The Heart of Discipline

I think of discipline in my life as a process of alignment and refinement.

My first responsibility is to bring all the parts of myself into alignment. Not perfection, but alignment. My beliefs aligned with who I want to be. My behavior aligned with my beliefs. My impact aligned with the intent of my behavior. These are some core examples of where I create alignment.

Feel free to borrow from these as well as create your own.

My second responsibility is to refine the elements of my alignment as I learn from experience. I will experience success and failures, smooth execution and sloppy, intended outcomes and unintended. Some previously strong beliefs will lose their purpose and some previously strong disciplines will lose their effectiveness. 

Nothing stays fixed forever. Work to bring things into alignment. Work to refine them and bring them back into alignment as you learn from experience. That’s the heart of discipline.

Everything is training for something. Do the work.

PS - Where do you want or need alignment in your life where you currently don’t have it? 

Where do you need to refine to get back into better alignment? Reply to this email with your answers.