Are you struggling to change bad habits into good ones?  Do you tend to wait until the last minute to do important tasks or projects? I am learning to overcome the habit of procrastinating by implementing another tool of discipline that I am confident will help me become more successful in whatever I do.  I call it the discipline of little-by-little.  In looking for the areas I need more discipline in my life, I realized that I have tended to wait until the last minute to do important projects.  While in college and grad school, I tended to wait until the last two or three day to begin writing when long papers were due.  I always admired people who turned in their papers early or methodically planned their work. 

When I employ the discipline of little-by-little, I tend bring better quality to my work, because now the goal is not just to finish but to take my time and do things well.   By establishing realistic time goals with extra time allotted to address errors, re-dos, and edits, I can carefully put one brick in place at a time.  This discipline of little-by-little makes it possible to focus on the details without rushing to the conclusion.  Just as in reading, by reading one page at a time, the book is completed in the time that it takes.  In the end, success is achieved. 

You have been beating yourself up long enough.  It is time to take off the gloves.  Are there voices in your head that continually criticize you?  How many times in an hour do you remind yourself of something you should or could have done?  It is time to let yourself off the hook.  Relax, some of those voices are not even yours.  You can go on a vacation, you can take a business trip, but please, whatever you do, avoid the guilt trip. 

Unfortunately, people who are on a guilt trip tend to give out free tickets to others also.  Yes, there are things I could or should have done, many I should not have done, and many that I would have done should circumstances have been different.  However, when I think about the time I spend thinking about those things, another hour or another day has passed. 

 I think I will turn in my boxing gloves, get out of the ring, shred my guilt-trip tickets, tune out some voices in my head, and make the very best of this day.  In fact, I think those are pretty good exercises in discipline for today.  Now I can be disciplined for success without the guilt or shame of failure. 

I tried and failed. I tried again and failed, and failed, and failed, …I tried and succeeded.  Thomas Edison said that he made three thousand attempts to create the electric light bulb and failed in all but two attempts.  There is an adage which says, “Nothing beats a failure but a try.”  Failure would have been the result in the scenarios above if either party had stopped at failure.  Victory is won when the mind is disciplined to never give up after a failure.  Victory is won when the will is disciplined to try again after each failed attempt.  Failure or success is only determined when effort has ended.  If you fail, try again.  If you succeed, begin something new and work until you succeed.

 In each attempt, something must change in order to eliminate what does not work.  Thomas Edison logged his attempts so that he would not keep doing the same experiment, the same way, repeatedly.  Taking careful note of what works and what does not work for us, in whatever we attempt in life requires discipline.  Otherwise, we are destined to keep making the same mistakes indefinitely.  Being disciplined for success is not just about our ‘will’ and our ‘effort’, it is about wise effort and relentless will.  With this kind of discipline, successful steps are then achieved in every effort, no matter how far we are from our desired goal.  Who knows? Great success could be achieved in your next attempt.  Try again!

 http://disciplinedforsuccess.com/blog/the-fear-factor

 http://disciplinedforsuccess.com/blog/failure-is-not-an-option

 http://disciplinedforsuccess.com/blog/the-big-picture

Do you ever find yourself being discouraged by the negativity and hatred that is in the world?  Do you ever find yourself overwhelmed with your own problems, hoping against hope that something would change?  Have you ever played the lottery or taken foolish risks hoping that something would miraculously occur to relieve some of the stress in your life? 

I have watched people die and have stood over the caskets of many deceased.  Things that stressed them out most of their lives lose their importance as they are dying.  Sometimes even the peace that you see on the face of the dying or deceased suggests relief from stress and struggle.  There was a time in my life that the stresses of living overwhelmed me to the point that death would have been a welcomed friend.  I discovered that it wasn’t death that I was afraid of, but it was the fear of failure and not being in control that was the problem.  

The desire to regain control of my life helped me to see that the real freedom came in giving up the need to control.  I had to learn the discipline of downsizing.  Under stress one day, I asked myself, “if I die today, how much will all these things matter?”  Sometimes we spend so much time trying to control situations, circumstances, and people that we fail to realize that the greatest control we can have is over ourselves. 

When I decided to accept death and befriend life, I had to fire my former bosses of stress, worry, and fear.  As I become more disciplined for success, I choose to live with a new management team.

Thoughts are like seeds, they grow roots.  Thoughts are also like weeds which seem to spring up out of nowhere.  Just as some trees and plants have extensive roots systems, our thoughts are part of an elaborate root system which was long before we or our parents or their parents were born.  The key to a healthy thought life is regular pruning, watering, and feeding.  Thoughts rooted in fear, anger, hate, or the like, must be continually pruned.  If we keep our minds open to learn our thoughts will always be watered with creative juices.  If we feed our minds through reading and questioning, we will always be fed with knowledge and new ideas.

A disciplined thought life must also tend to the weeds that tend to infest our thinking.  Choosing what to think about leaves less room and time for the weeds to take over.  We must also recognize poisonous, hateful, and fearful thoughts that tend to stunt our growth and choke out our excitement for life and learning.  Disciplining our thoughts is a powerful key that unlocks success in almost every area of our lives.

Let’s plant new seeds, water the roots, pull the weeds, and watch our thoughts redesign our lives and our future.

In every walk of life and in every corner of the world knowledge is communicated through language.  There are languages of math, science, music, and culture.  There are languages of faith and religion as well as politics and economics.  There are also languages of nations, communities, households, and relationships.  Within languages there are dialects or words and expressions that are peculiar to a smaller number of people.  I believe that every heart has its own language and peculiar dialect which must be interpreted to others for communication and understanding to occur. 

Whenever we meet people, we tend to exchange experiences in order to establish a common language of communication.  Although we may have common cultural experiences, each of us have unique dialects or patterns of communicating which are as distinctive as our fingerprints.  Just as we would look for ways to understand and communicate in a foreign country with someone who speaks another language, we must discipline ourselves to understand and communicate with those whose experiences are foreign to ours.  As we tell our stories, and listen to the stories of others, we become better communicators and interpreters of a vast range of human experience, making it possible to bridge the divisions which threaten to destroy our world. 

We need more interpreters!  We need more people who can translate their own experiences into a language that can be understood by those whose experiences are foreign to their own.  We need interpreters who are willing to listen to, understand, and translate the experiences of those who speak different cultural, emotional, spiritual, and experiential dialects so that we can establish communication and avoid sudden destruction.

Perhaps like a seasoned couple that has been married for many years is able to finish each other’s sentences, read each other’s body language, and read each other’s thoughts, perhaps we can become skilled interpreters so that we, like them, no longer need to wound each other anymore.

In the song, Theme from Mahogany, Diane Ross asks the questions, “Do you know where you’re going to?” and Do you know what you’re hoping for?  “Do you know?  The song invokes images from the movie in which the dreams of youth had slipped away with no open doors to return to the past and fulfill them. 

Where are we trying to go in life?  Have we been there before?  If yes, why are we trying to go backwards in time?  A living dream has a present and potential future, and as far as I know, we have never lived this day before.  Whenever I find myself reminiscing too much or mourning former dreams, I discipline myself to come back to the present so that I can envision a future that allows me to see and enjoy what I have never seen or experienced.  I discovered from my past mistakes that if I keep looking at the future through the sunglasses of my past, I will only see what I have always seen and repeat the mistakes that I have made before. http://disciplinedforsuccess.com/blog/a-new-pair-of-glasses

So, I am realizing that if I am going to be disciplined for success, I need to establish the daily and lifetime mission of exploring new possibilities (http://disciplinedforsuccess.com/blog/consider-the-possibilities), dreaming new dreams http://disciplinedforsuccess.com/blog/dreams-visions, and ‘boldly going where I have never gone before.’  

Today I would like to thank every person who has served in the military for your service.  Some volunteered, some were drafted but our nation and our world has survived because of those who served in all ranks and branches of the military.  Some fought in wars they were opposed to, and under leadership whose views were not their own.  Yet military discipline sacrifices individual opinions for the effectiveness of the military and the good of the nation.

My father and four of his brothers served in the military.  My mother had six brothers who served in the military.  I have two nephews, countless cousins, and close friends who served in the military.  Their sense of mission and commitment to duty are admirable traits that I believe have helped to strengthen this nation.

My father and some of my uncles served in the military when all branches of the military were racially segregated.  I listened to many of my father’s stories about his experiences in Fort Benning, Georgia and the hatred he experienced on and off base.  I wondered how they endured and continued to serve their nation with dedication and commitment.  As I listened to his stories, I realized that there was something powerful about the discipline, order, and chain of command which protected them. 

Whatever your views may be politically, there are privileges and freedoms we all experience because of the dedicated service of the men and women in our military services.  Thank you for your service! 

Have you ever run from something only to find out later that that was the place you were supposed to be?  Have you ever looked and looked for something only to discover that it was right under your nose?  “If it had been a snake, it would have bit you,” Mom would say.  Stop for a moment and think, is there something sitting in plain view that you failed to see?  A diamond in the rough will look like an ordinary stone, but polished and cut it becomes a valuable and precious gem. 

Sometimes there are people near us who have, or are, the answer to our problems, but because the grass looks greener on the other side, we often fail to see the obvious. Let’s not wait until the snake bites us to realize what we have available to us.  Let’s not allow our complaints, our shortcomings, and our problems to blind us to the amazing treasure within us and those around us.  Even little children can teach us if we are willing to listen to them.  What treasure is hiding from you, or in you, just waiting to be seen and used? 

The problem may not be with the snake that would have bitten you, that you didn’t see, it may be with the one you saw that bit you and didn’t realize it was a snake.  As we discipline ourselves for success, we may discover like the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion in the Wizard of Oz, that what we have been searching for may already be within us.  Like Dorothy, we may discover that Kansas is not as far away as we thought.

What’s that?  Are those clicking heels that I hear?  

Every now and then we need a break from the routine.  Every now and then we need to rest.  Everything in nature is designed to take a break and rest.  Our bodies are designed to rest and sleep and when we fail to do so our bodies fail to function as they should.  Day and night and the changing of the seasons are designed to give the earth and its inhabitants rest.  Ancient agrarians learned that even the soil needed to take a break sometimes in order to be more productive, so they rotated their crops or stopped growing in a plot of land in order to revitalize the soil.  Employers learned that two fifteen-minute breaks and an hour for lunch make their employees more productive in an eight-hour workday.

Just as it takes discipline to work, it takes discipline to rest and take a break.  It takes discipline to do something different.  Take a nap from time to time.  Take a different route home.  Show up early for an appointment and relax.  Send a loved-one flowers.  Plan a debt-free vacation.  Sit still and do nothing for twenty minutes and give your mind a break from thinking and worrying.  Take time to read something interesting or entertaining.  Turn off the television and let it rest.  Even God took a break at the end of each day and rested at the end of a productive week.

If you have been on a long break, take a break from laziness and get up and do something.  Laziness needs a break in order to function properly also.  A mindset of success must have the discipline of doing and not doing, accompanied by the discipline of knowing when, where, and how they function.  Get up or sit down but take a break from the routine.

How we feel about doing something may determine the quality of work you put into it. How we feel may determine the value we place on a person, place, or thing.  Often you can tell how a person feels about themselves by the way they take care of and treat themselves.  Depression can rob a person of their self-worth and cause them to neglect their hygiene and grooming.  In fact, I would suggest that you can determine how someone feels about almost anything by observing the value they place, or fail to place, upon it at any given time. 

Some of us have been told to abandon our feelings so much that we don’t realize that everything we have substituted for our feelings also involve feelings.  Just because something has been numbed, doesn’t mean that it is not there.  Our feelings may not always be logical, and they can work for or against us.  I have seen intelligent and capable people hinder their progress and success because they were unable to understand or discipline their feelings. 

Discipline is the key to success!  Those with explosive tempers will be ruled by their anger if they fail to rule themselves.  Those who ‘feel’ that no one cares about them will be ruled by the drive to find love unless they can find a way to heal the emotional wounds of hurt and abandonment.  Emotional discipline is not beating yourself into submission with a whip and chains to control your feelings.  On the contrary, emotional discipline can be having the courage to remove the chains and stop beating yourself up.  I often thought of discipline as something that involved harshness but there is a degree of success that can only be achieved by kindness.  Your feelings are important and essential to your success.  Don’t dismiss them!  Manage them or they will manage you!

She was confident that she was faster than the other runners on the starting line.  As the starting gun fired, she thrusted forward from the starting block with great energy and speed.  Three quarters of the way through the race she had a notable lead and began to revel in the thought of her victory.  Her overconfidence and premature gloating caused her to slow her cadence and just as she approached the finish line two runners darted pass her leaving her with a third-place finish. 

Ideally you want to start strong, stay strong, and finish strong.  However, a weak start does not prevent you from having a strong race.  You may have a mid-race spirt and make up for lost time.  You may have a strong start and a mid-race stumble or lull, but the race may be determined in how strong you finish.  Like the runners who took the lead at the finish line, if you discipline yourself to always finish strong, you may be surprised at the outcome.

To be disciplined for success, we must give consistent effort to always finish strong.  The more determined we are to finish strong, the more likely we are to develop a habit of starting strong.  When we develop the discipline of starting and finishing strong, the easier it becomes to stay strong.  If we practice this discipline every day, and in every task, our ongoing success will astound us and those who may be watching from the stands.  Start strong!  Be strong!  Finish strong! Stay strong!

Have you ever watched children use their imagination while playing?  As they grow older, they are often told to stop daydreaming, focus, and take their head out of the clouds. Even as adults we are often told to stop dreaming and come back to the real world.  Ironically, in the real world, the leaders in cutting edge technology, scientific development, research and marketing, and many more fields are asking their associates to dream and imagine more.  In fact, it is the dreamers, daydreamers, and those who are not afraid to go into the ‘enchanted forest’ who have driven progress for us throughout the years.  The Wright brothers were thought to be crazy until they combined the imaginary worlds of many before them and became the first to have sustained and controllable flight.  Their unwillingness to give up their imagination has resulted in roughly ten thousand airplanes being the air, worldwide, on any given day and time.  

Whether you are 30, 60, or 90 years old, you’ve probably had some dreams you lost along the way.  Some may be lost forever, some are still doable, and some may have turned into nightmares.  Just as we sometimes wake up and cannot remember our dreams, many of the dreams and aspirations we once had are now only faded memories.  Before you despair over lost dreams, let me remind you the most amazing thing about us is not our dreams but the fact that we can dream new dreams at any age. Perhaps God give us sleep each night so we can dream and see possibilities and awakens us each morning to have another opportunity to turn dreams into possibilities, and possibilities into realities.

In order to be disciplined for success, we may need to develop a disciplined imagination which allows us time to keep back and daydream.  All reality started with an image, and our imagination has endless possibilities.

When you cannot be intimidated, and you refuse to intimidate anyone else you are free.  This is difficult to achieve in a world where bullying and intimidation seem to be the rule of the day.  If you watch and listen to the interactions you see daily between spouses, friends, parents and children, supervisors and those under their supervision, teachers and students, and almost any other interactional relationship you can imagine, I believe you will most likely see evidence of bullying and intimidation.  I define bullying as any attempt to control, dominate, or manipulate another person.  The most common way I see this is done is through invoking fear and controlling through intimidation.  Some parents threaten their children in an attempt get them to obey using fear tactics.  Often bosses and supervisors will make subtle, and not so subtle references to those under their supervision to remind them that they have power over them and their financial well-being.  Even some nations use the threat of force and political and economic arm twisting to wield power over other nations.  Some religious leaders use religious doctrine as a tool of control and manipulation, as if to imply that God is a bully. 

As we manage our own lives and discipline ourselves for success, we acquire freedom from the manipulation of others and we free others from any control or domination that we may be tempted to have over them.  If parents have modeled self-control and trained their children to make decisions for themselves, the process of relinquishing the controls so that they can become independent adults becomes easier.  Unfortunately, many parents continue to control and manipulate their children even when their children have grandchildren of their own.  Even more unfortunate is the fact that bullying, manipulation, and control are becoming more prevalent in our world.  We can become the heroes who reverse this dangerous trend by refusing to be bullied by these ghosts of fear, manipulation, and control.  When we become the boss of ourselves, we will set others free from our controlling behavior and encourage them to become ghostbusters and bosses.  Self-government is the most powerful and effective form of government!

Just as a playwright or novelist develops a character in a play or novel, each day our character is being developed on the stage of our lives.  While most of us live predictable lives, we have the power to change the script, setting, and plot at any time.  Why then do we, settle for the same routine day after day, even if the routine is a deadly one?  Why is it so difficult to change?  Routine is safe and comfortable, and we give ourselves a thousand excuses and reasons for not trying something new.  Success is measured by progress towards a goal and the only way to measure our progress is to have a goal which can be measured. 

While discipline involves establishing routines, it also involves breaking them in order to establish new ones.  Discipline also involves constantly looking for ways to make good better, and better best.  Life can never be routine or boring when we are excited about making progress and embracing the change which comes with progress.  In this sense, discipline also makes us like flexible steel, strong enough to bear the weight but resilient enough to adapt to change.

If you want to be disciplined for success with the ability to grow and change then one of the most powerful determiners of our character development will be our speech.  If we speak negative words, we will more than likely produce negative results.  We can write a new script for ourselves each day.  Write the story of your life the way you want it to develop and if you need cue cards to remember your lines post them somewhere you can see them whenever you forget your lines.  As the disciplined playwright, you determine your success.

Today was my last day on earth, I died today.  It really doesn’t matter how I died.  I will never see another sunrise or sunset with the eyes which served me well for so many years, even though my sight had weakened over the years.  Amazingly, the things that were so important to me no longer matter at all and anything I did not finish will either be left undone or be done by someone else.  Some will mourn my passing, some will be angry and hurt, and some will cry at the news of my death, but I will not return to the body I have known and been acquainted with for so long.  My nationality, economic status, race, social status, or educational level no longer make a difference.  Like my mother, father, brother, grandparents, other relatives, and friends who died before me, I left family and friends behind for business to go on as it always has before we were born.

I must have been dreaming or having a divine encounter, because suddenly, I realized that I am still alive.  I did not die! Whether I rise to see the clouds or a sunshiny day, I may see tomorrow.  However, what seemed to be so urgent and important to me before I died, no longer holds the same level of importance for me.  Whether I was dreaming or receiving a divine wake-up-call, it was good for me to die today.  I just had a moment of gratitude and appreciation for many things I failed to appreciate while I was living.  I was too busy living to live and enjoy life. I was too busy worrying about things, situations, and problems to be genuinely concerned about people.

The good news is that today I am alive, and today I can begin to discipline myself to have a different outcome when the real day of my death comes.  With a new lease on life, I come back to the planning room to move some things up on the list, some things down on the list, and some things off the list.  It is going to take discipline, but I can already envision success.  It was a good day to die and find out that I may have many more days to live.

If you spend every penny you earn, you will be broke.  If you spend more than you earn, you will always be in debt.  Zero sits in the middle of the number line.  The numbers to the left of zero are negative numbers and the numbers to the right of zero are positive numbers.  You can move to the left or the right depending on which direction you discipline yourself to travel.  If you travel left, you have chosen the route of debt, and ultimately debt can lead to death.  If you travel to the right, you have chosen the route of freedom from debt.  I have been broke before and I am currently working my way out of debt.  I have eliminated debt before but I have discovered that until I view the number line differently, and until I can move from simple addition and subtraction, and begin to multiply with the use of exponentials, I will always live somewhere in the vicinity of the zero. 

When I seventeen years old I wanted my dad to co-sign for me to get a car, but he said that he didn’t co-sign for anyone.  He told me to put money into a savings account and when I reached a reasonable amount, I could purchase a car with my own signature.  Well, I was upset, and I gave an older friend $500 to buy a used 1967 Pontiac Tempest for me and have it transferred into my name.  It was a fast, pretty, red car and it was mine.  Speeding tickets, traffic violations, and an accident caused the life of the car and my driving privileges to be short lived.  Then, under the constraint of having a suspended drivers license, I saved my money as my father suggested.  To my surprise, at the age of nineteen I bought my first brand new car, a 1974 American Motors Gremlin for $3,300.  Although I did not tell him that I used his advice until after the purchase, I saved until I had enough cash to purchase the car, went to the car dealer, signed a contract to buy the car, and drove off the lot with my new car the same day.  I did not use the money I had in my savings but took out a loan for the car.  Following the advice of my father, my money in savings continued earning more interest than I was paying in interest on the loan.  Using the same strategy, I paid my way through undergraduate school, borrowing money from the credit union each quarter, calculating to make sure that my interest earned was more than the interest I paid. 

If I had continued to use the wisdom of my father, making sure that I was not only working for my money but that my money was also working for me, I probably would be a very wealthy person today.  As I stated earlier, I have been penniless before, but I have learned that it was not because I lacked knowledge but because I lacked discipline.  If we are going to be disciplined for success and help others to achieve success also, we must do the math and consistently apply the knowledge.  The further we move to the right of zero on the number line, the freer we can live, and the more we will have to give.

In the 1960s television show, “Lost in Space”, a young Will Robinson was often accompanied by a robot whose most memorable lines from the show were “Danger Will Robinson” and “that does not compute.”  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a robot to warn you of immanent danger or let you know when an idea you have doesn’t make sense?  Roads have signs that tell us to slow down when a dangerous curve is ahead.  Deadly liquids have warning labels on them to keep us from accidently killing ourselves or others.  Everywhere there are signs to help us live safer and healthier lives.  The question is, “how well do we heed the signs?”

Just think, what if your robot had said, “that does not compute” before you went into unnecessary debt which sent you into financial slavery.  What if your robot had cried out, “danger, danger” before you entered that last dysfunctional relationship?  What if your robot had been able to show you the consequences of those words spoken, or things done, which hurt someone you loved?  I suggest that we are amazingly more intelligent than our artificial intelligence.  So perhaps the voice from within has been trying to warn us all along.  Perhaps we have relied on our artificial intelligence for so long that we are losing our ability to use our natural senses and intelligence. 

Do you hear that voice within saying that it is time to discipline ourselves for success, heighten our senses, and give our robots a little time off?  

How do you define Success?  Is success measured by happiness, contentment, or money?  Do you get greater satisfaction from helping others or from gaining wealth?  Would you measure your success by the fulfillment of your life’s dreams and goals?  While there is nothing to say that you cannot, or should not, measure success by any or all the above, your measure of success will be determined by what you value and the prioritization and accomplishment of the things you value most.  What I may define as success may differ from what you may determine as success.  Therefore, it is important for us to identify our own measures of success.  Unfortunately, many of us live significant portions of our lives pursuing dreams and goals that are not our own.  Hence, we can appear to be successful in the eyes of many people but a failure in our own hearts.

Perhaps the greatest challenge, and the thing that requires the most discipline, is getting the dreams and goals of society and other people out of our heads and hearts and finding out what our hearts alone would measure as success.  It is so much easier to pursue something that you want than what you think you should want, or what others say you should want.  If we are going to discipline ourselves to be successful, we must identify two focal points, where we are now, and where we will be when we have reached the destination that we call success.

The beautiful thing about ‘destination success’ is that we can reach it every day.  If we start each day being true to our mission, each day will have ‘success destinations’ to celebrate periodically throughout our day.  When success is a daily rest stop on the road of life, we never have to worry about being disciplined for success because it has been woven into the routines and rituals of our journey.

Today I have been thinking about the difference between motivation and inspiration.  When I think of being motivated to do something, I think of having a reason to do something that is strong enough to move me to action.  On the other hand, when I think of being inspired, I think of something I enjoy and look forward to doing, with or without a driving reason.  So, reasons motivate me, and feelings inspire me.  Wouldn’t it be great if we felt inspired to do everything we have to do?  When I think of being disciplined for success, I ask how can I motivate myself through the things that inspire me?  Or how can I receive inspiration as a result of being motivated?

When I am not inspired, I must motivate myself to the do things which need to get done.  I must give myself reasons to act, or I must draw inspiration from others, my dreams and visions, or something that generally inspires me.  I guess my success will depend on whether motivation and inspiration can form a bonded relationship in my life so that they always find ways to work together.  If I am not feeling particularly motivated, inspiration will help me feel like finding a reason to get moving.  When I am not feeling particularly inspired, by motivating myself to put one foot in front of the other to accomplish a goal, I find myself being inspired by my own determination and progress. 

Whether I am moved by ‘disciplined motivation’ or ‘inspired discipline’, it seems to me that success in the product of discipline.  How do you define motivation and inspiration?  Please share your thoughts!