The Way of "Discipline"

Just changed the blog layout, let me know if you like it. :D

From the last blog:

Discipline: being able to do something that is planned, while having strong temptations and distractions.

After understading what 'Discipline' means, I decided it's now time to try it out and to study it deeper. One aspect of self discipline I've been working on is trying to discipline myself to sleep and get up on time. While that may sound easy to you, but for someone not as disciplined as yourself - I usually found the many excuse including, but not limited to: "having to finish something off, it's almost done"; "I'm not sleepy, can still do some more work"; "need this done, don't have time tomorrow" to sleep late. And ofcourse, since I slept late, I couldn't get up as early as I wanted to (else, I'll be a walking zombie - "brains, must have brains, muahahaha" hope I didn't scare you there. :P)

Just from the sleeping example above, I believe that to be disciplined on something - we must not find excuses for ourselves. To be disciplined, we have to do what is planned. And not change the plan with excuses all the time.

Here, I started thinking about planing. To do what is planned, one would in one form or another need a plan. And in this plan, it should list out why we have to do what the plan suggests (i.e. the justification), what are the benefits, and what are the losses if we don't do it. I'm sure you would of thought of the benefits and losses beforehand, and by writing it down, I'm hopping it will help us concrete it, and to think deeper about it.

Now for those smart people - you might have picked up that "benefits" and "losses" happen only if we are working towards something. Lets call that a "goal". Believe it or not, everyone has goals - a business's goal could be to earn more money; a employee's goal could be to not get fired; a husband's goal could be to please his family and make sure there is enought money; a wife's goal could be to make sure the hansband and the kids are happy; a child's goal could be to get that $100 action figure of BoBo Man; so on and so on.

Let take my sleeping case to further clarify. My goal would be "to get healthier". And because I know sleeping on time and having enough sleep contribute to better health, so I plan to do it. For if I don't I'll be tired the next day and my health would suffer.

Coming back to "goals". So why would we want to set goals. Obviously there's a "motivation". And we would need this motivation all the way through our plan to make sure we stay focused. If this motivation / desire is that very strong then we will deviate easily.

For the sleeping case, I want "to get healthier" so that I have more energy to do things, I can think better, I have longer life span, ... the list goes on.

I believe the dependency goes like this:

Discipline -> Plan (inc. Pros v Cons) -> Goal -> Motivation / Desire