Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

Study anyone who has achieved a measure of greatness, from the CEOs and entrepreneurs who have built wildly successful businesses to the best mothers, fathers, teachers and poets and you will be studying discipline in motion. Discipline is the cornerstone of self-mastery. Self- discipline is a fundamental virtue to inner-power. Discipline is the source, the wellspring that lets you live the life that you deserve. You must strengthen your inner core if you are truly dedicated to manifesting your highest potential for personal and professional success. With discipline, you will possess the inner fire needed to focus on your primary goals and realize your dreams.

The Real Secret of Discipline

I define discipline as the virtue that gives you the courage and the inner resolve to do what you said you would do - when you said you would do it. Discipline is all about promise keeping. I am not talking only about those promises you have made to others such as your promise to your wife about the vacations that you will be taking hero or your promise to your boss that you will become a better worker, for example. I am also talking about the promises that you make to yourself; those small daily resolutions ranging from the promise to read thirty minutes a day to a personal commitment you have made to raise the standards of your work at the office.

Discipline means that you take time away from the little emergencies which seem to eat up your day to kindle the fire of self-mastery. Discipline means that you get up early to go for a run on a freezing winter's day because you made this one of your personal mastery milestones and you are dedicated to raising the level of your physical fitness. Discipline means that you refuse an invitation to go out to a party on Saturday night because you had planned to review your goals and refine your purpose statement and think deeply about where your personal, professional and spiritual life is going. Discipline is having the power to turn off the TV and go into your study to read some of those books that you know will truly improve your effectiveness. Discipline is having the bravery and the inner-strength to stop giving so much time to the unimportant things in your life and to start directing your energy to those high-impact activities which will truly make a measurable difference in the richness of your life.

Integrating the habit of discipline into your days takes effort, willpower and courage. Having the discipline to follow through on the life goals you have set for yourself and living the kind of life you have imagined in your mind's eye is a very brave way to live. It is a very noble way to live. It is also a very liberating way to live because you have become the master of your own life. You begin to take control of your destiny. It's the source of great enlightenment. You set your course and then you have the resolve to follow it. And this also leads to tremendous amounts of confidence because you realize that you alone are the influencer of your life and if you don't like what you see, you can change it. You shape your circumstances rather than letting them shape you. You become the master of your life rather than letting life master you.

Building Discipline

How do you build self-discipline? The principle can be stated in nine words: put off short term gratification for long term satisfaction. You build discipline by sacrificing what is easy to do for what is right to do. When you put off doing what is impulsive, those things that simply feel good in the moment but offer no long-term benefits and start doing what your heart tells you is good, you start to build discipline. When you do the things you don't like to do but know you should do, you build discipline. This is the seed of greatness. 

The top performers on the playing fields of business and life continuously raise their standards. They realize they are bound for glory and destined to actualize the full extent of their personal genius. So they have done their inner work and are focused on achieving personal excellence. They know that they are here for a life of meaning and action. Leaders have the wisdom to understand that self-mastery comes one day at a time. And the days slip into weeks. And the weeks into months. And a time comes when those small, daily improvements in their discipline levels have created extraordinary results in life quality.

3 Lessons For Creating Self Discipline

1. Finish What You Start

As a Professional with many competing demands on our time, it is essential that we, at all times, have the strength of will to follow the daily plan I have set for ourself and concentrate only on those pursuits which are central to my mission. To cultivate the kind of discipline required to be able to do this, a philosophy that I apply in my own life is to finish what I start. This simple practice is enormously effective because, in practicing it, you are no longer a slave to your weaker impulses which silently prod you to take the path of least resistance and quit before your goal is reached, no matter how small that goal may be. Instead, you are in full control of your self and use your inner power to accomplish worthy ends, whether this means completing a hot new book on creativity, learning a new language or growing a dynamic business.

2. Be Silent

The Buddhist monks have a favorite strategy to build willpower - one that has been used by many cultures over the years to build enormous amounts of inner-strength and resolve. It is the vow of silence. You might wonder how would staying quiet for days on end build willpower? It is because you are exerting force on your will. You are not giving into the impulse telling you to talk. You made a promise and set a goal that you would be silent for a few hours or maybe even a full day and then you had the courage to keep this promise. And this courage and capacity quickly spills over into every other areas of your life. Following through on this small goal builds your capacity to follow through on larger goals like managing your time more efficiently or building richer relationships or mastering your physical endowments. Speaking your goals is important..but having the resolve to be silent is equally important.

3. Get Up Early

Early rising is one of the key life habits of so many of the highly successful people I have studied from Ted Turner to Nelson Mandela. In my own life, I've now trained myself to get up before 6 am since I have found that rising at this time allows me the time I need to write peacefully and think deeply Without a doubt, it's one of the best things I do for myself. But I earned the rewards that I have received from getting up early. 

Above all else, however, the real key is to appreciate that discipline in your outer world comes from a disciplined inner-world. And a disciplined innerworld comes from thinking correct, inspiring, disciplined and enlightened thoughts. Your thoughts form your world.