5 Principles of Personal Discipline
A certain amount of personal discipline and drive is critical for success in both business and life. A couple of years ago, I spent time with Warren Rustand, an exceptional individual, who shared with me how he stayed focused and motivated. His principles of personal discipline have guided me through over a decade of entrepreneurial success.
1. Commit to Personal Discipline
Discipline will go as far as your willingness to follow through with it. Do what resonates with you and stick to it. Warren’s simple daily habits included waking up and spending ten minutes reflecting and feeling grateful, ten minutes reading something inspirational, and then another ten minutes writing in his journal before embarking on a half-hour of exercise.
I am a big believer in maintaining positive habits like exercise, a regular massage, and getting the big things done first. Stick to simple, healthy routines. They help you build momentum and remind yourself that you’re capable of consistency and meeting challenges.
2. Live with Purpose, Every Day
Charles Lindbergh made the first solo Atlantic flight in 1926. When he landed in Paris, he made the following observation: “We live today actually, in our dreams of yesterday, and so by living today we live to dream again”.
People we deem successful have often reached that point by having a dream and then taking incremental steps toward realising that dream. Visualising where you want to be is the first step to getting there. Such a dream gives meaning to every day. It makes smaller, incremental progress feel important rather than trivial and gives you the accountability you need to fuel your commitment.
3. Act with Intent
Visualising and strategising are critical. The way we live is not just a random sequence of events. It’s heavily influenced by our thoughts and our actions. Be proactive rather than reactive. Actively define success for yourself every single day, for both your long-term and short-term goals. Doing so will impact your chances of success.
4. Make Conscious Decisions
We have the power to shape our approach to each day. We can choose happiness when those around us are cynical or apathetic. Life is about the choices we make in the time that we have.
5. Have a Cause Greater than Yourself
You can measure someone’s character by how they treat the people who can neither help nor hurt them. Those who are motivated only by what others can offer them may not be there when you need them.
If someone has no power to influence us in any way, we must choose whether we help them. It is our empathy, rather than an external influence, that dictates that decision. In business as in life, you will likely someday find yourself on both sides of that dynamic, and people tend to remember how you treated them when the tables were turned. Compassion has a way of coming back to us.
These concepts are eloquently captured in the words of Rabbi Harold Kushner:
“Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it.”
