Tony Robbins, a life coach, and who I see as a personal development guru, showed on his Netflix documentary, I Am Not Your Guru, how he plunges into a dunk pool of 57-degree water

before he starts his day or does a speaking/coaching event.  Yikes! I don’t know if I could do that. I get antsy jumping into a pool in the summer, knowing it might be chilly. That takes a crazy amount of discipline, the D word.

According to Collins Dictionary, “Discipline is the quality of being able to behave and work in a controlled way which involves obeying particular rules or standards.”

Another definition is, “Discipline is the practice of making people obey rules or standards of behavior, and punishing them when they do not.” I am using the first one since the second one does not apply here.

To me, discipline is the act of being aware and then focusing on the actions that serve us in the best way.

Challenging negative and irrational thinking and focusing on better thoughts takes discipline. I’ve been doing this, and it takes determination and a true desire to change your thinking for good; trust me, it’s tough but worth it. If you truly want to change your life, you need to develop discipline with your thoughts.

It’s so easy just to let my mind wander and do what it has always done. That’s not getting me anywhere. I’m noticing more and more the negative (wrong learned messages) thoughts that come into my mind, and I have to think (and sometimes say out loud) “Stop!” and put a good thought in its place. Yesterday, I was thinking about one of my goals, and a negative thought popped in, “What if it never happens?” I was like, where the hell did that come from? And I thought, STOP! JUST STOP THIS NONSENSE! I’m just grateful that I see it now and am doing something about it.

We need discipline when we choose to be: loving instead of angry, kind instead of acting like a jerk,  compassionate instead of judgemental. Our ability to choose a better path relies on discipline because sometimes doing the right thing is tough, and we have to make ourselves do it.

We know we need discipline to exercise our bodies. Movement keeps things working properly in the body. The trick is not seeing exercise as a punishment or chore but as a necessary action to improve our lives. Just like your car needs good oil pumping through it to function well, our bodies need to get our blood flowing, and exercise does that. Putting good food into our bodies is also necessary for better health.

I need the most discipline with sweets. I forgo sugar in my coffee with no problem and drink water with lemon instead of soda, but I love certain goodies I make! Recently, I’ve been making blueberry cobbler. Dear God, it’s so freaking good. Then I give it to my parents, and I don’t know if they should be eating that stuff, but they love the goodies too. Gee, I wonder where I got it from.

It takes discipline to love ourselves and to know what’s best for our lives. We need discipline to override guilt, anxiety, shame, low self-esteem, or low self-worth. Think about it. To improve your self-worth, you must take action to help yourself see your value. For me, it’s writing this blog. And it doesn’t matter if one person or a thousand people read it. I’m doing it to put it out there, knowing it will find its way to the eyes who need to read it.

I think the most important thing in our lives is that we love ourselves. When we love ourselves, we are happy. It’s true. Happiness is an inside job, as the saying goes. Loving ourselves means that we are okay with who we are, where we are in life, who is in our lives, and that we are enough. Loving ourselves means that we can love others with a deep connection and feel the love radiate back to us in a healthy way.

When we decide to improve our lives, we need discipline to achieve whatever we desire. Discipline will get us up in the morning when the alarm goes off and give us the desire to take care of our bodies to feel and look our best. Discipline will get us off our butts to do something physical, even if it’s walking up and down your steps. And discipline can help keep the healthy thoughts in our minds and keep away the ones that hold us back, the creepy ones that make us doubt ourselves. We’ve got to be firm and say no to any thought that doesn’t serve us well. And it’s going to take a fair amount of discipline.

But once you start to do something, it’s not so bad, right? We moan and groan at things that don’t need the drama. Just do the thing. It’s not that hard.

I know I have a lot of work to do on the level of discipline I have. I used to have a lot of it with my body, where I exercised, ate well, and was in great shape. However, I allowed injuries to sideline and depress me. That’s not good. But it’s so easy to do! I have had an excuse. Well, that hasn’t served me well, so the alternative is to reach inside and find the discipline to move – any way I can. And guess what? When I do move, I feel better, and my self-esteem rises. It can happen to anyone, too.

Don’t let the D-word scare you. Start small with it, and you’ll keep strengthening the discipline muscle like lifting weights. You don’t expect to lift heavy weights from the beginning of starting an exercise routine. No, you start with lighter weights and move up from there. Your discipline muscle works the same way. Once you develop discipline, it overflows into all parts of your life. Your relationships will improve with yourself and others. We all deserve that!

Thank you for reading this, and I hope I’ve inspired you to find one area of your life you can use more discipline to change a behavior to better your life. We all want to be happy, even if we don’t think about that through the clouded mental clutter of yesterday’s junk. We do. And we can give ourselves that gift. It might take a bit of discipline though. But we are worth the effort!

To Being More Disciplined,

Francesca