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The idea of discipline used to repulse me. It felt like I was forcing myself into a box I didn’t choose. In many ways, discipline equated to hate. I assumed self-disciplines were the same.
Instead, I stuck with setting goals.
But as my life progressed, I quickly realized that setting goals is one thing, and meeting them is entirely different (learn what has and hasn’t been working in my health here). Ironically, achieving my goals required self-discipline.
As I started to study self-discipline, I came upon a new understanding of discipline. One that is more about protection and purpose, even pushing you forward, and less about dictatorship and punishment. In all areas, growth requires self-discipline, which creates the action to birth the outcome.
I realized I needed to incorporate self-discipline to achieve my goals.
All good things in life take work. That work comes from healthy self-disciplines. But honoring that and even living it means you must change your view of discipline. I share more about that inside this podcast and the five self-disciplines that have changed my relationship with my husband, God, and myself.
Self-Disciplines OVER WILLPOWER
I used to attempt to achieve my goals by mustering up more willpower. I didn’t know it was the opposite of what you would assume. Willpower is not the catalyst of action, but it’s an action that produces energy to fuel willpower.
Willpower may keep you going, but it’s not the thing that will help you start.
When I learned there was a difference between willpower and discipline, I started to understand how to use both rather than attempting to muster up the willpower to live disciplined.
The key was learning to understand discipline, not as punishment or a means of forcing myself to do what I didn’t want to do, but from a place of protection and purpose. Discipline protects you from straying from your vision and path and moves you forward into abundance.
Basic self-disciplines can help you experience more of life by keeping you on a healthy path and, ultimately, one you enjoy.
Discipline is a form of healthy and positive desire.
Discipline is a form of healthy and positive desire. Again, it’s not about force but enjoying the outcomes of the actions you’re living to incorporate.
You don’t continue doing what you hate. You only engage with things you love or at least bring you comfort long-term.
I’ve experienced that over the last few years as I created a new vision of what discipline means and how I want to use it in my life. I aligned my desires with my disciplines to get my current practice of self-disciplines. They’re not as common as expected, but they create the foundation to do the rest.
5 (Uncommon) Self-Disciplines I’ve Incorporated
01. The Discipline of Creativity
I’ve realized it’s easy to get sucked into consuming and even comparing, so much so that I’ve lost the focus of creating. But when it comes to life, it’s a metric of what you make it or how you create it. If you want a better life or achieve different things, you must do something. You’re going to have to create it.
The same is true for health. You can’t consume more information and expect it to change you. The only way to change your health is by taking action.
Stop attempting a new system or the next program and start creating health in the way your body needs. Get creative with cooking, moving your body, and nourishing your whole self.
Things changed when I stopped looking at life in black and white and opened up to the vast array of colors within. When I started to see living and living healthy is more of an art and less of a system.
Get creative. It’s one of the best ways to keep taking action, making it part of your life. Plus, discipline without creativity can feel stale and unexciting. It can feel like a chore more than a desire, making you less likely to stick with it. The more I’ve let creativity drive my life in everything I do, the more I’ve done.
02. The Discipline of Letting Go
In the past, I was the epitome of a stuffer. I would shove every emotion and idea inside of me, assuming none of it mattered. However, I realized that shoving emotions in an attempt to ignore them was not making things better but worse.
Even when I didn’t realize it, I was living out of those emotions, and it often happened in the most unhealthy ways. Holding onto everything was only hurting me. It made me miss life right in front of me because I was so consumed and full of the things that were hurting me (or had been hurting me).
But through therapy, I realized holding onto things was hurting me more than it was helping me. It was preventing me from moving forward and living life. That’s when I learned the art of letting go.
The art of letting go is allowing emotions and experiences to move through you rather than get stuck within you.
I’m not perfect, but making this a discipline has changed the trajectory of my life. Every day, I ask what I need to let go of. What am I holding onto that I shouldn’t be? It doesn’t have to stop there, at letting go of the negative, but sometimes it’s letting go of something I own to help someone else. But in all cases, it’s for good.
03. Being Honest About How I Feel (All The Time)
It might be surprising self-discipline and certainly uncommon, but I’ve struggled in the past with being honest with my emotions. Again, it goes back to shoving them down rather than letting them go.
In the process, I had a hard time confronting my own emotions, even myself, making it especially difficult to be honest with other people about how I feel.
It’s uncomfortable to make known how you feel. It tends to lead to a lot of hard conversations. But people can’t help you, and you can’t help yourself unless you’re really honest about how you feel.
Understanding how you feel takes a level of self-awareness. That requires you to pay attention to yourself, not in a way that elevates you, but to understand yourself enough to bring about the best version. Pay attention. What is your body telling you? What is going on in your mind? Just because you feel it or think it doesn’t mean it has to be your reality. But it will be unless you do something to change it.
Every day, I’m working to understand how I feel—not to stay there but so I can move out of it, beyond the thoughts that hurt me and the ideas that hold me back, and into the life God intended for me.
04. The Discipline of Living Present
My verse of the year focused directly on the discipline of being fully present in the moment. It comes from Matthew 6:34:
If you’re anything like me, you’ve had a challenging time living in the present because you’re too consumed and worried about the future, most likely based on the story of your past. I’ve lived far too much of my life in the unknown and self-created story of my future and not enough time in the only space I can truly live, the present.
Nothing good comes from spending too much time worrying about the future. It just makes you miss the moment—the sense of groundedness—that supplies your peace.
Peace requires a sense of presentness, which means showing up to live in the moment. I still put a plan together for the future, but I hold it loosely, viewing the future in a positive light, not a negative, fearful one. The art of present living truly grounds me in an all-knowing God.
05. The Discipline of Holy Confidence (not self-confidence)
Confidence seems like an ever-elusive thing in life. That’s often because we define it as a place you arrive at, believing things like you’ll be confident once you hit your goal weight. But confidence isn’t a place. It’s a feeling.
The thing about feelings is that they’re a perspective built on what you believe. This means you can change your feelings by changing the lens through which you process your emotions. But doing so requires a strong belief system, creating a foundation that is without doubt.
Confidence is a steadfast belief. It doesn’t fail.
Contrary to popular belief, humans cannot provide the confidence to live out of our whole selves because we can’t offer the safety to get there. We have immense power, but it isn’t our power. It is a power supplied to us by something greater than us.
Understanding that power and living with it is the ultimate form of confidence.
But that only happens when you recognize that you, on your own, are not that powerful. Your power comes from God and fully believing in something greater than yourself. In many ways, this provides the ending to the story that becomes the ultimate form of protection.
You may not know what is next for you, but you know how it ends, allowing you to rest in the unknown of now.
Living confident means living out of a foundation built on God. True confidence, protection, joy, and power come from that and only that. That means daily remembering the one who is in control.
Confidence isn’t about yourself. It’s about someone greater than you. It’s a holy confidence.
(un)Common Self-Disciplines
Through these uncommon self-disciplines, I’ve developed more common ones. But it’s only because of these that those have become a joy and desire within my life.
That’s the power of uncommon self-disciplines. When you create the right ones, a few things can turn into an entirely different life, just like any cornerstone habit or action can. It’s the power of the domino effect. One thing always leads to another. The important thing is deciding what the right dominos are that you will focus on.
What self-disciplines have changed your life?
FOLLOW ALONG IN HEALTH SCHOOL TO LEARN MORE.
This podcast belongs to a larger series called Health School. A podcast devoted to teaching you health is much easier than you know, but that happens when you understand the foundations of how your body works and its connection to your mind and soul.
Get all of the remaining podcasts in this series here.
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