We are rushing towards the end of another work week and another Quote of the Day. When I first began my journey and was struggling to create a new habit of working out regularly I thought that doing a regular workout was about motivation and that if I found the right magical mix of things to motivate me than I’d be able to make working out regular part of my habit. Motivation is very helpful and it can often lead me to start something new or even try to evolve something I’m already doing to the next level. I fought my own nature time and again, getting down on myself, criticizing myself for not keeping my motivation high enough to keep the habit going. It took me a long time to realize that making something a habit isn’t about always being motivated to do. It was about having the discipline to do it regularly. I wish that was the magical moment when it all fell into place. See, I believed successfully applying discipline meant harshness. I thought it meant having this unflinching iron will that just was. What I have come to understand is that discipline like so many things in my journey were about properly framing in it a way that helped me accomplish what I wanted to do. For me, that meant that I had to look at discipline first as something that you build and strengthen. Just like regular working out would strengthen my body, regularly applying discipline to areas of my life would help me grow and define it into something that I could leverage when beginning something new or for me increasingly difficult to maintain. Discipline then comes down to a choice. Every time my alert goes off telling me it’s my scheduled time to workout I have a choice. I can keep to my schedule and do it or I can come up with an excuse and avoid it. If, for me, it was a choice then what was I choosing? I began to look at it as a choice between what is most powerful in that moment…. The thing I want to do right now or the things I want do do most. Put a better way, to quote a literary character, “…we must choose between what is easy and what is right.” The easy choice is always to stay in bed, get that extra 30 minutes of sleep, to have that 2nd or 3rd helping at dinner, to not worry about figuring out the points to track what I’m about to consume. The right things however are getting out of bed and doing that workout, sticking to my daily points, tracking what I eat, etc. It is why having such an important why is so vital to me continuing my journey. I use it to help me weight decisions on what seems like a daily basis. Be aware today of building your discipline and make sure you choose what you want more. It is often the road less traveled and it has made all the difference. Have a blessed day, y’all! Stay safe, stay dry and enjoy another beautiful day.
