The Key to Gaining Discipline

Discipline; this word can mean two entirely different things depending on your perspective and your experience around it. For those who struggle to find discipline, it can be viewed upon negatively. For those who have found their discipline it is a treasured word. One that is rooted in success and one that has allowed them to accomplish their dreams or at least working towards them. Jim Rohn once said, “Now here is the key to discipline; start with the little disciplines, get excited over the little disciplines and get right on those because those will lead to the big ones. You can’t handle the big challenges in life unless you take on the little ones.” I love this quote by Jim Rohn because you have to be able to handle the small disciplines or you will never be able to handle the bigger disciplines that life will throw your way. Mastering these small disciplines is what allows you to handle the stress and big decisions that come with tackling something bigger than yourself whether that be in business or any other area in life. The key is to make discipline your best friend. It is the thing that will help to keep you on track of your goals on the days you don’t feel like it. For me I have found that those days that I don’t feel like doing whatever thing that I know I should do outnumber the days that I feel motivated. After listening to many successful business owners and athletes, I have found that they too struggle with motivation, but their discipline is what keeps them in the game. You don’t know how much missing a workout or missing out on an opportunity will set you back. The key to losing weight and keeping it off is focusing on these small disciplines that will help you to show up even when you don’t feel like it. It’s the simple things such as going to bed on time, getting some sort of movement in (even if it is just ten minutes), and focusing on eating whole foods. Most people don’t realized how big of an impact even a ten-minute workout can make. It is helping you to establish that daily practice of getting movement in. Surely, everybody has ten minutes to devote to improving themselves. It’s changing your mindset around health and fitness. It is breaking it into many small disciplines and getting those established and before you know it you will be getting closer and closer to reaching your goals. It’s treating nutrition and exercise as a gift and not a curse. It’s also setting realistic goals. You didn’t wake up one day fifty pounds overweight. You put that on by continuously making incorrect decisions day in and day out that eventually got you into the position that you are in. It isn’t your fault. Our dietary recommendations have been incorrect for many decades. The result has been disastrous for our country. We are an overcarbed, overprocessed, and nutrient deficient population. The good news is this is all easily fixable and once you understand how to retrain your body to function as it was designed to, you will be able to shed the weight and regain vitality. In my case I was able to reverse chronic health conditions that I was told was impossible to reverse. I learned to start listening to my body again and realized that it was sending me cues all along. We are taught to ignore those symptoms until one day that slight headache is now a full-blown chronic disease. Our symptoms can be caused by the food we eat, the products we use, and our environment. The hardest part can be determining what is causing the problem and often times it is multi factorial. Everyone’s journey is different and we all have different conditions that we are genetically at risk for. We used to think that genetics was the end all be all for what disease we were destined for. While genetics does play a factor it is ultimately the environment and our lifestyle that determines whether a gene is turned on or off. It is managing inflammation, fueling ourselves with good nutrition from whole foods, and doing some sort of exercise to keep our bodies in good condition. You will find the simple daily habits that work for you. What is one simple habit that you can start today?