Decision and Self-Discipline

"I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions." Stephen Covey, 1932-2012, Educator, Author, and Speaker

Decision and self-discipline...you can’t have one without the other.

Bob Proctor teaches that the opposite of decision is procrastination. I had to think about that one but the more I thought about it, the more I had to agree. You can believe that you’ve made a decision but until you’ve acted on it, it really is not a decision. It’s more like a wish.

Furthermore, to actually make a decision and act upon it requires self-discipline.

I think most people consider the term ‘self-discipline’ to be a nasty word! People have this misconception (or paradigm) of ‘discipline’ as being the same as ‘punishment’. It comes from the old days when we were little and all of our discipline came from outside of ourselves. That is why so many people have such a resistance to it. I know my hubby does!

The real definition of self-discipline, according to Bob Proctor, is just being able to give yourself a command and then follow it. That sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? It’s amazing that so many of us have such a hard time with the implementation.

I remember what a mess I was back in the summer of 2009 right after this break-up of almost two years. I was depressed to the point of scaring my kids where they were in contact with each other and counting my drugs! My youngest son was still living with me and in college and a very busy young man. I spent the better part of two weeks not bothering to shower or dress, sitting in my chair in the living room, wrapped in my bathrobe, smoking, drinking wine and watching hours of the Weather Channel.

One day, my son sat down on the couch across from me and said, “Mom...we need to talk.” He then began to remind me of something I had mentioned about taking a long trip by myself to visit friends I had either not seen in a long time or had never met in person. It required several days on the road down the entire East Coast. At this point I could not get excited about anything so my answer to him was something to the effect that, yeah, I should do that.

Fortunately for me, he wasn’t buying that answer. He immediately pulled out his datebook and began making the time and travel plans right in front of me and gave me a list of things to do and calls to make. The short version of this story is that I did, in fact, go on that trip. I had a marvelous time and I was able to prove to myself that I could actually COUNT ON myself. I developed a much needed sense of self-confidence on that trip. It was a wonderfully healing experience.

I will forever owe my son a debt of gratitude for what he did for me that day!

But, we don’t always get that lucky, do we? Most of the time we have only ourselves to look to for direction. That is where self-discipline comes in handy!

So, if you find yourself doing a lot of procrastinating, as many of us do, all it means is that you need to develop a skill that you do not currently have at hand, namely, the ability to give yourself a command and then follow it. I, myself, have a bit of trouble with self-discipline and a major issue with procrastination. This is one reason why I spend so much of my time looking for the wisdom to correct the problem.

Perhaps I am finally on the road to success. It takes a fair amount of self-discipline to implement the decision to begin a blog and make regular posts!

Here’s to a commanding day!

Cindy Hurd

PS: Here's a great article on decision making: 

 http://us6.campaign-archive1.com/?u=95079d1f2d8dd96fe7888998e&id=4fd8711fe4&e=a0499dcd8b