Be disciplined one time a day for constant growth
Changing discipline to be one deliberate act of discipline a day in an effort to improve yourself - may be a healthier and more balanced way to handle this character trait.
The long-term benefit of discipline:
- becoming the person you want to be - by actively doing uncomfortable things and growing from it
The short-term benefit of discipline:
- accomplishing a task, productivity, getting things done
Focus more on the long-term benefit and less on the short-term benefit.
Why?
Because the short-term benefit is somewhat unsustainable in the beginning, it's fighting an uphill, endless, perhaps unwinnable battle.
And as a result, people fall through and falter in their discipline, which then causes them to hate themselves. Negative emotions. A kickback.
And a lot of the time they are living dissatisfied lives while doing it.
While I think it's more important that we make progress towards our goals in a satisfied manner. Why? Because the journey is all that we have. It's our life. There is no end goal. No "once I achieve this then I will finally be happy." It simply does not exist, and so saving your entire happiness for a moment that will never come is silly and stupid.
Instead, we have an option for exponential and natural, contented growth. It's the long-term benefit of discipline.
The point of it is everyday to just do 1 thing that makes you uncomfortable, that you know is good for you, and to grow from doing it.
It could be talking to a stranger, going to the gym, sticking to an appointment you made, trying something new, any of these things. You just do it once, in the moment, on that day. You use your discipline willpower for this.
This way you'll grow from it and next time that event arises, there'll be less resistance and it'll be easier to execute. There won't be so much of an energy expenditure. This is the long-term benefit of discipline. It compounds and grows.
Doing this in the long-term, over many years, the change will be dramatic. I just 5 years time you will be a demigod. That's how it works.
So don't get caught up in the self-deprecating short-term discipline. It's important and useful at times, use it to get some things done, but remember that the main goal is to build yourself up.
You want to build yourself up into the kind of person that can just naturally execute on these tasks without debilitating self-hatred and exhaustion. You want to just embody that state of being and enter into that flow state, then life will both progress better and be more enjoyable along the way.
