A New Definition for Discipline

At one point in my life, I completely lacked discipline. That’s hard even for me to believe, let alone those who have only known me as a very driven person (read more about that here). Yet it turns out that discipline is a thing that can be built, practiced, and grown as time and life go on, and I’m extremely thankful that I had great example of this all throughout my life.

My definition of discipline, though, has changed as I’ve gotten older…and hopefully a little wiser.

I used to think discipline meant always doing everything at your full effort, no matter what. I thought it meant that 100% of me went into every single thing I did, and it was extremely hard to experience any perceived failure and continue to move forward in spite of that. If I did ‘fail,’ no matter how small that failure was, I would spend an equal amount of time beating myself up about not succeeding…and dreading the next time I tried again. When you put all of yourself into a thing, even a 99% success ends up feeling like no success at all.

Discipline, I have learned, takes on many different forms.

I used to think that discipline meant never hitting the snooze button. Now, I see that discipline sometimes means waking up, knowing deep down I need more sleep to be the person that I need to be in a given day, and intentionally resetting the alarm so I can be healthy instead of exhausted. It means that when I wake up late and feel ‘behind,’ my mind is disciplined enough to know that I did what I needed to do that day, and the rest will simply have to fall in line behind it.

I used to think that discipline meant treating every run like a race. Now, I see that if I ‘race’ against myself or a group on Monday when it doesn’t count, I’ll ‘lose’ when I have a track workout early the next morning. I have realized that competitiveness is great in races where time matters and results count, but whether or not I run faster than the person beside me on any given training run matters very little. Having the discipline to not prove myself at every turn is extremely difficult, but extremely necessary.

I used to think that discipline meant if I was ever finished with work before the day was done, I was simply being lazy. Now, I see that discipline means taking advantage of the facts that some weeks will feel completely full and overwhelming, others will feel very easy, and the balance in between is learning to love both of these equally. When I have a slow or easy week I am grateful for the extra downtime, and when my week is filled to the brim I am thankful for the ability to work for myself and do what I love.

Discipline is a beautiful thing, but one that can let me get in my own way if I’m not careful. Seeing how the definition has changed as my life has shifted over time has given me some much-needed perspective and allowed me to become a better person in business and life because of it. For that, I am grateful.