"I need to become more disciplined."
This is a common problem for many, particularly creative and entrepreneurial individuals. Many people believe if they were simply more disciplined they would have caught up on their taxes by now, have a clean home, a profitable, well-managed business and, most importantly, the peace of mind they imagine will come with all these achievements. The problem is that setting a goal of being more disciplined is a difficult one to get enthusiastic about. In fact, for some it may take the creative wind right out of their sails. For people who create by breaking rules and challenging conventions, trying to maintain a commitment to become a better rule follower and schedule-minder often ends up as a series of false starts, frustration, self-loathing, and Ben and Jerry's binges.
While the desired end results of discipline may be worth dedicated pursuit, perhaps focusing on discipline as the means to goal achievement creates more problems than it solves. For example, Twyla Tharp, a highly disciplined dancer and choreographer wrote an excellent book on this subject entitled The Creative Habit. Sounds much more appealing than "The Disciplined Dancer," yes? Developing a habit seems far easier than developing discipline. This may be a matter of semantics, as in the end their outward manifestations may look quite similar, but consider the energy and connotations each of those words has for you.
Habits are easy to follow and hard to break. Discipline on the other hand sounds like work every day. Discipline is continually applied effort to achieve a certain end. Relax your focus and discipline falls apart. By contrast, habits take on a life of their own, apparently driven by their own power whether you want to engage in them or not.
In my experience, when people talk about having a need to be more disciplined, they are really talking about a need to be more consistent in the pursuit of their endeavors.
What can be done to help you become more consistent?
Stop talking about discipline unless you really love the word. In fact, any word that feels like it has lead weights attached to it is one to strike from your personal vocabulary. If you want to make sustainable lifestyle changes, they have to feel positive, powerful, and attractive or you will be doomed from the start. Anyone can be disciplined for a weekend, but if the goal is consistency and the creation of habits, which support you over a lifetime, you have to be enthusiastic about the process.
Article comments
1 - Kathy
Excellent article!! This is most motivational piece I've ever read, so thanks!
2 - Laura
Glad to be of service Kathy! Feel free to kick around the rest of my articles here as well as at my blog for more on this and many other personal development topics.
Happy surfing!
L
3 - christiana
wonderful article!
4 - Margaret Horn
Well-written. I'm tired of reading blogs with grammatical errors (excuse my sentence fragment) and stylistic problems. Some of the article seemed mere rhetoric; in other words, you were comparing apples to apples. However, what you're suggesting is kind of a mind gymnastics (shift the way you're thinking), and perhaps that works for some readers. I certainly don't want a six-figure income. I guess I'm the artsy-fartsy type. I'm also chronically ill, which is one of the reasons I never get anything done. I would be interested in seeing an article on how to be productive when ill! I liked that you referred to Twyla Tharp. (Margaretsstrangeworld.net)