A.B.S. #4 Monday Motivation #2: Discipline
I wasn't always the most disciplines person in the world. Growing up in Tracy, CA with my mom and sister, sometimes with my dad or grandparents, I did a lot of stupid stuff and was listening to rap and not hanging out with the best of people. I was eating fast food every night it felt like and was not disciplined at all it seemed.
When I was 13, on my birthday, my grandparents picked me up from school to go live with them, I had no idea about these
arrangements. I went through middle school fairly undisciplined but made new friends, changed my environment, got heavily in to baseball and video games.
At the age of 15 I started working out to eventually lose 40 or so pounds to go down from 225 to 185 from ages 13-17 until I went to bootcamp with the marines, dropping down to 165 at one point. This work out regiment I put myself on was the introduction to real disciple. It was the first time I had to commit to doing something for myself for the greater good of my life.
Going through the Marine Corps Boot Camp will put a little bit of discipline in anyone who goes through the experience. Being the youngest of 98 or so guys, I had to learn discipline a lot younger then most. Discipline is waking up before the sunrise, working out, and eating food before most normal people are even up yet. Discipline is doing the things you know you have to do to get what it is you want even though you have to fight resistance every step of the way. The harder it is to fight resistance, the closer to your true calling that action is.
As I got older, discipline kept alive in my life in the form of exercise, sports, and competition. I always used to pride myself on being fairly in shape even though some periods of time I'm not as in shape as I would like to. This all comes down to discipline. No one wants to run on a mildly cold cloudy day, discipline is doing it anyways. It's doing the hard but necessary things.
Discipline is something that is completely necessary for leadership performances. It is a major leadership trait within people and has to be practices, just as muscles need to be used or they fade. You can practice discipline by giving yourself a mildy/really hard goal and taking the first steps to achieve that goal.
Maybe you want to lose 30 pounds in 3 months, as I recently did one year ago. Discipline is not eating when you're mildly hungry and if you do, it's healthy food. Discipline is exercising, running, yoga, AND meditation within 3 hours every 2 days while working to pay bills. Eat less food! Our bodies don't REALLY need that much food. 1, maybe 2 decent meals full of veggies and fruits and mild carbs will suffice. Fighting the urge to eat is sooooo hard, even for me, and if you can beat your own mind for 2 weeks, it can become a habbit, then you'll start to see tremendous results.
Discipline is when you're about to make love to a sexy chick and you're both super in to it but she decide's she doesn't want anymore, discipline is calming down and getting back to normal breath.
It is something you can continue to work on and eventually, WITH PRACTICE (along with everything else in life), you will be able to walk right by that McDonalds on the way home from work even though you haven't ate anything all day. Train your mind and your body will follow.
Thank you for reading! If you have any good discipline stories please share in the comments below! It takes discipline to write this blog post! Let's hear how you displayed discipline today in the comments!
Cheers,
Ty Stevenson
arrangem