Discipline should be easy - so why isn’t it?

Health needs to be your number one value. Here's why.

People associate discipline with doing hard things - but what if it didn’t have to be that way?

The word discipline comes from the Latin for disciple or follower.

So, someone who is disciplined is simply a disciple of their values.

But discipline is hard

When we were children, our values were set for us by our parents, teachers, and society in general. When we did not follow these values we were 'disciplined' to keep us in line or we were told we ‘lacked discipline’.

Discipline was therefore seen as hard or bad as we struggled to conform.

As adults, we can set our own values and it follows that when we assign something importance, we make it a priority and it feels relatively easy.

However, most of us do not set our own values. We mindlessly take on the values of those around us, and because they are not our own we find them hard to follow - just like when we were children.

What do you value?

Check your calendar for the last week or so - what did you spend your time doing? This gives you a pretty good indication of what is important to you.

Often ‘making money’ is at the top of the list. This is what society values and what we’ve been conditioned to believe.

Naturally, things lower down your hierarchy suffer. They feel like they require ‘discipline’ or that they are hard to fit in, where actually they just need to be placed higher up your list.

Bandwidth is limited

This really hits home when things on top of your list take up so much bandwidth that you end up sacrificing other things in life that you’ll end up regretting e.g. family or your health.

One solution is to re-organize your value hierarchy as noted but this doesn’t solve the bandwidth issue, which is invariably limited and so to truly win at life, this reshuffling is not enough.

Create leverage

When building a business - there are ways of creating leverage to free up your bandwidth. You can hire people or use software or systems to get more done.

This allows you to put things on autopilot and therefore win in many areas at once.

However, the problem with putting money at the top of your hierarchy (like most of us do) is that it is infinite and so instead of using systems to free up time for other things, we use leverage to create MORE money.

And because we are often chasing money for the wrong reasons (and society validates us for this), no amount will ever be enough. This is reflected in Bronnie Ware’s study into the regrets of the dying where most people regretted “working too much”.

Now, there is nothing wrong with making a fuck ton of money but it has to be put in the correct context in life.