Understanding discipline in order to be disciplined

"Discipline is a necessary spell we create ourselves to focus our energies on what is the right thing to do and is also important - then doing it," Izz.

Discipline is a very significant word in the human vocabulary. From a community point of view, it makes us live together in harmony or at least aspire to. It makes people behave in better ways that acknowledge the need for common existence - without discipline, everybody would do as they please and somewhat, a chaos point would be reached pervasively and our relations with others would be a mess. But my interest in this word at this point is more on a personal level. Personal discipline. It is this, albeit not alone, that makes great people that: Great People. That makes succesful people a success. That makes lovely kids lovely. That makes the alchemist, a master. That makes you and me marvellous in our desired ways or just downright mediocre - depending on which side of the descipline fence we choose to stand on.

I've chosen to stand on the committed side of the descipline and do what I set out to do - I try to make it consistent. I really try. And boy is this tough. The hardships on this side of the fence would make one swear it's not worth it - that one should just be on the lounging side and just throwing up their feet and waiting for life to happen whilst embracing mediocrity (we do embrace it by virtue of not choosing to be great).

But I can't pick the other side of the fence - which I lived at for long enough and all it's done for me was play games with my soul and live me right where I was since choosing that side many years ago. I wonder which side you stand on. The committed side of the discipline or the lounging side (which can be chosen by virtue of not choosing the other).

Courtesy of dictionary.com, I pulled out the following meanings of the word discipline:

• Training to act in accordance with rules
• Behavior in accord with rules of conduct; behavior and order maintained by training and control
• Trained habits that separate the wheat from the charf, whilst keeping the charf as that: the charf (my own meaning)

What I like about those meanings is that they echoe what we all know for sure: that discipline, because it gives us so much more than it can ever take away, comes with training. That for us to be disciplined, we need to train ourselves to live our lifes in certain ways that speak of greatness, and oppose mediocrity.

The best part of these meanings is that we can set our own personal rules to live by, whilst adopting the universal rules of successful and great people. At best, we will be disciplined if we have set ourselves a life's vision and mission. In that way, we ensure that what we do daily is getting us closer to our vision. In other words, we live the mission of our life - and if we're not, we know that our discipline is lounging and we will become mediocre people as we watch our dreams wallow in the lost wind.

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