Many experts advise parents to give consequences to discipline a child, where, by consequences they mean good punishment. The goal of this punishment is to teach a child to avoid undesirable behavior by fearing the consequences of the behavior.

Relying on the consequences to teach lessons may work. Parents may achieve instant obedience. But is it really worth it? Be it parents, who give consequences, or life, they are all external sources of punishment. Fear from the external sources teaches a child to avoid unpleasant experiences, to become cunning. But it doesn’t enrich the child’s heart. It doesn’t develop the child’s moral intelligence. It doesn’t lead to long-term moral discipline.

The only source of punishment that leads to actual discipline is internal. It comes from the child’s conscientiousness. The voice inside the child tells him that mother became sad because he was late for dinner. She made the dinner with love for the family and expected everybody to be on time, but he forgot, or couldn’t stop his play, and now they are all late for the movie. Or, they are at the movie, and mom can’t enjoy it because she worries that he is hungry.

When will this happen? When will the child feel uncomfortable because he hurt someone by doing something wrong? When will the punishment of conscience teach the child to avoid hurting other people? When will this internal punishment become the child’s internal discipline?

No one knows. It may happen immediately, or in a few weeks, or in a few years. Only patient and faithful parents will see their children being driven not by fear of annoying consequences, but by the precious desire to improve behavior, the desire to become a better person.

Good parents don’t expect children to become internally disciplined over one incident, or even after a series of consistent incidents. They don’t train their children, they just live together with them. Good parents believe in their children’s intelligence and that is why they raise well-disciplined children, the ones who know internal freedom. Those parents don’t have to know the difference between discipline and punishment. They focus on knowing the difference between when they increase a child’s dignity and when they encroach upon it.

The power of self-discipline in selling must never be underestimated because it is probably the most important quality you will find in any successful sales professional. Nobody likes the boring or difficult tasks in selling but they are normally the only way for us to reach the bigger prize at the end of the hard work.

Behavioural Change

Self-discipline in sales is more about doing what you don’t want to do rather than doing what you like doing. Everybody prefers to call the eager clients who are ready and waiting with their credit cards rather than cold calling complete strangers. The secret to successful selling is to form the habit of getting the hard stuff out of the way first and if you are able to do this successfully two things will happen as a consequence:

1. You will be so much more successful in your career or business

2. You will feel so much better about yourself and your self-esteem will grow

Emotional Discipline

In my opinion, one of the biggest reasons why people fail in selling would be due to a lack of emotional discipline or emotional intelligence. The ability to control your emotions in selling can really make the difference between being in the top 5% and being in the bottom 20% so it’s well worth doing a bit of work in this area. Some people may think that you can’t change your emotions but I would really disagree with this theory. In fact I don’t even think we need to change our emotions; it’s much more a case of “managing” them. We need to know when to stop ourselves from being too opinionated with the customer and to try and give them as much space to express their ideas as possible. It can be hard to swallow at times but it will definitely bring rewards in the long term.

Task Prioritization

It’s not so much what you do; it’s when you do it. There will always be tasks of greater importance that are revenue generators and other tasks that can be delayed or delegated. Brian Tracy has a wonderful book about eating a frog or something along those lines. Eating the frog symbolizes the idea of getting rid of difficult tasks first thing in the day instead of constantly postponing them to a point where they will probably never get done at all.

Building Blocks of Self-Control

I don’t think it’s realistic for a person to develop super powers of self-discipline overnight and therefore the best solution is to implement it gradually over a period of time. Research often states that it takes between 21 and 30 days to develop a new habit. I personally believe that this will vary from person to person. Some people have already been brought up by their parents with a stronger element of self-discipline, whereas others have been allowed much more flexibility. Setting achievable goals is one great way of reaching higher levels of discipline because each step of the way is like a victory in itself.

Raise Your Expectations

Sometimes it’s a good idea to raise your expectations if you want increase your level of self-discipline. They are two elements that fit nicely together as one should trigger the other. If you want to increase your income level in sales it will almost certainly involve an increased level of self-discipline in order to achieve this.

1. Set a speed limit.

This will help your drivers avoid accidents, and it will also help you save fuel. Most car manufacturers recommend a speed of 60-65 kph for economic fuel consumption, and for trucks it’s 50-56 kph. Some drivers may find it difficult to comply, so you might need a device for drivers who can’t help but step on the gas pedal. There are quite a few vehicle speed limiter devices on the market for that.

2. Give them specific driving time frames.

Simple: just tell them to come back by x time. Of course you’ll need to account for traffic, accidents, and others, so make the time reasonable. This will help cut down on unnecessary side trips (and consequently, unnecessary over time pay). More importantly, your deliveries are on time.

3. Allow breaks from driving.

You might want to get more deliveries done, but what if it’s at the cost of more accidents? Don’t overwork your drivers. In Europe drivers aren’t allowed to drive non-stop for more than 4 hrs. and 30 mins., and they’re allowed 45-minute breaks between driving hours. In Australia, the maximum non-stop driving time is 5 hours. These rules were set in those countries for a reason–lack of sleep can cause irritability (which in turn might start road rage) or falling asleep on the wheel. It might be a good idea to implement a similar rule in your company.

These are only a couple of simple, easy-to-implement tips on how to manage your drivers, but even simple methods can come a long way to improving operations.

As a tantra teacher, I have often been asked whether tantra is nothing but the absence of sexual repression. After all, a tantra master trains his disciples in overcoming of sexual inhibitions, guilt and fear. Does this then mean that a student of ancient tantra is nothing but an uninhibited Bohemian capable of astounding sexual feats?

Nothing could be further from the truth. Under the guidance of a genuine tantra teacher, the student becomes highly disciplined. This is true not only in the area of sexual intimacy, but in all aspects of life. Such a person certainly does not engage in indiscriminate sex, nor does he or she boast of ‘special gifts’.

A student of the tantric arts attains a worshipful attitude to all beings – most especially towards an intimate partner. This worshipful attitude is guided by extreme mindfulness – which is tantra meditation, and sacred acts of love – which are the tantra rituals.

To the untrained perceptions, a disciplined individual is nothing but repressed. The Freudian school of thought seems to teach such a philosophy. The popular perception today is that we must give in to our desires, or else we become emotionally crippled. This is a lie. In all of us lies our animal nature, and the only thing that differentiates us from beasts is our power of intelligence and discernment. We are able to make thoughtful choices.

However, even if we were completely at the mercy of our untutored animal nature, we would not engage in wanton sexual activity. After all, which animal does? Even in the animal world, sex is a highly self-regulated activity. No doubt, sex is as pleasurable to animals as it is to humans – but they do not engage in it just for mere thrill seeking. As human beings with the gift of intelligence, we must aspire to reach an even higher level of discipline.

Yes, your tantra master will teach you to understand and overcome your sexual blocks. And yes, you will experience joy and gratification that you never thought possible in sexual intimacy. But you experience these because you have learned to rein in your desires and give them a divine form and shape. You will not experience them because you have left all discernment and discipline behind.

The tantric man or woman is a spiritually advanced being. Such guided people understand and accept the role of sexual intimacy in their lives as both a divine gift and a divine responsibility. They are not repressed – they are evolved. Are you ready for this evolutionary leap? Are you willing to accept the spiritual path of the tantric? The path is open and available to all who seek a genuine tantra master to guide their path. And remember that there is a very significant difference between control and repression.

Discipline is amongst the leading reasons parents state for enrolling their son or daughter in a military school. However, it has been joined and in some cases supplanted by the following: low self-esteem, problems with authority, poor friends, addicted to video games, drugs, not doing well in school, not following rules and a variety of ‘D’s (ADD, ADHD, Learning Disabilities, etc.).

Has discipline become less critical over the years? Is it better managed in the home and schools than it was 15 or 20 years ago? Do parents feel for various reasons that discipline is not as formidable an issue as it once was in their home? Are we, as a society, doing better at discipline and therefore it is not the weighty issue it once was?

Discipline is a set of rules used to maintain order. It is a system of expectations predicated to provide predictability and hence stability in our society so that we can function as positive members of that society. Knowing the rules is of critical importance. Knowing what the expectations or rules are for our conduct universally and specifically in certain situations, conditions, habits, etc permits us the option of informed right choice. These rules as a statement comprise the law and general mores in our society. They are the map co-ordinates by which we navigate freedom – the exercising of right choice.

If this is what discipline is and if parents site it less and less as the primary reason for their applying to military schools, then can we be assured that it is in fact less of an issue for them, their sons or daughters, and indeed our society? Or might we examine carefully their other primary reasons and find them to be authored at least in part, by discipline, or more specifically, the lack there of? Is self-esteem, or rather self-concept in part dependent upon measuring yourself against certain standards? What if those standards are not clear or not known to the individual?

At many military schools discipline is an integral component of all facets of daily life. Boarding school communities thrive on order, predictability and each member knowing the rules, their place in maintaining those rules, and how we convey them in our actions with each other and the world beyond.

Discipline is a system of rules extended from the laws of our society, founded in what I have identified as these five values: Loyalty, Labour, Courage, Commitment and Honour. These represent the expectations for ethical behaviour by which we prosecute and accomplish our mission. In addition to these five values, rules are founded upon the following principles: the equitable treatment of all students, faculty and staff; the preservation of mutual respect; cooperation and understanding the notion that the practice of right choice in regards to obedience to the rules increases ones freedom and options; that this is inherently good for the individual as well as the group; that wrong choice will lead to sanction and perhaps dismissal from the group.

It is of critical importance that every member of a school knows the rules as soon as possible upon entering and that all (students and faculty) are reminded of them frequently. Equally, that those who lead in this community do so by their example.

Discipline is not synonymous with punishment as many in our society seem to believe, nor is it synonymous with reward. But rather, it embraces both of these as active outcomes of individual choices regarding compliance to the rules. Students should be actively encouraged to make right choices by presenting rewards for right choice and sanctions for wrong choice. Ensuring students know the rules, the attendant rewards and sanctions, and accompanied by experience, provides the clarity of environment that authenticates it as consistent and unbiased. Confusion about the rules, or the misrepresentation of them or their expectations by those in leadership roles, is NEVER good and must not be condoned. Faculty, staff and other leaders must actively subscribe to the rules and their founding values and principles in order to effectively discharge the mandate of their office.

Students are often at differing developmental stages from one other and from the faculty. In order to truly appreciate this faculty and staff may need to accurately reflect upon their own stages of adolescence and how they expressed their needs for autonomy, control of their environment and how they interacted with authority.

If one examines the reasons parents now site for applying to a military school, each has its roots deeply planted in the domain of discipline. This concept is critical to understand if we are to provide the kind of learning and living environment that has order, health, opportunity, and success as its hallmarks. Many students come from environments that have been chaotic, easily manipulated, unclear in expectations and standards, and have lacked the willpower to motivate them to make right choices.

One last observation: Experience has taught me that I have learned more from those things that I didn’t want to do but came to recognize that I ought to do, than from those things that I immediately wanted to do. Many of today’s youth come from a world of instant gratification that feeds them the fast food of what they want, when they want, and how they want. In so doing it has burdened them with unrealistic views of themselves, their importance, their rights, and their powers, as well as burdening them with the weight of having to catch up, learn lessons they should have learned long ago, and being resentful towards us and their parents for them finding themselves in this state. Regrettably, many of their parents have sent them to military school because they are at the end of their emotional resources – and their children know it! To add insult to injury they perceive they are there as a punishment. They have become angry, immature, manipulative, budding narcissists who hate the idea of their changing and certainly those who would dare impose this change upon them – us!

Such reflection might lead to some very important rules about maintaining the rules:

1. To know the rules, believe in their reasons for existing and the principles upon which they are founded, and live them will equip a staff member with much of the authenticity to prosecute his or her mandate fully. To not know or to not believe in this makes you a phony functionary that students will happily identify and exploit to your compromise. Students must never be confused about expectations for their conduct and demeanor. Therefore, staff must know the rules and how to properly communicate these.

2. Instruction and correction (albeit at times so very often repeated) are the highest form of affection.

3. You are always more authentic and respected in “walking the walk” than you are in “talking the talk”.

4. Engaging your eyes and your ears to look and listen is the same process as engaging your common sense before you open your mouth. Remember, we are given two eyes and two ears and only one mouth for a reason. If you are not sure, never use the latter except to become sure.

5. To anticipate is divine! To react is sadly a distant second.

6. There can be many routes to teaching a lesson, none of which should compromise the lesson or those learning it.

7. Sarcasm is the lowest form of humour, rhetorical questions the ghost of reason and ridicule the signature of ones own ignorance. Use none of these. EVER.

8. Profanity is for those who lack an appropriate command of the language. Its use is the baggage of a slothful attitude and one students never need to see from staff.

9. If you don’t know or are unsure ask the proper person.

10. Lead by your own example.

Your attitude has a great deal to do with your personality. It influences your response to people, events and things as well as your likes and dislikes. People that have a healthy attitude toward life are persons that meet difficult situations with calmness and who are cheerful, pleasant and easy to get along with.

Control your temper – once you have spoken, you cannot recall a single word. A person with an unrestrained temper can throw others into a state of confusion. Everything one say, starts a reaction – good or bad. When you master your own behavior, you will be free to choose the course your behavior will take. You cultivate the characteristics that are desirable and you discard those that are unwanted.

Emotional stability is important – practice self-control. Learn to suppress the signs that betray unpleasant emotions, such as facial grimaces or gestures of anger, impatience, envy or greed.

Be polite. The root of politeness is thoughtfulness of others. Politeness should be easy to practice for it includes all the little things in life such as ‘thank you’ and ‘please’.

You must have a sense of humor. Cultivate your sense of humor. Take yourself less seriously. When you can laugh at yourself, you have gained the ability to evaluate realistically your relative personal importance. A pleasant personality is the key to success.

Learn to display pleasant emotions – graciousness. The willingness to assume the responsibilities of friendship, the ability to fit into new situations and to meet new people with friendliness is all parts of professionalism. A sincere smile sets the mood for warm human relations.

In order to be successful you are going to need to apply successful habits. Successful habits are: 1) being able to focus 2) being disciplined and 3) being consistent.

You can actually learn and master each of these habits by walking. If you walk for one hour three times a week for one year can successfully teach yourself and master the habits of being focused, disciplined and consistent.

The Habit of Being Focused

1) Set a walking goal that is not comfortable for you. For example: Plan to walk 5 miles three times a week for a year.

2) Get a planner and on the days Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next year, pencil in the word “walking”.

3) Establish a time that will be convenient for you to walk (such as 7am-8am) and then write the time underneath all of the places where you wrote the word walking.

Your focus is “Walking 5 miles every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for a year.

The Habit of Being Disciplined

Once you start your walking regime it will not be uncommon for you to come up against a defeatist attitude. In the beginning, you may become tired and you may even want to give up and quit. You may also find that your convenient schedule is not so convenient anymore and you may want to swap back and forth in order to fit your walking regime around your schedule instead of fitting your schedule around your walking regime.

What ever reasons that may pop up in your mind to get you to permanently sway from your focus, do not comply with them. Remember that by sticking to your schedule you are developing the habit of being disciplined.

The Habit of Being Consistent

The way that you develop a successful habit is by doing the same positive action over and over again for a period of time.

When you walk for 5 miles every Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the exact time for 1 year and you do not sway from your focus, you will have developed the habit of being consistent.

Positive Results

In order to be successful, you have to be able to see successful results. When you have a focus, a plan to achieve your focus, and you are disciplined in following your plan then you should be able to see positive results.

When you walk 5 miles three days every week for a year, then you should be able to see improved health and weight loss.

The worst disassemble round wanting to read about information is looking for it. With so many sources of information on the internet one would be dense pressed to breed out the exact information that is needed. We’ve once done the hard work for you and made it available to you with this article that you are now reading. So read this article about goal setting…

There is a large gulf between the position of a goal and goal accomplishment. Most goals don’t proceed beyond the paper on which they have been written. And a few of them will fall midway of the distance. Very few people will travel the full distance when it comes to setting goals.

In case you want to close your goals then you want to possess the following points in mind:

* You should work with a burning drive to achieve your goal. Many a times we do chattels because of fear of failure or scolding. In case this is what you are doing then you are destined never to succeed.

* You must keep faith in your capabilities. Nothing is impossible to achieve if you have the genuine attitude.

* Written words have more proficiency of coming right than spoken or imagined ones when it comes to goals. Be to the point as to what you want to do and make sure to write down every goal, sub-goal and the way you are going to achieve them.

* Write down all the benefits and that desire that come your way once you achieve the goal. This is a prolonged motivating factor, and will keep you breeze forward.

* List the skills that you call for to achieve your goals. For instance, if you want to be a chef then you must comprehend how to work with vegetables. Knowing where you stand today will lend a hand in planning your future steps.

* Create a list of obstacles that you are presumably to come across. These may be shortage of finances, for instance. If that is so, then you must encounter ways to arrange the funds previously the financial crisis beyond doubt hits you.

* You must many times use regular deadlines. These should be vigorous but achievable. If you fail to fulfill your task by the period allotted create changes and demand another deadline. Don’t impartial stop working if a deadline to finish a sub-task is not met. Just keep moving forward.

* Bring about a list of persons who can motivate you to reach your goal. Their base can mean a lot when you are under pressure.

* Picture your goals as vividly as imaginable because then you know where you want to reach and arrange the extra efforts to reach there.

* Don’t loose hope or give up. Failure will come but you should grab it in the right stride. That’s the solitary way to advance forward.

What an interesting article, don’t you converse in the brain? Sufficiently, there are more interesting and informative articles on that topic here. So perceive free to browse round and read the articles.

And if you are also interested in other topics there are so many other subjects obtainable for your enjoyment and information. Just don’t burn your bridges, make sure you to put the necessarily action in that is needed to reach your goals.

In your online business, there are quite a number of things that you have to master in order to be successful, but few can compare in importance to will-power and self-discipline. You are going to be tested in so many ways, while building your business that you are going to need these two qualities so important in your life almost every day. It is no good carrying on procrastinating and taking no action about different things that we all know are absolutely necessary in your online business.

So often you may want to do things that you know are beneficial and important for your business online yet, if you do not actually take action to get them done, you see that time carries on regardless and very little is achieved. This sort of thing happens to most of us, especially when we lack will power and have no self-discipline. So keep reading because I will cover a few ways to develop will power and acquire self-discipline.

I don’t want you to keep wishing you had will-power and self-discipline. Instead, I am going to show how to get these qualities to make a great difference in your life. When you start eliminating the habits that stop you from going forward, like laziness, excessive eating, smoking and procrastination, you will be on your way to recognize that you are getting more will power and self-discipline. Having more of these qualities is absolutely necessary to do well in your online business.

But how do you get will-power, how do you begin to understand will-power?. Well, if you think, like many people do, that will-power is something very arduous or difficult, or that you have to tense your body and brain to express it, you are mistaken. Don’t believe it because I am going to show some strategies that will convince you it is not difficult to develop will-power.

When you don’t value insignificant, unnecessary and unhealthy ideas, feelings, actions and reactions that don’t empower you, you are showing you posses will-power. This energy is stored inside you and can be available any time you need it to accomplish anything your want.

We will cover later some exercises you can do to gain a lot of will power, but now let us talk about self-discipline and why you need it for your life and your business. You could say that when you make decisions for your business and carry them through to fruition, you have some self-discipline because you have not allowed instant gratification and pleasure take you away from your desired course. Indeed that is a good definition of self-discipline because your actions allowed you to stay with the course that you selected before-hand.

Is this skill useful and required in everyone’s life? Absolutely! Without it, as we touched before, you would not stick with your decisions and would have a hard time achieving your goals in business. When you have it, your actions, thoughts and behaviour are in line with a better and more fulfilling life because your inner strength and will power overcome addictions, and other negative traits like procrastination, laziness and lack of focus, to allow you to achieve whatever you want to do in online business.

So why would you not develop self-discipline? You do know how useful and required it is for success in your personal life and of course in your business world too, so fortify it, embrace it and develop it further. Remember that lack of discipline may lead you to failure in reaching your goals. But on the other hand, actions described above that demonstrate you have self-discipline, leads to self-assurance, inner strength and self-regard, as well as to complete satisfaction and happiness.

There are lots of issues and challenges along the path of success, accomplishment and wealth in business and you want to rise above all of them to become successful in whatever you do. You want and need to have perseverance, persistence and sheer will power in order to also overcome other negative traits like smoking, drinking, eating disorders and other damaging habits like drug addition, procrastination and laziness.

Here is what self-discipline can do for you, in addition to those qualities mentioned above:

• It allows you to regulate and control anger, indecision, appetite and various other natural responses.

• You can eliminate many types of temptations which you do not need like gossiping or gambling, overeating or watching too much television.

• It can certainly rescue you from throwing in the towel when things are tough in the business world or in your personal life, by giving you the strength to keep going.

• With it you can get great relationships with others, by not feeling easily hurt or disturbed with what sometimes people do or say to you.

• It gives you better control over the need to accomplish the goals you set for yourself in your online business, as well as having total control over your responses, needs and thoughts.

There are so many more qualities that self-discipline can bring to you…

But how can you develop these inner qualities of will-power and self-discipline? Well, will-power can be obtained gradually and it all depends really on your desire to get it.

And you do not require huge monumental feats of effort to achieve it. Don’t believe those who tell you that to get will-power require you to go through great suffering or physical mutilation.

In fact, anyone can become powerful with will-power simply by the challenge of eliminating everything that you know is harmful for you in many areas of your personal and business life. By giving up adverse and useless things that take your time to make you weak, you gain in strength according to how many of these bad habits you can stop. Repeating this process is the challenge you need to make your life more absorbing, gratifying and interesting.

The will-power that you want is not something that can be achieved in one day. You can only developed it bit by bit, over a period of time and it is something that doesn’t depend on feelings, emotions, un-focus enthusiasm or even optimism. Instead this gradual ability, developed over a period of time, if it turns into a habit, it is something so special that you can use over and over again whenever and wherever you require it.

This training of the will-power extends or inter-relates with self-discipline since the taking of gradual steps to obtain will-power requires another great quality as we’ve covered before called self-discipline. So, carry on this way because with self-discipline you also get self-control which is another way of calling self-discipline.

Using self-control wisely is one of the most important tools you can have for self-improvement and for accomplishing success online.

What else does self-control do? It can do a lot of things really, like keeping under control any self-destructive, addictive, compulsive and obsessive action. It can enhance the sense of personal mastery and balance over your life. And it can remove any feelings of weakness and being too dependent on other people. It also enables you to take control over your life. And there are many other qualities that self-control brings to your life.

Self-control also has to act against many obstacles like truly understanding what self-control really is about; or about deficiencies of the desire to alter and improve. And it has to act against solid and uncontrolled emotional responses. Also, do not allow self-control to be considered a restricting and unpleasant activity.

How do you develop self-control? You first find out what areas of your life need more self-control and these could be: Drinking, Betting, Smoking, Obsessive behaviour, Eating and then attempt to identify emotions that lack control, like being angry, dissatisfied, sadness, resentment, delight or fearfulness. See if you can isolate the thoughts and emotions that push you to act in an unrestrained manner.

Here are a few exercises that you can do to gain will-power, self-discipline and self- control: A) Refrain from saying things that are offensive or negative to other groups of people. B) Overlook the gossip useless pages of newspapers. C) When you desire to eat unhealthy meals, discard the thought and prepare yourself an alternative healthy one. D) Try not to drink your tea with sugar for a week if you normally take sugar with your tea. E) Get up straight away at the set time to do it, instead of thinking about it. F) Develop the habit of finishing what you started.

But there are so many more things similar to those above to create an unstoppable muscle to develop your inner strength. The point here is that you do not want to continue making your life hard by doing the things you don’t like. Consider instead making your life ‘easy’ by doing the things that most people think hard to do. These skills are vital for your will-power, self-discipline, your personal life and your online business.

German Calvo

I have built my business on the belief that “preparation isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.” You see we all have control over how we prepare and therefore that is where we need to expend our energy if we want to become successful, regardless of our chosen field. Many people spend their time worrying about things they have no control over, be it their competitors, co-workers, boss or what will happen tomorrow or farther into the future. This is a trap that is easy to fall into, but you do not have to fall prey to it.

If you are able to stay focused on the things within your control, you will find that the benefits are endless. The reason most people fall in to the trap of worrying about things they have no control over is because to do what I am suggesting causes the pain of self-discipline. As most of you already know life is full of pain and choices. I feel your choice between these two forms of pain will go a long way in determining not only how you experience life, but also many of the outcomes in your life.

Every person has a surprising degree of control over which and how much of these two pains they experience in their lives. Being prepared and focusing on what’s in front of you takes a large measure of self-discipline. Lack of self-discipline more often than not leads to regret. Many will read that and think, well if it’s going to cause me pain I may as well take my chances and skip the self-discipline and “hope” for the best, possibly missing out on any regrets.

Sadly “hope” is not an effective strategy for living your life or succeeding in your career and usually leads to regret. Imagine being at work and needing to stay an hour late to finish up your presentation, but you elect to go out to happy hour with your friends in “hope” that no one will ask questions about the part you failed to complete. The next morning you give your presentation and are unable to satisfactorily answer the client’s questions, causing you to lose the account and the bonus you were planning to use for that dream Hawaiian vacation your wife had been planning for over a year. Do you think you will have any regrets or that your wife will be mad and let you hear about it repeatedly for years?

These are the type of decisions that each of us has to make everyday and I believe they are not to be taken lightly. My first argument against the former approach would be that the pain of self-discipline is temporary and short in duration, while the pain of regret tends to be never ending and haunts you forever. My next argument would be that self-discipline when practiced regularly will become a habit, reducing the pain of it over time to almost no pain at all. Think of the act of brushing your teeth. When you were first told you had to brush your teeth before you went to bed it seemed like such a bother/pain for you to do, now I bet you do it without even thinking about it, just like I do, because it is a habit now.

My final argument in favor of choosing the pain of self-discipline, would be that few great accomplishments come without it, and the use of it builds your confidence, self-esteem and can give you a mental edge. People assume that the most successful people among us are more talented than we are and that their success is preordained. The truth is that talent is developed and self-discipline is a key ingredient in the process, along with exposure and deep practice. I tell all my clients that my definition of self-discipline is: “Doing what you don’t want to do right now, so you get to do what you want to do when the lights are shining on you.” You have to do all the little things if you ever hope to experience big things.

Some pains in life are unexpected and cannot be prepared for like the sudden loss of a loved one or some natural disasters. There are numerous pains in life, so why not limit a major one like regret by accepting the small amount of pain that comes with self-discipline? To me that is a bargain I can’t afford to pass up.

POSTED IN THE MIND SIDE BLOG EDIT