Perhaps our fascination with superheroes is rooted in the belief that all of us were born with unique gifts that we bring to the world.  I believe that unless we can see ourselves for whom we were created to be, we will continue to destroy ourselves on planet earth, and in space should our adventures take us beyond earth.  I began this blog on March 4, 2019 with the blogpost entitled, “Global Warning!”  In that post I said, as I often say, “If we master ourselves, we cannot be mastered by anyone else or anything else, and if God is our master, we cannot be defeated.”  I revisit that saying today because I have placed a lot of emphasis on self-mastery and not nearly enough on God being our master. 

Self-mastery, in the sense that I use it, does not mean that I become my own master.  Rather it means that I learn to master those things about me and my world that are within my power to control.  On the other hand, having God as my master does not mean that God treats me as a slave or that I should expect God to do the things that I can do for myself.  I cannot speak as an expert in either of these areas because I am receiving day-by-day training in how to understand the difference between the two.  I am learning how to manage those areas of my life that I can manage, and how to submit and surrender to the authority of God in those areas which are beyond my ability to see, understand, or control.

I have exercised a considerable amount of self-control through exercise, diet change, fasting, etc., over the years, only to realize how easily it can be lost unless I willingly and consistently submit to the leadership and authority of God.  This takes a great deal of the burden off me, because now I can consult with God, receive wisdom, direction, insight, inspiration, and strength, from an adviser, teacher, and master twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, every day of the year.  What a concept?  Therefore, my success is not dependent upon my ability to control myself alone, but also in my ability to surrender to the direction and wisdom of God.

I recall two famous lines from the 1995 movie Apollo 13 which I believe are must be tag lines for anyone who is determined to be disciplined for success.  The first one, “Houston, we have a problem” probably resonates with all of us who have had unforeseen and unexpected problems arise at the least opportune times.  It has been said that problems have solutions, and indeed some of the greatest and most ingenious inventions and discoveries have been made by people looking for solutions to problems.  Whether you are raising children, starting a new career, getting out of prison, moving to a new location, or starting a business, your greatest challenges, and subsequently your greatest successes, in life will involve problem solving.  One of the first steps in problem solving is being able to clearly state the problem.  Each time you look at the problem from a different angle you see the problem from a different perspective.  From each perspective as you re-state the problem, the problem becomes clearer and the solution closer to attainment.  To be disciplined in problem solving is to always look at the problem with fresh eyes.

The second line from the movie that I believe to be essential to discipline and success, is “failure is not an option.”  All roads lead to success when we are disciplined and relentless in our determination to succeed.  When success is our only option, failure is eliminated from our vocabulary of possibilities.  What a revolutionary mindset, I believe this mindset will revolutionize our lives because it eliminates doubt and any temptation to settle for anything less than the successful completion of our stated goals.  This mindset also equips us to look for answers and find solutions.  Imagine embarking on every task knowing that problems will arise, but for you. failure is not an option.

This is the first Mother’s Day without my Mom, who passed away on June 6, 2018 at the age of 89.  Yet, in so many ways I still feel her presence.  I remember her laugh and when our family gets together, or we speak of her we often laugh at some of the things that she said and did that made us laugh.  I remember her sweet nature and how she often thought of and encouraged others.  I remember how she remembered her thirteen siblings’ birthdays and called them or sent cards.  I remember Mom helping me work through anger towards my Dad and serving as a mediator of my feelings during those tough years of adolescence.  I remember my mom working with my dad around the house, sitting by his side in church, her kissing him every day he went off to work and when he returned home each day.  I remember seeing my mother work in her garden and her flower beds as though she was landscaping heaven.  I remember her frugality and how she managed her household responsibilities on a minimal budget, looking for sales, cutting coupons, and canning fruit and vegetables. I remember how people far and near would speak of my mother’s baking and cooking skills.  I remember joking with her on the phone and having breakfast with her on Saturday mornings for the last four years of her life.  Yes, there is so much I remember when I think of my mom but most of all I remember her love for her family, her love for people, and her love for God.

Whether your mom is dead or alive, whether she raised you or did not, whether the memories were mostly pleasant or not, treasure and honor your mother today.  I believe our success is tied to our ability to discipline ourselves to see the beauty in our genes and leaving the ugly behind.  Remember the tender moments and understand that out of those moments can blossom beauty when we discipline ourselves to see beauty. 

The Russian cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin was the first human in space.  Upon returning to earth on April 12, 1961, he described the beauty of the earth with its magnificent colors, the amazing vastness of space, and he encouraged his fellow earthlings to preserve and improve the beauty of our planet.  Not long after this amazing venture into space the Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev reportedly said that Gagarin looked and looked but did not see God.  It is interesting how our perspective is always twisted to match what we believe?  If your perspective says there is no God, you could possibly look God in the face and not know it.  On the other hand, someone else saw the pictures that were taken from space and their response was, “I see God in the beauty of the earth and in all the pictures taken from the earth’s atmosphere.”

I heard a story about two twins who were raised in the same family, and whose father was an alcoholic.  One became an alcoholic and the other did not drink alcohol at all.  When the alcoholic twin was asked why he became an alcoholic he replied, “because I was raised by an alcoholic.”  When the other twin was asked why he did not become an alcoholic, he replied, “because I was raised by an alcoholic.”  Again, perspective determines how we can see the same reality and have radically different outcomes. 

When we are disciplined for success, we begin to examine our perspectives in order to understand why we see things the way we see them.  The more we understand our perspective on any given subject or reality, the more open we can be to learn, grow, go places we have never gone before, and experience things we never thought we would ever experience.

Think of the things you could have done yesterday that were left undone.  Well, let’s scratch that idea because the time that you spend thinking about what you didn’t do yesterday is wasted time today.  If you are like me, today’s wasted time still leaves yesterday’s task undone in addition to today’s tasks that will be left undone.  At the end of the day we lose yesterday and today because we have spent so much time thinking about what we left undone.  So, what does tomorrow hold?  If tomorrow is like yesterday and today, we will have compounded regrets over what we left undone yesterday, today, and what will invariably be left undone tomorrow. 

You might ask, “how then do I get out of this cycle of compounded regrets?” Well, I did a cursory calculation and discovered that the time I spent bemoaning what I didn’t do could have been used productively to accomplish yesterday’s, and today’s tasks, and allow ample time to plan for tomorrow’s tasks.  You may have heard the saying, “the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”  As a matter of fact, they will go awry unless we develop the ‘discipline of doing.’  It has also been said that not only must you plan your work, but you must work your plan for your plan to work.

It is important to have good plans, make lists of the things we want to get done, and gather all the tools and resources needed to accomplish our goals.  However, until our things-to-do-list gets done, and our goals and objectives are completed, we remain in the territory of the ‘undone.’  All the undone things become weights that get heavier if they remain on a list of things to do.  When are we disciplined for success our load is light because we are always doing what can and should be done.

Did you know that you can rub two pieces of wood together and start a fire?  It takes a while, but the heat generated by the friction will produce a spark.  As the spark is produced, blowing on the sparks then produces a flame.  Forest fires begin with a spark.  A car starts with a spark.  Engines, furnaces, boilers, ovens, burners, airplanes, and every form of power known to us begins with a spark.  The energy produced by the spark must reproduce and then be harnessed to perform the great feats that we can do with energy on earth and in space today.  Whether we are talking about energy produced by steam, fossil fuels, natural gas, the sun, or other sources, a spark must be ignited to generate and harness power. 

Like every machine and power source we know, we as human beings also function because of sparks.  Neurologists have determined that sparks fire the neurons in our brains which in turn allow every system and part of our body to function at minimal or maximal capacity, depending on the condition of those systems.  Just as the sun is the source of energy for our solar system, each of us has a light in us that produce energy for the 11 major systems in our bodies.  When our light sources are dimmed, it is more difficult to produce a spark.  Depression can set in, systems begin to malfunction, energy is lost, and eventually we become dysfunctional.

Disciplined behaviors, which become habits, lead to the successful maintenance of every system in our bodies, including our spiritual system which cannot be seen or measured in objective terms.  If we are going to be disciplined with all systems set for maximal potential, we must light sparks and manage our fires.  As Smokey the Bear used to say, “Only you can prevent forest fires.”  Please remember that our thoughts and words produce sparks and if we are not careful our sparks can produce destructive wildfires.  On the other hand, when we manage ourselves well, our fires become productive and creative, making the world a better place to live for everyone.

At many railroad crossings and subway stations worldwide, you may see a sign cautioning drivers, pedestrians, cyclists or anyone entering the path of the train to beware.  Trains cannot stop as quickly as cars and are not required to stop at all places where cars, pedestrians, and cyclists cross.  For safety’s sake it is important to stop, look both ways, and listen for oncoming trains.  We have daily crossings in our lives that come with subtle dangers.  We can avoid daily pitfalls if we discipline ourselves to stop, look, and listen.

Sometimes we are so busy staying busy that we miss the stop signs, caution lights, and red lights which signal that possible danger may lie ahead.  Slow down and pay attention to the speed limit, the road signs, and the traffic lights.  Every now and then, it is a good idea to pull over at a rest stop to stretch and take a nap.  Just as in driving, many of us have had health, emotional, physical, and spiritual accidents in our lives because we failed to get out of the driver’s seat for rest.  Fatigue and weariness may cause you to miss critical signs.  Who knows, the sign we miss may say, “danger, road out ahead.”  Oops, over the cliff!

Not only must we stop and look, but we must also listen.  We must listen carefully to words spoken by us and others, because words are clues to coming success or imminent danger.  If we discipline ourselves to stop, look for and listen to, the thousands of clues we receive every day, wisdom and discretion with become our traveling partners and success will meet us at every mile-marker along the way.

Have you ever burned or cut yourself?  Have you ever had a broken bone or undergone surgery?  Do you remember the scab that formed over the wound?  Do you remember how long it took for the bruises and scabs to go away?  Have you ever shared your scars with anyone or had someone ask you how you got certain scars on your body?  Scabs go away but scars often remain.  Scabs form to protect while healing takes place underneath.  Scars serve as reminders, not only of injuries and pain but also of the healing process.  When we find value in our scabs and our scars, we stop nursing old wounds and talking about past hurts in a negative way.  Rather we begin to show our scars as measures of our victories as a soldier would talk about wounds obtained in victorious battles. 

Just like the body has amazing healing powers, our minds, spirits, and emotions also form scabs and scars also.  One of the greatest challenges we face in life is the challenge to see our scabs and scars in all aspects of our lives as opportunities to heal, grow, and win even greater victories as a result of our past successes.  A great deal of discipline is necessary to view pain, injury, and negative circumstances as positive things that make us stronger, wiser, and unstoppable.  Our future success depends on our ability to see our scabs as shields for our defense and our scars as reminders of our victories.  It is not the person or thing that wounded us that is our enemy but our perspective that determines whether our scabs and scars will become our allies or foes.

Have you ever watched a baby learning to walk?  Have you ever seen the joy on a parent’s face when the baby takes his or her first step?  Whether assisted or unassisted, the first step a baby makes is a cause for parents and family to celebrate.  When did we stop celebrating first steps and baby steps?  When the baby takes two or three independent steps and falls, we praise the baby so highly for the steps and ignore the fall because we are so excited to see even the baby steps.  Because we are excited, the baby becomes excited and encouraged to get up and try again. 

Because I speak a lot about discipline I have been asked, “how does one become disciplined?” “Are there steps I can take?”  “Is there a pill I can take?”  Well, I haven’t been asked about the pill, but I am sure that someone has thought, “well they have medicines to help you focus, isn’t focus part of discipline.”  Yes, there are such medicines but when I speak of discipline, I speak of the ability to discipline ourselves. I speak of a training we put ourselves through so that we can become masters of ourselves, and the boss over our bodies, emotions, minds, finances, temperaments, and every part of our lives.

Here are some baby steps you can take if you are serious about becoming more disciplined.

1. Identify an area of your life that you would like to gain control over.
2. Use whatever means you have at your disposal to convince yourself it is possible to manage and master that area.
3. Take the risk of falling and take a step, even if you have to hold on to something, or someone, until you can make independent steps.
4. Find someone who will celebrate your baby steps, encourage you when you fall, and patiently cheer you on until you find yourself running instead of walking.
5. Encourage yourself, become your own cheerleader, laugh at your tumbles, and don’t quit until you have been promoted to supervisor over this area.
6. Select another area of your life to exercise your new supervisory skills, and start with baby steps again.

If you follow these simple steps you will become disciplined for success, you will become your own supervisor, and you will become the boss of you!

Today I made a things-to-do-list.  Whenever I am feeling a little overwhelmed by having so many things to do, I make a list, set a timer to work on each item, and move to the next item until everything on my list has been scratched off.  List making has been effective for me in making packing lists for travel, sermon preparation, preparation for writing, and in organizing at night for the next day.  I realized at some point that if I make a list, I only need to remember while I am making the list.  This seems to free my brain to be used in more creative and productive ways.  Today was a reminder of the power of the discipline of list making.  In fact, this discipline is most effective for me, not only when I am feeling overwhelmed but every day. 

Sometimes my list is composed of things that I do automatically, like making up my bed or brushing my teeth.  This helps to keep me focused and gives me a sense of accomplishment when I scratch them off the list.  I also try to add small increments of long-term goals on my list each day.  It has been said, “if you plan your work and work your plan you will be successful at whatever you set out to do.”  Making lists is a form of planning and scratching things off the list indicates that you are working your plan. 

Discipline is defined as an “activity, exercise, or a regimen that develops or improves a skill; training.”  Making lists may not work for you but if you find a regimen or practice that does, discipline yourself for the successful completion of everything you came to earth to do.  Your mission, your vision, and your plans, whether written or memorized, work them each day and watch your amazing progress and observe how your progress helps others become successful also. 

Have you ever looked out of a window on an airplane 30, 000 feet in the air and watched the trucks and cars on the highways below moving to-and-fro like ants?  Like ants, we have built an amazing network of highways all over the world to connect us to one another in commerce, families, government, entertainment, recreation, and far more.  Not only do we have highways on the ground, but we have highways in the sky with flights in and out of cities all over the earth.

When I wake up each morning, I take flight and soar above my day-to-day activities so that I am not going back and forth with no sense of where I am going and why I am doing what I am doing.  This gives me a chance to remember why I am here and what I hope to accomplish before my time is up on earth.  So, as I think of myself from an aerial point-of-view, as one the ant-like human beings running to-and-fro, I want to make sure that I am as deliberate in my approach to life as the ants.  Maybe, like the ant, our power to discipline ourselves, along with our ability to reason, we can do amazing things with the short time we have left on earth and leave legacies for generations to come.

What would you like to leave for others to remember and benefit from after you have left the planet?  Like the ant, discipline yourself now and leave something of value behind when you are gone.

When you have tried something repeatedly and it isn’t working, it is time to change.  If you have been using a method that is getting results that are less than you desire, it is time to change.  If you have a wish list that has the same items on it today that were on it a year ago, it is time to change.  When your daydreams and your night-dreams find no place to come alive in your life when you are fully awake, it is time to change.  If you have been planning to do something for a long time and have not started yet, it is time to change.

Change is a lot easier than it seems!  It is as simple as using the television remote control. Turn the channel from “same old routine everyday” to “reviving dreams and dusting off old plans.”  Use the mute button to block any voices inside or outside which say, “you’ve tried this before”, “you will never succeed”, or “here we go again.”  Turn up the volume and click ‘replay’ and ‘repeat’ whenever you hear encouraging words, see new ways to step into your dreams and visions, or see possibilities of changing your course to a more positive direction.

If you don’t particularly like where you are, or the state of mind you are in, it is time for a change.  In fact, it is time for you to change, because your situation will not change until you change.  The simple disciplines of listening to and learning a new song, doing something different each day, and deleting old favorite channels and replacing them with new ones will automatically generate a new playlist entitled “Disciplined For Success.”  Change will no longer frighten you and you will quickly recognize when it is time to change, become disciplined for success, and make changes that will change your life.

Sometimes we are too embarrassed to admit that we do not know something.  So, we act as if we know.  Pretending to know what we do not know and pretending to be who we are not prevents us from learning and growing. The person who knows everything or pretends to know cannot learn anything new.  As the saying goes, “inquiring minds want to know.”  Those who are eager to learn are quick to admit what they do not know.  Discipline in the pursuit of knowledge has preceded every advancement we have made as human beings in every field of endeavor. 

If we are going to have great success in whatever we do, we must develop a hunger to learn new things.  If we make the effort to learn something new every day, not only will our knowledge increase but we will ask questions where we use to pretend that we already knew the answers.  Not knowing is never a problem, because an inquiring mind can always learn.  Not being willing to learn is always a problem because a rigidly closed mind is a hindrance to all learning and progress.

When we develop the discipline of inquiry, we become excited about learning new things.  The inquiring mind never stops learning and the learner never stops growing.  Pretense, ignorance, and close-mindedness are never options for those who are disciplined for success.  Let’s learn something new today!

If you are a procrastinator, you do not need to take more time to make decisions.  In fact, you may need to practice making a series of quick decisions each day.  Procrastinators tend to labor over things as simple as which shoes to put on, what to eat, whether to get up or sit down, and many other things for which another person may just do decisively.  On the other hand, if you are a person who tends to make snap decisions and quick judgments, only to regret having moved to fast, then you may need to practice taking three to five minutes to step back and wait before making decisions whenever possible.  Whatever our temperament or tendencies, a balance between our strengths and weaknesses is needed to be most effective, efficient, and disciplined for the success.

Perhaps the best way to determine how to be disciplined for this kind of balance is to do a self-assessment and then ask a friend or loved one who will be honest with you to evaluate your assessment of yourself.  Then with their help, write a personal prescription for yourself for at least three doses a day, for thirty days, and I believe you will see your procrastination turn into progress or your rash decisions yield reasoned and remarkable results.

Write the prescription, take the proper decision-making dosage each day.  As you regularly review and revise your personalized prescription, your discipline will always meet success along the way.  

Can you imagine a phone keypad or computer keyboard without a backspace or delete key?  Can you imagine pencils without erasers?  Can you imagine a world in which there was no way to correct a mistake?  Even our bodies come with erasers that can correct years of poor eating and health habits.  Antibodies in our immune system act as corrective agents helping us erase things that may have mistakenly entered our system.

Fortunately, life allows us to correct many of the mistakes we make and even when we cannot correct a mistake, if we keep living and making good decisions, we can learn from them and build better lives because of them.  So, don’t get trapped in the web of guilt, shame, and addiction that often follows our mistakes and errors.  Each mistake is an opportunity to learn a new way of doing something.

Being disciplined for success in our lives does not mean doing everything right the first time.  It means disciplining ourselves to use our mistakes as learning lessons so that we don’t become stuck in the cycle of repeating the same mistakes over and over again.   

There are over 7.5 billion people living on earth and earth’s population is growing about a percentage point each year.  Astronomers and scientists are making great strides in space travel and are beginning to project a time in the coming years when human beings will be able to live off the earth.  I applaud us for our scientific and technological advances which allow us to explore space, look for life throughout the universe, send probes to the sun, and put satellites in the atmosphere which have remarkably changed the way we live on earth.  My greatest concern for our planet is that I believe we have, and continue to, devalue our most valuable natural resource.  We have found carbon and other elements on the moon and evidence indicates that many elements found on earth can be found throughout our solar system.  However, we have searched and signaled throughout the universe and have not found another natural resource and lifeform to compare to the human being.  Yet, we value metals like, platinum, silver, gold, and diamonds higher than that of human life.  When human beings are devalued to the point that animals, rocks, wood, and metals become more important than the well-being of every human life, then it is easy to understand how human hearts turn to stone and people begin to act like animals. 

I would like to challenge you to look at every one of the 7.5 billion people living on earth as part of a valuable resource that, when given their right value will make all human life more precious than the most precious stones on earth.  With this discipline, I believe we will discover that we no longer need to fight over diamonds, gold, or any other precious stones, because we will know that we are the most precious gems on earth.  This discipline of re-valuation will allow us to appreciate earth and our most valuable resource, the human family, with all our variations of color, hair texture, cultures, languages, smiles, and splendor.  

Perhaps you have heard the cliché, “you win some, you lose some.”  When I look back over my life at what I had determined to be losses, I now see as wins.  Another cliché says, “hindsight is 20/20 vision, but when I see my losses as wins, my hindsight gives me a winning way to look at the present and the future.  Through my former lens, I saw losses and wins, but through my new lens I can only see wins.  When I think of losing my mind, going through divorce twice, struggling to raise and guide my son, being overwhelmed by debt, being shamed and ashamed, losing family members to death, losing a job, and the list goes on, I can honestly say that in each of those instances I see wins and not losses. 

Some things can only be seen by a trained or disciplined eye.  Soldiers trained to see camouflage, crime scene investigators looking for clues, pathologists looking for cancer, birds looking for worms, all have eyes trained to see what other eyes cannot see.  When we discipline ourselves to see victories in what we thought were losses, we can only win. 

Imagine that, no more win/lose scenarios.  The eye disciplined in this way now begins to see possibilities in perils and triumphs in tragedies.  Now I can see that in losing what I thought was my right mind, I discovered the mind I never knew I had.  Take another look at the landscape of your life, you may discover some hidden strengths and treasures with a new pair of glasses.

“Close that door”, my Mom and Dad would say, followed by “We are not trying to heat up the outside”, if we held the door open to long in the cold month of the year.  My father would then explain, “every time the cold air comes into the house it lowers the temperature of the house, causing the thermostat to kick on and start the furnace to warm the house again.  Each time the furnace starts it causes the gas meter to go faster, costing us more to heat the house.”  I can remember as a child helping my father caulk all the windows in the house to make sure that air was not seeping in from undiscovered places.  He would say, “place your hand under the window seal, see how much air is coming through that small opening.”  Months later showed us the gas bills indicating a significant reduction in the expense.  Years later, they replaced the windows in the house with the thermo-sealed windows which kept the house even warmer and reduced the expense even more.

Well, if you have been reading my blogs up to this point, you can probably already see that some analogy to life is about to follow.  Indeed, you are correct!  Sometimes you can be fired-up with a dream or a vision and a long as you keep them in a warm place, your momentum grows.  But sometimes in our excitement we stand in the doorway too long and the cold air then cools the dream.  Or others, peering through your windows, begin to blow cold air through every crack they can find.  Before long, the dream becomes to burdensome and emotionally expensive to carry.  You pack the dream away, hoping to take it out in warmer months, but the warmer months come with their own labor, and cold dreams can be packed away forever. 

We must discipline ourselves to close the doors and seal the windows to keep the warmth in and the cold out when fire is needed to fuel our dreams.  Doorways are passages, not meant for standing.  We must seal the holes, so the cold doesn’t seep in so fast in the winter, and the cool air doesn’t seep out so fast in the summer. 

Hannibal on the former television show, The A-Team, used to say, “I love it when a plan comes together.”  There is something amazing about watching disjointed parts of any schema coming together like the pieces of a puzzle.  In a dotted sketch, it is the connecting of the dots that completes the profile.  Vision creates the dots, discipline connects them.  The greater the vision, the more dots there will be to connect.  The more dots there are, the greater the discipline needed to connect them.  Just as separately the pieces of a puzzle make no sense until they begin to connect, the dots are only dots until they are connected by lines.  Then the picture develops. 

In similar fashion, our experiences, thoughts, dreams, etc., are only disconnected pieces and specs until they are connected.  We must connect them in order to see ourselves clearly.  Discipline can help us bring order out the chaos so that we can focus on developing a clear and consistent picture of the beauty and power to be revealed as the dots are connected and the pieces come together. 

Even we do not know what we can become, or what awaits us behind disjointed pieces and unconnected dots.  Let us discipline ourselves with such a consistent pattern of behavior that we are always connecting the dots and connecting the separated pieces in our lives. Watch the picture of ‘you’ develop! Success is in inevitable when discipline is in play.