[Neurons] 2025 Neurons #3 DISCIPLINE: THE SECRET OF EXCELLENCE

Sun Jan 19 19:39:38 EST 2025

From: L. Michael Hall

2025 Neurons #3                        

January 20, 2025

Discipline: The Personality

Factor You Love to Hate #3                        

DISCIPLINE

THE SECRET OF EXCELLENCE

Something wonderful happens once you can get over the negative press that
surrounds the word discipline and reframe it so that you see it as a
powerfully positive trait-as a description of a life-style under your own
control.  Suddenly, you discover just how awesome discipline is as an
accelerator of success, effectiveness, and productivity.

How does discipline accelerate your personal effectiveness?  There's many
ways it does this.  First and foremost, now you can get yourself to do what
you know and need to do.  As a "course of action" discipline now becomes
your action tendency and your strategy for getting things done.  And isn't
that the problem when you lack discipline?  Without discipline, people utter
all kinds of complaints-complaints that highlight that they can't get
themselves to take action.

           "I just don't have the discipline or the will power to go to the
gym."

           "Why does the skill development of the coaching skills require
so much discipline?  Isn't there an easier way?"

           "But discipline seems like such an imposition, like someone is
forcing me to do something."

           "I'd be okay with discipline, but there's so many procedures and
not enough options."

Because what you once considered a discipline is now a life-style of choice
and desire, you are easily able to get yourself to do what you plan or
decide.  You are no longer like a child who opts for ease, comfort, and
pleasure.  That's because discipline is an adult choice wherein you guide
yourself by your knowledge and understanding rather than by your emotions.
Children are naturally undisciplined.  They have not yet learned the art of
being disciplined.

To accelerate your personal success, you need to know what "course of study,
course of action" to take and then you need to act consistently in doing
what needs to be done.  That's why discipline is a critical factor for
success.  It is a consistent practice which enables you to live out your
knowledge and your competence.  It is the ability to follow-through on what
you start.

Discipline is also the inner lifestyle of valuing your objective.  In the
process of setting a goal, you identify why it is important to you-its
value.  And it's in seeing and feeling the value of something that activates
your whole mind-body system to go after it.  No wonder Roy Smith spoke of
discipline as a fire, an inner burning that generates the energy and
motivation to make it happen.  "Discipline is the defining fire by which
talent becomes ability."

Discipline accelerates your success because it is inward control.  It is a
controlling of your mind and controlling of yourself.  Now because we call
that self-control, no wonder we positively equate 'discipline' and
'self-control.'   That's because when you learn to think in a disciplined
way, you are truly in charge of your mind and therefore of yourself, your
person.  Two thousand years ago Marcus Aurelius understood this inner power
of discipline and how discipline gives you an inner strength from which to
operate.  "You have power over your mind, not outside events.  Realize this,
and you will find strength."

Discipline accelerates your personal success to the extent that you can now
so "No" to yourself, to mis-using your time, energy, focus, money,
resources, etc.  You can say "no" to every temptation that would pull you
aside.  And with the ability to so "No" comes the ability to say a
resounding "Yes" to all that truly matters.

"Self-respect is the root of discipline: the sense of dignity grows with the
ability to say no to oneself." Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The price of excellence is discipline.  The cost of mediocrity is
disappointment." William Arthur Ward

"With self-discipline, most anything is possible."  Theodore Roosevelt

Do you get the picture?  As strange as it may sound at first, discipline
creates and accelerates success.  It gives you the inner control,
motivation, and structure to make your dreams come true.  And it begins
inside with your mind.  As "a course of study" you first develop a mental
discipline, a disciplined way of thinking, and from there it cascades down
through the rest of your life.   People who lack discipline lack the mental
power of focus.  And that leads to the sad fact of the undisciplined,
namely, no discipline-no excellence.

Every Olympic athlete is a living emblem of that principle-each person who
becomes a champion does so precisely because of the discipline he or she
brings to the sport, and without the discipline to learn, to practice, to
consistently practice, to persist, to bounce back from defeat again and
again- there would be no excellence.  This is true freedom-the freedom to
pursue your goals by following the procedures that can dependably take you
to the edge of expertise.  How about that?  True freedom is inside of
discipline!

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, ISNS

738 Beaver Lodge

Grand Jct., CO. 81505 USA

meta at acsol.net

 <https://www.neurosemantics.com/product/thinking-for-humans/>
https://www.neurosemantics.com/product/thinking-for-humans/

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