You see, although I have qualities like Resilience and Focus which contribute to being Disciplined, I struggle with the consistency aspect. I have never been one to follow a routine and always delayed my most important tasks until the last minute. This helped me excel under pressure, and believe in the impossible as this particular "coping mechanism" turned simple tasks into impossible ones by restrictions created by none other than mwa!

So now you can understand why I want to write about this. My childhood lifestyle was highly unstable and did not allow me to have a specific routine. Heck, one day everything would be great and the next day we would have to uproot and move our entire lives, or I would plan to study at a certain time but my 'rents would start a war, and a battle field was no place to pull out a book. I still did though, earphones in and world out. This was how I developed the amazing ability, skills and mindset to see GREATNESS in the midst of a fall and OPPORTUNITY in the eye of obstacles. And this mindset has led me to where I am today and I am grateful, but its not taking me any further, this is why I desperately desire to harness this "ability" and make it a natural part of who I am - to be consistent and dedicated always, as often as I intend. I create routines, and day plans and week plans and weekend plans and thousands of plans, which remain on paper and never materialize into this physical dimension. Discipline is not a concept you can read about and memorize and BAM its inside you. Its almost like proving to have it, is the only way to have it.

Self discipline leads to growth and growth leads to success. Every goal we wish to accomplish has a set of actions we need to follow through on. Although these "actions" are a must, it is also a want. If we want the goal then we want to incorporate these action steps into our lives that will lead us to it. for example, if you want to have a body like a Kardashian, there is a specific gym routine we would need to follow on a regular consistent basis. Therefore the gym routine becomes something that we want to incorporate to attain this goal. However, as mentioned before this will be a challenge if we are not used to being disciplined. So the question is, what is holding YOU back from committing to your action step? is it negative emotions like overwhelm, depression, grief, laziness, etc.? if so, then what belief do you have that is creating these emotions and not serving you in your conquest to achieve your goal? Do you perhaps believe deep down that, that specific body type is impossible to achieve for yourself? do you perhaps believe that your efforts will be in vein? do you believe that you have other priorities that overtake this one and out-rule it? there are millions of different emotions and beliefs that hinder us and block us from our commitments to ourselves. I, for one, find it easy to fulfill tasks for others like for my 9-5 job, but find it difficult to do these same tasks or tasks of the same intensity or even less, for myself. I start and then unintentionally quit. The action just stops, until 1 day turns into 1 week and suddenly its months and I've failed at my goal because I've failed to embody the discipline and consistency needed to reach the goal. I begin again and the process repeats and I stop at the same point and don't push further than that, but If I have an authority figure demanding it from me, I succeed. Maybe instead of a limiting belief its a non-belief holding me back? This would make sense. If I saw myself as an authority figure for myself, maybe then I would listen to myself and complete my tasks on time, every day, and eventually it will become a habit. Hmmm...

Blocks are different for each of us. And the key to discovering these blocks is to ask ourselves millions of questions which eventually will lead to the answer. Everything starts with a belief. once we find that belief, we can either prove it correct or incorrect which will then determine what gets built on top of that belief and from it. Some times we may even experience many blocks and we have to find them one by one and start diving into them and choosing the ones that serve us best. Our unconscious system of living and doing without going inward first is a system that inevitably sabotages most of us who were not raised with discipline or given the freedom and knowledge to embody it as a skill within us.

So if you are like me, and find yourself standing at the this broken bridge trying to figure out how to rebuild it so that you may cross over and grow then I would like to share with you some advise and tools which have personally helped me.

1. Do the inner work, and ask yourself those questions, start the debate within yourself, challenge who you are and seek the truth. Get rid of the beliefs which do not serve you and start with one question... "what is holding me back?" and then formulate from every answer another question until you can't any more.

2. then, let go of it, ask yourself. How would it look, what would it feel like to let go and what does letting go require from you? does it require incorporating a new belief? if so, what belief? does it require you to find clarity and understanding of why the initial, misleading belief even exists in the first place?

3. Once you let go, you should be able to move forward and take those action steps. If you come across another block, repeat.

4. Then write down deadlines and time stamps on where and when and how you going to do what you need to do.

5. Another technique is to put a punishment in place if you don't do it, maybe no dessert if you don't gym etc (however the punishment of not taking your action steps is not achieving your goal)... Or a reward if you do. Whatever keeps YOU motivated.

6. Look forward to this process, look forward to the learning, to the healing, want it deep within and eventually it will be a habit, a lifestyle, a natural occurrence.

And lastly... Start now.... All you need is your own mind. All you need is YOU.