Author: Joe Van Deuren

The third component was best summed up by Winston Churchill when he said, “Success is going from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.” In one word that would be PERSISTENCE. The majority of those that we would consider to be highly successful are also ones that suffered setbacks, one after the other. But due to their persistence they were able to achieve what they set out to do.

Persistence is something that you have to set your mind to from the very beginning. When you begin with a great deal of motivation and self control, it is persistence even in the face of failure that you will experience self discipline and have success in reaching your goals.

Persistence does not come off the shelf, it cannot be bought – but it is inside each of us already. What keeps some from persisting though is fear of failure, what others might think or how they may look foolish in the eyes of their peers.

So now we have self control, motivation, and persistance and in our next post the final component. You will be surprised by this one as there is a difference in personal _____ and self discipline _____.

Part one: Self Control

Part two: Motivation

Part four: Setting Goals

In developing self discipline the second of the four key factors or components is motivation.  If there is no motivation to reach the goal we have set, then disciplining or regulating ourselves to accomplish this goal becomes much harder to do and it is far more likely that we will stop and not reach our goal.

If the motivation is external as in, you have to go to work-not because you want to, you have to study for a test-so your parents do not get mad, you go on a diet because your doctor/friend/spouse says you should, it is not likely that you will be motivated to be disciplined in the efforts.

However if you have a strong enough WHY you are doing your job, studying in school, eating healthy, that strong motivation of why will create a self-discipline that would be very difficult to break.

All of us are motivated in different ways but if we are having trouble with motivation to be disciplined on a specific task or goal, one way putting some pressure on ourselves is to tell our friends and others about the goal that we have and allow them to help us stay the course.

Finally in regard to our children, we may not be sure what motivates them, but our goal is for them to find their motivation from within.  With that in mind, external rewards and praise for winning / medals / grades and other external things are less important than helping them to see the results they get with great effort and self discipline.  Praising that in our child will help them to continue on the path of self discipline.

Part one: Self Control

Part three: Persistence

Part four: Setting Goals

At the beginning of each of our classes we say to ourselves and in the hearing of others, “We are going to control our mind, our body and our mouth”.  From time to time I will ask the students, “Which is the hardest of all of these?” and they will almost always reply, “Our Mouth!”.  When we are young we learn about the need to keep our hands and feet to ourselves, how and when to keep our voices down at the appropriate time, but the mouth is the one that stumps us over and over again – no matter our age.

Most of us – especially me – have blurted something out, said something without thinking that we later wished we had not thought in the first place and if we did that we had not said out loud.  Unfortunately there is no string that we can take the words back.  We do this when we are young and when we are older, and we do it most often to the ones we love the most, our family and closest friends.

The catalyst of most of these words are tones of voice, certain verbiage of others, things that trigger strong reactions.  When we examine closely many times it comes from things that we are not comfortable with and or feel ‘less than’ about (our authority, reminder of something we do not like about ourselves, reminder of past experiences), it can be anything.  But in the end most hard feelings, harsh words, arguments, fights, physical attacks begin with words spoken – that if given the opportunity we would take back, after we thought about the consequence.

I write about these things as a reminder to myself to use self-control, think before speaking, look at the pro and con for saying anything and a reminder to use empathy.  How would I feel if another person said this, used this tone, or acted in this way to myself.  As I work on this, I ask that you join me in our attempt to use ‘discipline’ in every aspect of our life, especially with the most most dear to us.