That nasty D-word…DISCIPLINE

I’d have to say that many times I view the word discipline as profanity. I hate discipline. I hate it because it’s hard. It takes effort, work and intentionality. It takes patience to see results of discipline. It takes time for discipline to become habits and a lifestyle.

But that’s what I have to do. Over the past couple weeks, I have been dwelling deeply on the fact that I have little to no discipline in tons of areas of my life! It’s sad and sickening to see that. It’s one of the hardest things to do: to look at yourself and realize you are not the man you meant to be, and you have a list of reasons why.

Before in my life, I’ve tried to write out a list of all the areas of my life that need work, all the bad habits I wanted to rid myself of, and all the good practices I wanted to start. That list would be the difference between the man I was and the man I wanted to be. However, stupid me, I would gather all my strength and excitement and attack that whole list…all at once. I attempted to change all sorts of things in my life all at once. I tried to change everything, and so, as you can probably see where this is going, I finished with nothing changing. It was like me taking on the North Carolina basketball team…all of them…all at once…and hoping to even make a lay-up!

After a much needed discussion over lunch with Chuck, a mentor of mine (who, by the way, is one of the greatest men on the planet), I have decided a game plan for strategically tackling my list of life disciplines that I want to implement, change, modify, eliminate, etc. I will take three weeks at a time to focus on changing ONE area of my life. As much as it will bother me not to focus on changing the other areas as well, I will have to force myself to let those areas stay how they have been so that I can give as much attention to the focused area of change. I am hoping that focusing on one area for three weeks will allow those disciplines to become good habits. Then, after three weeks are done on one area of disciplines, I will move my focus to the next area and try changing my disciplines in that area WHILE keeping the habits formed in the first area from the prior three weeks. Although I’m not done compiling and sorting out my list of areas in my life that need to be checked, here is the list so far:

1. Physical – exercising, eating well, nutrition, sleeping patterns, etc.
2. Mental/Intellectual – reading books, learning, musicianship (writing and growing as a musician), even blogging
3. Spiritual – reading Scripture, praying, building my relationship with God
4. Relational – good relationships with family and friends, balanced social habits, good conversation, meeting people, pouring into people, encouraging people, serving in community
5. Emotional – this will be affected, determined and gauged by all the other areas

Although each area is vitally important, and each area even overlaps with every other area, I decided that I would start with the one area of my life that was most “out of whack,” the one that needed the most work and attention, the one that I thought was farthest from where it needs to be. So I decided to start on my physical disciplines.

Starting tomorrow, I will implement new disciplines and rules to allow me to live a better life physically (and lose weight!). I will write again tomorrow (I hope) about what I will be doing specifically to gain discipline in the physical arena of my life.

No more writing blog posts at 2 am after tonight… at least not on a regular basis!

~ by Cody Thomas on 11 March 2008.