I am officially back from my hiatus and I'm ready to get back into the swing of things. Earlier this month, I decided that my theme for the month of February would be discipline. I have tried to remain disciplined in my daily struggles and, with the notable exception of when I was back in Iowa, have been doing a really good job maintaining discipline in regard to food and exercise. We have all commented on how discipline is, quite possibly, the most difficult hurdle to get over as we move forward in our lifestyle change. I've been trying to find ways to make self-discipline less difficult and easier to apply in my daily life and think I have stumbled across an interesting resource. In an effort to remain disciplined myself, I am going to break my blog up this week into 6 entries (much like the dude who I stole a lot of this from) did. Not only does it make sense to break it down this way, but it will also require discipline on my part to stick to my schedule.
When I went searching for self-discipline online today, my hopes were to find a good definition for this concept. Maybe it's just me, but often times I find it very difficult to truly define everyday ideas such as discipline. While I found a variety of definitions for self-discipline, most of which made it sound absolutely horrible, this is the one I found that best fits how I see it:
Self-discipline is the ability to get yourself to take action regardless of your emotional state.
I like this idea of self-discipline for many reasons but mostly because we are dealing with a lot of emotions in this journey and our emotions and attitudes tend to make a very large impact on the way we approach the task at hand. When life is easy (things are getting done, we're well rested, we're happy) it seems we are more capable of doing well. When things get tricky, we're stressed at work/school, our love lives suck, we're frustrated with friends/family/men, we lose our grip on the goals we have. I think that once we teach ourselves to say, 'hey, I don't care if my cow died and I got this funny rash on my right elbow, I still need to eat well and exercise,' we will be completely successful in our attempt at changing our lives. Now, just saying this is easy, putting these words into action is an entirely different matter.
If life were easy, none of us would be overweight anymore, we'd have mastered several languages, have perfect relationships etc. However, as we already know, life is not easy. So, if life is inherently difficult, how does one master the elusive art of self-discipline?!?!? We have to practice and work damn hard at it, that's how! The website I was on used a really good analogy that I'll share with you because it's something we can easily relate too. From the mind of someone far wiser than me:
My philosophy of how to build self-discipline is best explained by an analogy. Self-discipline is like a muscle. The more you train it, the stronger you become. The less you train it, the weaker you become. Just as everyone has different muscular strength, we all possess different levels of self-discipline. Everyone has some — if you can hold your breath a few seconds, you have some self-discipline. But not everyone has developed their discipline to the same degree. Just as it takes muscle to build muscle, it takes self-discipline to build self-discipline.
I really like this analogy because I feel that it is so relevant for us. This explanation allows us to be human. So many things in weight loss demand perfection...this is simply not feasible. We have to start small and build up our abilities. This holds true in all skills, whether we want to improve muscle mass, self-discipline, piano, basket weaving etc. we have to start with the fundamental/basic skills, master them and then continually add new challenges.
So, homework time (as if you don't have enough to do already). If you want to work on improving your discipline, join me in trying to build up your discipline muscles (does that sound dirty to anybody else?!?!?). I propose that we each pick 1, small thing to tackle this week as far as discipline is concerned. Don't make it earth shattering, just something that will require discipline. For me, I am going to crack down on my post dinner snack. While I have been doing really well, I have been allowing myself an illegal snack most nights. This week, I will not engage in post dinner snacking unless my stomach is literally growling at me.
OK, enough for today. Good luck ladies and stay strong!
2 comments:
First I have note that I brought up the goal of discipline as my New Year's resolution. Just an FYI that I have good ideas. Anyway, self-discipline is something I know I lack and have lacked for several years. My goal for today and the rest of the week or as long as I can make it go, is to not pig out for my dinner/supper. Usually I am so busy during the day that I eat good, small portions and sparsely. Then, I get home and I have all this time and food at my disposal so I act like a garbage disposal and eat and eat and eat. So my goal is to keep my last meal of the day under control and portioned. But do I HAVE to since it's my birthday?? Just kidding!!
Discipline...what a great topic. My discipline has sucked since after the new year. Quite frankly, I just need to start journaling my food intake again so I can visually see what's going into my body and so I develop more control over my portions again. My issue is at night when I'm bored, tired, lonely, busy, or all of the above. I started eating extra food again when I'm not truly hungry. And when I'm truly hungry, I over eat instead of eating a simple snack.
I do like the definition you posted Nicole. Especially since you're responsible for yourself DESPITE YOUR EMOTIONAL STATE. I always fall back on my negative emotions and use them as a crutch. I'm going to be sad, mad, lethargic, etc many times throughout my life so I have to learn how to deal with these emotions and not use food to feel better. I've really let myself slip due to my stress lately. I've put dieting/exercise on the back burner because I feel so negative about my thesis. I'm kicking myself for doing so.
Building self-discipline is like building up a muscle....excellent analogy Nicole. Excellent blog entry in general. I'll blog more in my actual blog entry instead of making this comment too long.
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