I know I have your attention; I mentioned love, money and dieting in one sentence.
I always try to talk straight up. I believe in hard work and truth and results. I don’t believe in gimmicks, short cuts or empty promises that lather it thick on top but have little substance within.
I believe there is a lost art today and that is the Art of Discipline. For some it is a respected art; for others, one to be avoided like the plague. Many equate discipline with deprivation and sacrifice and hey, let’s face it, sacrifice isn’t easy. Yet, I don’t believe pursuing a worthwhile goal should necessarily be easy–in fact, I think the tougher something is to acquire, the greater the reward is when you acquire it.
Inarguably, discipline is work. It takes a stick-to-it-ness and a lot of patience. But I will personally testify to the results.
The first and best victory is to conquer self ~ Plato
Dieting = Exercise + Eating Right = Success
You’ve heard it before, but it bears repeating; some formulas, boring though they may be, are time tested and true. Mary always looks slim and beautiful even though she has a full-time job and manages a household with two energetic kids. “I admit I like looking and feeling good,” she says in a spirit of conventional vanity when I visited her recently, “and I suspect a good number of people on this planet do as well when you consider the billions of dollars spent for dieting books and get-in-shape gimmicks. Those ads on TV—“miracle” diet pills, specialized diet plans and powdered drinks, funky exercise equipment, it’s mostly hype. I mean, it’s possible to be fit, but it takes a lot of my discipline, not a pill. Right now I’m sitting here with you and eating a salad—oh, it’s a good salad; it has feta and sundried tomatoes and marinated mozzarella—but it’s a salad. Do I really want to eat this salad? Hell no!—there’s a plateful of cheese ravioli smothered in spaghetti sauce in the fridge that I want to bury my face into! But I know if I give in to my urge I won’t fit into a cute outfit hanging in my closet. I do want to eat the ravioli, and the cookies in the jar; but–I want to fit into the cute outfit and feel sexy more”.
Mary makes a decision, and she knows she will have to give something up to get something she wants more. Here’s the Rule of Discipline: There is always a tradeoff, always. Once you accept that you’re more than halfway to your goal. There is no short cut, no magic pill, no having your cake, eating it too and being fit too, at least, not if you do that regularly. You skip the cake and have a glass of water instead, you go for a brisk walk or run—you do that for a little while and you will look good and feel good. It sounds simplistic, but most formulas for success really are quite simple (not easy, mind you, but simple).
Proverbs 29:17 – “Discipline your children, and they will give you happiness and peace of mind.”
Parental Discipline = To Teach = (To Grow and Learn)
In the blog “My Life in Japan”, Jayaprakash notes, “Discipline is part of Japanese culture. The discipline of Japanese children is incredible! Children too are learned to obey public behavior and rules. Learned from elders, they are not behind any of the adults and on many occasions better than adults in obedience and discipline”.
Discipline in the Japanese culture translates differently than in the West; it means “to teach”. Children “learn” (as opposed to being forced) to obey behavior and rules, and this is what we desire for them. The Japanese discipline more in mind more than body–to shape the young and teach them right from wrong—and this is why they are so successful at it. Discipline is more of an education than a punishment. When we teach our children, we should look at the very big picture. Eventually, they will be running their own lives without our constant intervention, and naturally we want them to be responsible, caring, independent, disciplined adults. I say, I am raising men not boys. It’s not easy and it makes me tired most days. To do the right thing, sometimes I have to take something away from them, sometimes I need to take away from me in the form of time for myself or energy. But I want them to learn good behavior and rules of the home so that they adopt them as a natural progression of becoming a healthy adult. They learn, and grow.
Hard Work and Sacrifice = Enduring Love
My husband and I still are in love after 23 years of looking at each other’s mugs. Some would say we are lucky, and of course we are blessed. But, I assure you, there is a lot of work built into being blessed, a lot of tears, heartache, sacrifice and discipline. When we were engaged and he was in the army, I couldn’t be with him while he served and yet I couldn’t date others either, not if I was going to be faithful to him. That was almost intolerably lonely for me. Yet, love is worth sacrifice, even sometimes intolerable ones. In our marriage, we have endured job loss, an event that took a great deal of mental as well as physical discipline: many nights of peanut butter and jelly, holding back from anger and bitterness, a lot of prayer. But like the Phoenix, you do rise out of the ashes. You survive, because you are willing to give up something to gain something greater. You sacrifice those little things for the greatest thing. It’s a disciplined effort—but real, enduring love is always worth it.
Good For You > Bad For You = Health(ier)
A few years ago I suffered pretty badly from Endometriosis, a debilitating issue. Through a program of exercise and cutting back on some vices that would have made my condition worse, I do feel better. The vices—certain foods I love that exacerbate my condition, inactivity (I’m inherently lazy), staying up late which cuts in on healing sleep—are all fun but decrease my health. In truth, the giving in to myself doesn’t compare to being healthy. So disciplined health choices—giving up the vices– led to a healthier me. It didn’t happen overnight mind you; it took time, many months, it took years searching to find a doctor who would finally diagnose me properly after many who misdiagnosed me, sometimes dangerously so. It took months and months of research to eventually discover a least-of-all-evils, low-dose medicine that helps the symptoms, and a regular exercise program which eases the pain. It’s annoying and inconvenient sometimes to exercise, but less so than pain and discomfort. So a preferential choice is made. Having a condition or disease isn’t preferential, however; no right-minded person chooses to be ill. But we can choose to do the best thing for ourselves and our health; we can work at being optimally less ill or more healthy, even if it means exchanging the oh-so-exciting “bad” things for the not-so-exciting “good “things. And, quite frankly, being healthy is exciting, at least when you’ve lost your health and regained it back again. In fact, there is little that is more exciting.
Finances (Less = More)
Money is always a topic of interest. When you peel away the layers of spending and finances, one might discover that the many budgets have a built-in emotional foundation. It is my opinion that few people spend purely out of necessity; aside from starkly essential needs such as shelter, food, and utilities, a large percentage of spending is emotive. For fun, the next time you make a non-essential (or what you may consider essential) purchase, candidly ask yourself “why am I really buying this?”—you may come up with some surprising answers: to impress a friend; to improve your self-esteem; to compete with the Joneses; to celebrate; to assuage heartbreak.
A few years ago we spent more on eating out at restaurants and on non-essential purchases than our income allowed and this not surprisingly led to debt. We discovered we were always a couple of hundred dollars behind each month. We decided that if we were going to break even–forget about getting ahead–we would have to agree, literally shake hands, on a policy of Frugal Discipline. This meant not buying what we dreamily stared at in windows, living with what we already had ad nauseam, cooking at home seven days a week, saying no to frivolous purchases and being creative with necessary purchases. Making this decision as a couple meant that we were ready as partners for the undeniable hardship that comes with monetary discipline, and for the under-abundance which is antithetical to society’s credit-burdened way of life. Perhaps not so exciting, I agree, but the results that spring from discipline are exciting. Frugal discipline helped us to reach our financial goals, and now we are ahead at the end of the month. Moreover, we adopted a quality of life philosophy, quality-centric, as opposed to quantity of life, i.e. money-centric.
A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step~ Lao Tzu
These are tried-and-true results from living a disciplined life. This isn’t about get-quick-rich schemes, short-cuts, or magic pills; I don’t know a whole lot about those. But I do know that discipline works, and what works is equivalent to success. Discipline is worth the effort, for when you hold your goal in your hands or admire it in the mirror, when you behold that special person with a loving eye or stand tall at the pinnacle of the mountain looking down, it’s worth all you’ve worked hard for and sacrificed for, to know that supreme joy of success!
