Discipline is painful when it's beautiful outside...
By James Dodwell – Hammers of Hope
Good
Morning,
I don’t know
if I can handle another beautiful day, especially after all the rain we have
been gifted in the last few weeks. Three beautiful days in a row and two of
them I have been trapped inside without an opportunity to stand in the sunlight
and recharge my batteries. I can get more done when it is raining and stormy
than when the days are like they are today. I make excuses to be outside, like:
saying to myself, self; I will do this work tonight, but it doesn’t happen
because I exhausted myself during the day; or I will come up with errands to
run, only to find myself driving around with the windows down and my arm out
the window using my hand like a rudder on and airplane wing, allowing the wind
to push it up and down. It looks silly, I know, but at least no-one can hear
the airplane motor noises I am making from the inside of the truck.
Rain
or shine, cloudy or brilliant cobalt blue skies, this IS the day the Lord has
made, let us rejoice and be glad in it. It’s a win/win every day. And they all
said, “Amen.” What I am trying to say is on those truly beautiful spring days I
find my self-discipline waning, just a wee bit. However, we, as leaders, must
travel on the inside before we can travel on the outside, because the journey
of growth and success is first and internal one. The first person you lead is
you and you can’t lead effectively without self-discipline.
Plato
said, “The first and best victory is to conquer self.” So I have to do a self
check, on occasions, and ask myself, “How is your self-discipline, today?”
There are some guidelines or “action” points we can follow:
1.
Develop and follow our priorities. In today’s world we are all too busy, it
seems; however, no matter how busy we are nothing will get accomplished if we
firs don’t put together a plan. This plan should be built based on the priority
of the items we wish to accomplish in order of importance. Once this is done we
can release ourselves from those little time consuming tasks that aren’t very
important and make it much easier to follow through on the tasks with the most
importance. That’s the essence of self-discipline.
2.
Make a disciplined lifestyle your goal. Self-discipline for a day will not
enable us to be successful. It has to become a habit, a lifestyle to be
practiced each day. We need to develop routines and systems to help us realize
when we are on track or getting off track. We need to follow a crucial path
when it comes to long-term growth and success, education, training, schedules,
and so on and so forth. Once we have these routines and systems, stay with
them; tweak them as you see improvement to make you stretch and grow more and
more.
3.
Challenge your excuses. I struggle with this one because I can find other
things to do on those beautiful days; however we must challenge and eliminate
any tendency we may have to make excuses. When we find ways around being
self-discipline, we are just creating barriers to block us from being
successful. We need to continually challenge those “barriers” to allow us to go
to the next level.
4.
Remove rewards until you finish the job. What? No ice cream. If we lack
self-discipline we may be one of those people who order dessert before the
meal. Rewarding ourselves before we accomplish our goal can alter the end
result; most likely, we will not complete the task. Mike Delany stated,
“Businesses need to differentiate between their shirkers and their workers;
because if they reward both the same; they will soon find they have a lot more
of the former than the latter.”
5.
Stay focused on results. In our business some of our team members look at the
difficulty of the task while others look ahead to the results. The former gets
discouraged before we start, the latter is elbows deep in the project before
the starters pistol sounds. When we are facing a must-do task we need to focus
on paying the price rather than doing what is convenient. We, as leaders, must
count the benefits of doing what’s right then dive in and lead the way.
I
encourage each of us to lead a disciplined life. It will make a difference and
add value to those around us, and allow all of us to reap the reward of a life
well lived. Just saying. My blessing for you today is for you enjoy sharing
your faith, hope, joy and love with those around you. Philippians 3:12-14
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