Well hello there, my little crumpets! How's it going today? Yesterday? Last week? Tomorrow? I want to know all about it. This is your friendly neighborhood Khalu here, just checking in on your Thursday activities -- Okay, so I'm a little late! The podcast was up early, the blog post was up late. Balance? I know, that's a cheap excuse, but here I am! Are you on a skyscraper rooftop jumping on some thugs? Did you use your spidey senses and abilities? Oh, that's not real you say? I've had an encounter with a spider that proves otherwise! I mean, it was a real spider... But the way they shoot their webs is like Spidey does! It's not an exaggeration. Too off topic? Oooookay.
So to be honest, yesterday I had the article about 3/4 ready, but then I had a few calls I needed to attend to and by the time I was done, I did not want to finish writing the post. Now, what I had written yesterday was not about discipline. In fact it was about Science and "WooWoo" intermingling. Sounds interesting to you? I'll probably talk about it some other day. I just figured there was something else that was a little more pressing for me, so I'd like to share it with you. It didn't feel right. See, what I'm writing about now feels right.
I know I touched discipline a little bit on this post over here. Now I want to dive into it a lot deeper. If there's something I pride myself on, is having discipline. Doing things every day without exception (How ironic, huh? You missed your post by a day and talk about "without exception"). Now, sometimes your practices aren't the best, sometimes you don't fulfill your goal completely (see, I did show up and wrote most of it! Now I'm writing a whole new post today, so quit your yapping!).
You can't wait for inspiration to "hit," you've got to always show up and then and only then is when inspiration hits while you're doing what you do. It's like catching lightning in a bottle. You can't just have a bottle in the cupboard or wherever and expect lightning to fall in there... You have to be out with your bottle all the time! You WILL yourself to keep going even when you don't want to. Sometimes you might think "Nah, I got this... I'm super human and I don't need this..." (I might be speaking for myself here, except the "super human" part, that was just for effect... Ahem... Only that). When you find yourself thinking exactly that, is when you need it the most! That's your EGO talking. Tony Robbins (I know I sound like a broken record talking about him and God knows he doesn't need the extra traffic... But hey, nonetheless! Get used to me using other people's great work as a reference :) ) has a very cool way of putting it: EGO = Edging God Out. Thinking you do things all by yourself? Well, let me tell you that's not true!
If you keep showing up doing what you're doing, there will come a point in time when you will just keep getting better and better (as long as you keep focusing on improving and being better!). If you're being unenthusiastic about whatever it is you're doing, then obviously it's not going to be improving. The point is, you said you're going to do something? You better be doing it! Keep it going. Of course there is flexibility within what you do! The point is you keep at it.
Want to wake up earlier? Do it. There's no other option. Set an alarm for the time you want to wake up, say 5:00am (I personally wake up at 6:00, this is just an example!). You set that alarm and go to bed a little earlier than you would normally -- this way you rest what you need to! Everybody is different, so sleep the amount of hours that are good for you. I tend to work best with seven hours. Sometimes I get less, sometimes more. Seven is usually the number for me. Now, when that alarm goes off you better wake up and do something to keep you awake. Jolt yourself up or something, because you're going to want to go back to sleep! BUT, of course that's the complete opposite of what you set out to do! Use tricks on yourself. For example, I leave my phone in my office (the room next to my bedroom) so I HAVE TO get out of bed in order to turn it off. What little tricks can you play on yourself to actually keep your word? By the time I turn the alarm off, I'm pretty much awake.
The more you do it, the easier it becomes! Then you're waking up at 5:00 am without a hitch. It just takes 3-6 times to make it easy on yourself and three or four weeks of doing it to make it a habit! See how easy that was? Apply this with everything that you WANT to do. Have those "wants" become "musts" for you in order to succeed. Taking action is key to achieving anything, so you have to make promises to yourself. If you break your own promises, how do you think that's going to make you feel about yourself? HORRIBLE! So, you want to have confidence? DO IT.
Discipline really does boost confidence! The more you do and prepare whatever it is you're doing, the better at it you become. This will make you feel good about yourself. Isn't that nice? To actually feel good about yourself! What a novel concept, huh? Having confidence is key in everything, too! If you don't have confidence, people won't believe in what you're doing. That's because you yourself don't! You're probably worrying or fearful or whatever. Why is that? Because you haven't prepared enough! Those feelings are there to tell you there's something you need to do! Not to ignore them and pretend to be tough.
So use discipline for everything. Practice anything you want to practice daily in order to become a master at it and excel!