To most of us, the concept of “discipline” conjures up all kinds of negative emotions including mental images of a ball and chain and de-motivating thoughts of boredom and repetitive, mundane tasks.
It is human nature for us to long for the freedom to do what we want, when we want to do it. However, there is a great correlation that exists between freedom and discipline.
What if I told you that freedom would not exist without discipline? Freedom is having a goal or dream coupled with the ability (discipline) to transform it into reality.
The good news is, discipline is only required when we are uninspired by our actions.When faced with a long list of uninspiring tasks, we can do one of two things:
- Despite starting out with great intentions, we slowly begin to justify why we shouldn’t continue and eventually give up because the tasks were too hard, too boring or too something; or
- We change the way we think about the tasks and become internally motivated to perform them. We act despite our feelings (rather than on our feelings as in #1) and perform the necessary tasks even when we don’t want to because we are inspired by the FREEDOM the actions will create for us.
Inspired actions require very little if any, discipline. Stay focused on the freedom your actions will create and ditch discipline!
Until next time, make it count.
Richard Robbins