News By Tom Brownsword

I’ve been almost obsessed with the topic of self discipline lately and how it can really help a person in their business and life efforts. I’m of the opinion that self-discipline alone won’t be enough to sustain you in the long run, regardless of what you want to do.

Let me repeat that statement because I think it’s very important: I do not believe that self-discipline, in and of itself, will be enough to sustain you in the long run. Here’s why I think this way.

Self-discipline, according to Steve Pavlina, is like a muscle in that it needs to be developed. If you try to train with a weight that is too heavy for you, you’ll never get it off the ground and gain no benefit. If you train with a weight that is too light, you don’t sufficiently exercise the muscle and gain almost no benefit (although you might maintain your current level of fitness).

It’s the same with self-discipline. Start off doing too much and you’ll get discouraged and quit. Start off too light and you’ll never reach your potential.

There’s another comparison factor to consider here, though. Just like training the muscle isn’t usually the goal, neither is developing your self-discipline the ultimate goal. You train your muscles to compete in a competition, improve your health, etc. In the same way, you develop your self-discipline to accomplish other tasks.

And that’s why I say that self-discipline alone won’t get you to your goals. You develop your self-discipline, then USE that self-discipline to accomplish what you want to do. And just like you don’t think about your muscles when competing in an athletic competition (instead, you use them to propel yourself to the goal), you use your self-discipline to carry you to new heights and reach new goals. In other words, you don’t think about it; you just use it as a tool.

But before you can get to that point, you do need to train it. And that’s where I think I need LOTS of work.

I’m not afraid of hard work, although I sometimes find it difficult to figure out exactly WHICH hard work I need to focus on. That’s something called Purpose (you can read Steve Pavlina’s “take” on Purpose here; I like it), and if you are avoiding hard work, chances are good that you simply haven’t found your purpose. And according to Dr. Robert Anthony in The Secret of Deliberate Creation, that Purpose is known as your Heart’s Desire. It’s something that you can put 100% of everything behind. And once you find your Purpose or Heart’s Desire, there’s absolutely nothing that can stop you.

So I’m working hard to develop my self-discipline to get the “muscle” working well. I’m also going through some of the exercises in The Secret of Deliberate Creation to discover my true Heart’s Desire so that I’ll know what I need to be working on. In a way, that’s why I haven’t really been blogging much lately, and it’s also a factor (I think) in why I enjoyed last months’ break so much.

I am working on a non-IM project right now that’s going to be my focus through the end of October. It’s going to require a heavy time commitment up front but the time required should taper off as time goes on. It’s going to be a good way for me to develop my self-discipline muscle while learning new things that have the potential for profit further down the road.

Incidentally, if you want to know more about Steve Pavlina’s take on self-discipline, there should be links at the bottom of the post that I linked to earlier in this post.

Thanks for listening,
Tom