Tue 31 May 2005
Discipline a - Key to success in achieving your goals?
Posted by farshid under UncategorizedA few days back, I had an interesting discussion regarding discipline with a couple of friends that got me thinking ever since. The subject has specially been on my mind especially during my time here in Haifa, trying to improve myself in this department.
What I am talking about is having discipline in doing things. Lets start off by the things most people need to do throughout a period of 24 hours, including the basic needs (some of the points pertains only to Baha’is):
- Sleeping/relaxing
- Eating
- Personal hygiene
- Saying prayers and reading Holy writings in the morn and evening
- Say obligatory prayer
- Reciting the Greatest name 95 times
- Bringing oneself to account at the end each day
- Maintaining relationships, including writing/calling loved ones as well as socializing with people around you.
- Work
- Home chores
I will leave the list for now as I am fairly sure I have missed a couple of points. But this is to give you an idea that all these things have to be done every single day and most of these things might be done without thinking actively about it. Why? Because they (most of them at least) have become a core habit/fundamental part of me to the degree that if I don’t do them even for a day, I will feel the lack of it so extensively that I will not be able to go to bed until it’s done.
Enter the challenge. Make every single item on this list a core habit, introduce new habits into this list or drop bad (core) habits to make your day more fruitful, enjoyable and efficient. Maybe this new habit is for a short period of time (like studying for an exam) or you want it to be part of your life. To give you an example that I am struggling with on and off is to make a daily task list every morning as to what I am supposed to achieve that day and make sure those tasks are done by the end of the day. This would help free my mind from juggling a virtual task list that we all do maintain whether we like it or not.
How can I achieve it then? How do I make this to go from a on and off habit to a core habit so that I will not be able to sleep at night if you haven’t done it? This is were discipline comes in I believe and together with the will power is the fundamental way of succeeding in achieving goals. After all if you are persistent and disciplined you have done your part in attempting to make something to be (or to be dropped) as a core habit and this will undoubtedly help you in your personal development. Easy to say but harder to follow through…
June 19th, 2005 at 11:54 am
Dear Friends.
It is said that success is not about doing extra ordinary things , but doing Ordinary things extra ordinary well. The article under review provides splendid example for the above quote.
As the Writer rightly put it, from getting up to going to bed, various activities that we do , quite often with out conscious awareness, constitute discipline.Here is a catch. At the first look, You may question waht great about this? And that is the secret.
Believe m,e, if we do daily activities like getting at a same time every day, following routines in a systamatic way , retiring to bed at same time, preparing “TO DO LIST” and then analysing at the end of the day to know the progress and for taking further actions for pending things…… these play the foundation for great future.Remember , we are what our habits dictate.Once we consciously develop certain discipline regarding routines, we make systamatic approach to every thing a habit.And once You establish this discipline, You can be rest assured, that excellence becomes your second nature.
At the first reading, this may look strange.But develop discipline in small things, You would soon find yourself approaching whole of life with total discipline.