Discipline Yourself

Something most of us need more of is discipline. That was brought home to me during a recent ten-day prayer retreat. The retreat was highly structured, including a single daily period for “free time.” From 7 am to 7:30 pm, every hour was scheduled and rigorously adhered to, especially the three daily periods designated for something called “Centering Prayer.”

Whether or not such a retreat would appeal to you, you can understand the necessity of being present and accounted for throughout the entire retreat. You paid your money; the leaders were there to guide you; you were expected to be in your seat, ready for prayer. It resembled a brief spiritual boot camp.

Boot camp offers a good analogy for our need for discipline. I know how important boot camp in the Marine Corps was to my personal discipline. Twelve weeks at Paris Island, South Carolina changed my life. The truth is, without sufficient discipline, you will likely not be able to do what you really want to do, succeed fully at what you really want to succeed at. The finest justifying statement for the need for discipline I’ve ever heard came from philosopher Franz Rosenzweig. He said: “I must do all that I can now, so that when the time comes, I can do all that I must.”

As a people we have lost much of our discipline. Our burgeoning obesity problem is but one glaring indicator of our lack of personal discipline, and of how little we exercise as well as how much we eat. It seems that anything goes, that we don’t care, or care enough to discipline ourselves. And no one else can discipline you, but you. You have to become your own “drill instructor” (DI).

Discipline is nothing more or less than stick-to-it-iveness. You keep at something long enough to actually accomplish what you seek. Of course, having something worthwhile and desirable to seek is essential to developing the discipline to attain it.

Discipline is a surrender to purpose. If there is no vision, no motivating purpose sufficient to generate commitment to strive to attain, you will just tread water. Whether what you seek is an athletic prize, an academic achievement, or a professional advance, the one who usually succeeds is the one who works just a little harder than the others. Success is follow through. And follow through requires discipline.

Discipline is a form of commitment to yourself. You do the things you need to do to be able to do the things you want to do. Where discipline is lacking, so is performance. And with performance goes self-esteem. You need to do something really well. Once you do one thing well, you will find you can also do others things well.

Discipline may be difficult at first, while you gain the perseverance to carry on and out the course you have set. But once discipline has become a habit, you will do what you need to do with less pain and fewer problems.

Discipline requires faith and hope. You need to have faith in yourself and hope in your outcome. That so few evidence the kind of discipline necessary to attain great things, indicates an absence not only of vision and purpose, but of faith and hope. You are not likely to strive if you believe that what you want is beyond your reach.

Yet without discipline, you will never find out what you could attain. Make that, who you could become.