When you imagine the word discipline, I wouldn’t be surprised if you imagine a monk in an orange robe meditating within a temple. If you do imagine that, you’re not exactly wrong, that is a form of discipline. There is more to it, however, and in this post, that’s what we’ll be talking about. What discipline is, why it’s important, and how to be more disciplined.
Discipline is something people normally attach to things like meditation or being able to sustain physical pain like an ice bath for an extended period of time. This does have to do with discipline, however, there is more to it. Discipline is the mastery of self-control. Being able to control your mind and clear your thoughts for meditation; being able to control your body to last in an ice bath for a long time. Discipline is having complete control over your mind and body, it is the extreme version of ‘mind over matter.’ When you choose what you think, when you choose how you feel, when you choose what you do. That is discipline.
Discipline, now more than ever, is extremely important. Although it may seem that it’s some hippy method of living life, I can say, after studying the lives of many successful people, that discipline is a core factor in success. Whatever you want to do in life, there is an amount of discipline required. If you want to succeed in academics, you have to study, you have to finish your work on time, you have to say no to parties and going out sometimes, that takes discipline. If you want to create a successful business, you need to be ready to work every single day for sixteen hours. There will be no weekends, there will be times where you can’t afford everything, and going through all of that, sticking with it, that requires discipline. Next to that, discipline will directly make you happier. Let’s go back to meditation, meditation is something that many people in the top one percent do: Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Mike Posner. With reason, meditation has been proven to grow the right prefrontal cortex. What this does is increase the brain's capacity and ability to feel happiness. Discipline will also let you do more in your life: you can control your mood, you can control how you feel in the cold, you can control what you’re thinking, you can control your fears, you can control yourself.
While it may seem that in order to achieve high discipline you have to move to a temple and start meditating for eight hours a day, that’s one way to do it, for sure. However, there are other ways in which you can achieve discipline: meditate. Meditation is a great way to increase discipline, sitting everyday for just five minutes and meditating whether it be mindfulness, transcendental, or love and kindness, the method of meditation makes you relax your body, allowing you to understand your body, it makes you have control over your thoughts, allowing you to understand your mind, and it leaves you feeling a beautiful sense of serenity, allowing you to understand your soul. Another way is simpler: take a cold shower sometimes. Simply taking a cold shower, and preventing yourself from hyperventilating, and getting used to it will help you control your body, help you understand that you can adapt and evolve, that you can conform to the most drastic of situations. Other than that, do simple things in your life: form positive habits and stick with them, tell yourself you’re going to do things and do them, even when you don’t want to (reading, going to the gym, working a little bit on a project you want to do, whatever it may be). Lastly, simply try to control yourself, again, meditation helps, however, you can come to control your actions, emotions, and reactions if you focus on yourself and keep in mind that you want to be more disciplined. That you want to have more control over yourself.
That’s all for this week, I hope that it was satiating, and you now know the definition of discipline, absolute self control; you understand the importance of discipline and how it affects your success and happiness in life, and that you have a beginning understanding of how to attain this discipline. Discipline is a beautiful thing, and while it’s no easy feat to achieve, once found and mastered, it will be a great positive influence in your life that you will 100% believe was worth the time and effort, I trust all of you to become disciplined and wish you luck on it (and hope you wish me the same luck, as I’m still a student too). I hope you have a beautiful week, I’ll see you the next, peace.
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