The Freedom of Discipline

The longer I practice discipline, the more I see and value the freedom of it. Here’s what I mean:

A BUSY WEEKEND AND THEN IT WAS MONDAY

Last month, I planned a big birthday party. I’m good at things like that: all the logistics of planning an event, sorting out all the details and making it all come together. I’m not tooting my own horn. It just happens to be something I’m good at, and it’s something I enjoy immensely. 

I worked on planning that party for a couple of months, but as you might know with any event, it is the one or two days before it happens that all of the last-minute things must get done. There are the shopping trips. The cleaning. The cooking. I did all of those tasks as well as the other things that happen in a typical weekend to a mom of two elementary-aged kids. It was a long weekend, but it was so fulfilling.

Then Monday rolled around. I overslept. My son complained of a stomach ache. My daughter complained the orthodontic appliance in her mouth was hurting her. We were late to school. Needless to say, the morning did not go as planned. And boy was I in a mood. I felt completely defeated. I longed for my bed. To say I was tired was an understatement. I wanted my weekend back.

I share all of this to say – some things will go according to plan, and some things won’t, but it’s what we do when they don’t that matter.

IT’S NOT MOTIVATION

People ask so often how I stay so motivated, but let me tell you (as I have said before), I am not always motivated.

In fact, there are days when I am so opposite of motivated that I couldn’t find my motivation if it slapped me in the face.

This is where discipline enters.

On that particular Monday, I was still participating the 75 Hard challenge, which meant that I had two forty-five minute workouts to do over the course of the day. Because I had made the commitment to the challenge, because I had the goal to finish the challenge, and despite the fact that I wanted to do literally anything but workout that day, I had the discipline to complete my tasks for the day. I knew that if I quit then when I was emotional, that once I felt better the next day, I would regret the decision I made. And so I put one foot in front of the other, and I did them.

Let me tell you: it wasn’t easy to get those workouts in, and I would have rather do anything else and I was basically just going through the motions with my heart not really in it, but I did them. And the sense of accomplishment I felt when my head hit the pillow that night made it all worth it. I am so thankful for the discipline I had to fulfill my goals, so that the next day when I was feeling better, I didn’t have to start over but just continued on where I left off.

FREEDOM OF DISCIPLINE

As I was on a walk that day for one of my workouts, I was listening to a podcast, as I so often do. The person being interviewed was Koya Webb, international health coach and author. She said something during the interview that was so spot on for where I was that day. She was talking about discipline and referenced “the freedom of discipline.” And I couldn’t help but think about how true that was. There is freedom in discipline.

That particular day, a day when I wanted to do nothing but go back to bed, I was disciplined enough to accomplish the goals I had already laid out for myself for that day. I didn’t have to think about what I was going to do. I just had to do them. I had the freedom of discipline to do what I had already scheduled, what I had already committed to.

Discipline frees us to accomplish our goals, especially on the days when we’d rather go back to bed. Having discipline means that we already know how we will behave or the things we will do in certain situations. It frees us from certain decisions, from peer-pressure, from apathy. I don’t know about you, but to me, that is real freedom.

Having discipline is not always easy. Sometimes it means we might miss out on something. But more often than not, it adds to our lives in all the best ways.

Being disciplined takes the guess work and a lot of the unknown out of our lives. It frees us from making decisions sometimes. We simply do what we said we were going to do for ourselves. This is true not only for fitness goals, but for goals we set at work, at home, with friends, and in any area of our lives.

I have since stopped that particular challenge, but I have developed new goals for myself. Through discipline, I know I will accomplish those goals in the same way that I did before.

NOT ALWAYS PERFECT

It has taken me a long time to develop discipline, and quite frankly, there are days when I still don’t live up to where I want to be or follow through with my commitments. And that’s okay. But I’m a heck of a lot better that I used to be, and I have to come to truly believe in the freedom of discipline. And just knowing that helps me stay on track.

If you want to read more about goal setting and cultivating discipline, go back to this post here.

Until next time,

Jeri Austin