Living the Disciplined Life

Our lives are filled with habits. The challenge is how do we keep good habits and lose bad ones?

I have thought about discipline a fair amount. I am often trying to improve the way my life works and am daily putting in effort to hold on to habits I am trying to acquire. There is always a period of time where certain habits require real work to make them a part of our life. It is during this time period in which most people lose the fight. It requires mental toughness it add a new habit to your life.

I like talking in concrete terms so I will share where I am seeing success and where I need to do some work. I have succeeded in making exercise a fundamental part of my morning routine. The truth is, the way I am wired, I need 45 minutes of aerobic exercise every morning in order for my life to work properly. At this point this habit takes very little mental toughness to keep, as I just do it five days a week without thinking much about it. I am also doing well about spending time in the word every morning and praying as well. These habits seem to be critical to my overall success, so I am glad to have them in place. Hygiene has become a higher priority in the last couple of months, as in brushing my teeth a second time during the day and flossing, as well as adding palmade to my hair to make it look nicer. They still take a little mental toughness- there have been a few occasions where I have had to drag my rear end out of bed to brush my teeth and floss, but I haven't missed days and I am pretty happy about how it is going.

As far as habits that need changing... my work affords me a lot of flexibility as far as when I work, so I struggle getting to work as early as I like. My diet could use to have more fruits and vegetables in it. It would be good if I did more cooking - I admit it, as far as the food I eat, I am little lazy. I do some cooking for breakfast, but it really isn't anything elaborate. I don't eat out too often, which is good, but still my diet could use some work. It would be nice if I made a habit out of cleaning out the interior of my car. Yes, I am going to try and change these things over the months and years to come.

The number one secret to making change is to do it slowly. You can try to change it all at once, but once your emotional fervor dies down you probably won't have the capacity to hold on to it. Pick the most critical habit for your success overall and go after it. The key here is consistency. You need to retrain yourself so that doing whatever this habit requires every day becomes standard procedure. If it was reading your bible in the morning, just read for 15 minutes to start with. Don't try to read for a really long time at the beginning; you don't want to set the bar so high that it disuades you from following through the next day. A little bit of patience goes a long way- don't expect to get amazing results right off the bat.

My prayer for you is that you will put the effort in to add new disciplines into your life. Good habits go far toward helping you sustain success when it comes. And the habits you have will dictate the character that is in you. If you are single, you will bring joy to your life through good habits and it will help you attract a mate. If you are married, upgrading your habits will help sustain your marriage and make your mate more content that they chose you. You might even like looking in the mirror more, enjoying who you are becoming. I pray that you will agree with me that the disciplined life is the way to live!

Your companion in Christ,
Sean