As a former competitive gymnast and child of a doctor and an Asian "Tiger Mom", discipline has been ingrained into me from a young age. Today, I would like to share my philosophy on work ethic and discipline and how one can acquire such a highly coveted quality.
Why do we need discipline in our lives? Why can't we just live a carefree lifestyle devoid of structure and responsibility? The answer is simple. Discipline is how you get things done. Discipline is the key to achieving your goals. Whether that goal is to earn a professional degree, become financially independent, compete at the Olympics, or simply to master a skill, discipline is the way to reach the destination. Without it, your goals and dreams are simply wishful thoughts. Discipline is what turns your dreams into reality.
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Identify your goal.
The first step towards becoming disciplined is to have a goal in mind. Without a goal to work towards, it is impossible to find the motivation to work hard. Discipline without direction is martyrdom. If I didn’t have a passion for dance and a goal to reach my greatest potential as a dancer in the fastest way possible, chances are, I wouldn’t have had it in me to wake up each morning at 5:00 a.m. before school to practice; to spend my lunchtimes in the school dance studio, practicing; to train for an additional four hours after school, and spend the rest of my evenings cracking the books. The power of a dream cannot be understated. A true dream possesses you, infiltrates every pore of your being. You hunger for that dream each and every waking moment. You can’t wait to wake up each morning, because you don’t want to spend a second away from chasing your passion. The very thought of achieving your dream brings your to tears. When there is a dream, there is a passionate flame. It is this fire that drives you to push yourself to the extreme. As a wise friend of mine once told me, “There is no concept of sacrifice when you are pursuing you passion.” You have to WANT something so badly that your drive to achieve surpasses the inevitable difficulties of getting there. My former piano teacher, an incredibly strict Russian man named Igor, is the embodiment of a disciplined soul. At age fourteen, he became famous all across Russia, performing solo concerts around the world. To get there was not easy, of course. As a boy, Igor would wake up every morning at 4:00 a.m. to practice before his classes. After school finished, he’d be back in the practice room, rehearsing until dinnertime- sometimes skipping dinner altogether. Igor had an all-consuming dream to be a world-class pianist. Failure was not an option for him- if he failed, he would starve. He wanted to be one of the best pianists of his time. He knew that the only path to get there was by following an extremely disciplined practice regimen. So, while discipline is a must for achieving goals, the converse holds just as true: you need a goal in mind to become disciplined.
Create a well-defined game plan.
Once you’ve set a goal for yourself, the next step is to create a plan to get there. Take, for instance, world-renown psychologist B.F. Skinner. While in graduate school, Skinner knew he was falling behind his fellow classmates. Determined to catch up, he set a strict daily regimen for himself: wake up, study, go to class, study until dinner, sleep. Not a single minute in his day was left unscheduled. He carved out no more than 15 minutes each day for downtime. Skinner undoubtedly followed a disciplined routine. He had a goal- to catch up academically- and set a strict regimen for himself to accomplish this goal. Not only did Skinner reach his goal- he went on to become one of the greatest psychologists of the 20th Century. Now, that is not to say that to be disciplined entails taking extreme measures, as Skinner did. However, once you have identified what you want to achieve, it is adamant to create an outline, a blueprint, a clearly defined plan, to get there. It is not enough to say, “I want to become a world-champion Latin dancer, so I will practice hard.” The term “practice hard” is much too vague. It doesn’t give you any clear instructions as to how to go about accomplishing your lofty goal. It’s like attempting to climb Everest without knowing the way up. A better plan would be this: "I want to become a world champion Latin dancer one day. I will start by getting up at 5:00 a.m. on Monday-Friday, and train until 7:00 a.m. My morning training should look like this: warmup with 10 lines of rumba walks, 10 lines of cha cha walks, 10 lines of samba walks, then pick a specific dance to focus on, and practice figures for twenty minutes. Then move on to rehearsing routines. I will break down each routine into 4 separate sections and repeat each section until I get it right." You see how much more specific this plan is, than simply, "practice hard"?
Be smart with your game plan.
In the past, I was strongly of the mind that the harder I work, the more I seemed to “suffer” to reach my goals, the greater the chance I will have of succeeding. As a gymnast, I’d push myself well beyond my physical limits, and keep going even when I really should have taken a break. I starved myself to achieve the ideal rhythmic gymnast body. This “no pain no gain” mindset is ultimately why I got injured and had to stop gymnastics. I was not thinking. I was just doing. While the “no pain no gain” model holds some degree of truth, I can’t say it is completely accurate. Working hard and working smart is the way to go. Being disciplined does not mean blindly putting in hours upon hours of energy into achieving your goals. You can’t study 24/7. You can’t grit your teeth through physical pain to keep on training. You can’t starve your way to bodily perfection. Energy is a limited resource, so it must be spent wisely. I suggest leaving some time each day for relaxation, so you can recharge before getting back to work. Even Skinner left 15 minutes to himself each day. Humans are not robots- we can’t keep speeding along at full force. So, when creating a plan to stick by, make sure you take into consideration your limitations, and respect them.
Stick to your game plan.
You will have down days. Days when you want to break from routine. Days when you don’t want to get up for practice. Days when you just want to quit your diet and stuff your face with chocolate cake. What differentiates those who succeed in attaining their goals from those who don’t, however, is one word: grit. Grit is the ability to persevere through difficulty. Most people give up when the going gets tough. Those who emerge victorious are the ones who fight through the hard times. Those who have the willpower and strength of character to keep pushing and keep climbing, even when the path gets rocky, are usually the ones who succeed. It is not enough to work hard for one or two weeks, then give up. Winners have an iron will and laser focus and stick to their regimens unwaveringly.
Keep tabs on your progression through your game plan.
When I planned to discipline myself to achieve my goal of becoming a great Latin dancer, the first thing I did was create a folder in Google Drive entitled "Latin Dance". Each day, I took detailed notes after practice or training. I'd write down what I had learned, what I had accomplished during practice, what things I needed to work more on, how I felt during my practice/lesson, and ideas on how to improve my training regimen. By keeping close track of your own progress, you are better able to see day-to-day progress, as results take the concrete form of words. Being able to see yourself improve is a huge motivator.
Seek guidance and motivation from a friend or mentor.
Your journey of disciplining yourself to achieve your goals is very difficult when performed alone. We all have days when we just want to give up... when we can't seem to find the inner strength to keep going. In times like this, it helps SO much to have an outside motivator- a parent, a coach, a teammate, a friend. So, if you want to train for a marathon, get a friend who’s interested to join you. Following a disciplined routine will be much less grueling if you have someone by your side.
Don’t wait to feel motivated to start working.
If you wait to feel motivated to get working, you will most likely never get anything done. When was the last time you were excited to study organic chemistry? Discipline is, simply put, sticking to the daily grind, even though you don’t want to do, because your desire to achieve supersedes present discomfort. Discipline is doing things you don’t necessarily want to do for future benefit. It is a form of delayed gratification. The good news is, once you get started on a dreaded task- be it studying, athletic training, or practicing piano- you are often able to ease into it. You eventually get into the flow state of mind- complete focus on the task at hand- and the initial pain of starting the task subsides. So next time you are faced with studying for that midterm, JUST DO IT. There’s no use in putting it off, for you’d simply be protracting your anguish. There will be days when the motivation runs dry and you feel like quitting. Know that it is completely normal to feel this way, and that it is adamant for you to keep going, even if you don’t want to.
When failure is not an option, discipline comes naturally.
As aforementioned, Igor was forced to live an incredibly disciplined lifestyle because he had no choice but to achieve success as a concert pianist. Let me tell you a similar story. It was summer of 2011 when I trained with the Chinese rhythmic gymnasts in Zhu Hai city in Guangdong province, China. I didn’t know true discipline until I met these girls. They woke up at 6 am each morning, went for a pre-breakfast run, ate breakfast, and began morning training at 8 am. Morning training lasted until 11:30 a.m. Then came lunchtime, followed by nap time until 1:30 p.m. At 2:00 p.m., afternoon training began, often lasting until 6:30 p.m. It’s straight to dinner after training, followed by downtime to close off the long, physically strenuous day. Lights out at 9:00 p.m. Repeat the same routine the next day. These girls trained six days a week, Monday through Saturday. Many were hand-selected from all over China to train and live at the sports institution. At the age of four or five, they were forced to leave behind their families and hometowns to train, in hopes of achieving Olympic glory. There was no option but success for each of these girls. If they couldn’t make it to the top, they would be sent home, often to poor families who couldn’t provide for them. Sounds like a tough lifestyle, doesn’t it? The common thread that ties together these disciplined individuals- Igor and the Chinese gymnasts- is the fact that they don’t give themselves the option of failure. If Igor failed as a pianist, he wouldn’t be able to support himself in Communist Russia. If these Chinese gymnasts failed to reach Olympic glory, they would be relegated to a life of poverty and minimal opportunity. When you only have a single path to success, the discipline will follow, because even entertaining the idea of failure is unacceptable. Now, most young people in America are blessed with the opportunity to go to college, where the doors leading to successful careers are endless. if you don’t make it as an artist or athlete, you can go back to school and earn a professional degree. This freedom is indeed a blessing… We don’t have to fight each day to survive, because we have a safety net beneath us. We can afford to relax a little… to not live in survival mode all the time. The problem is, many young people are lulled into complacency by this very fact. When the stakes are not as high to achieve success in something, people lose the hunger and drive to strive for personal greatness. In turn, they lose their self discipline. They let each day float by listlessly, instead of fighting every second to achieve their goals. So, here’s what I think. If you really want to get disciplined (and I’m talking long-lasting discipline, not those one or two week phases that eventually lead to relapses in relaxation and indulgence), you cannot give yourself the option of failing. Now, I use the term “failure” very loosely here. Things like getting fired from a job, underperforming in high stakes situations, or flunking out of organic chemistry all fall under the umbrella of “failure”, at least in this context. I understand that in failure comes opportunity to learn from our mistakes, and in real life, such situations I’ve named may not be perceived as true failures, but rather, experiences to be learned from. For argument’s sake, however, let’s just go with this pseudo-definition of failure- inability to achieve desired goals. Of course, for many of us, failure does not mark the end of the world. If we don’t get into our dream college, we won’t be relegated to a life of limited opportunity. But when you adopt the “success-only” mindset, you will remain hungry. When you tell yourself, “Failure is not an option”, you WILL work your hardest to achieve your goals, whether it’s learning a new language, getting an A in a difficult class, winning a competition, or writing a book. On days when the motivation runs dry, as it inevitably will, you tell yourself, “I don’t have any option but success.” Perfect cure to a motivation dry spell. This mindset does not allow you to grow complacent. No time for idleness or engaging in vices. You have a job to get done, for failure is NOT an option. Now, I will be the first to say that this “nothing but success” mindset is not for everybody. It’s really a lifestyle choice… Some may value relaxation and partaking in life’s pleasures and spending time with loved ones more than achieving goals. Some may desire a nice equilibrium between a life of discipline and a life of fun. Some may have reached their goals already and can afford to revel in their past years of hard work. I am not denigrating any of these lifestyles, or implying that a spartan life of militaristic discipline is the best way to live. But for those who are looking to up their discipline game because they are hungry to achieve… hear this. It is more difficult for those blessed with opportunity to adopt the “nothing but success” mindset because of the simple fact that they don’t have to. Because failing does not mean starvation, or even death. In turn, motivation to succeed must stem solely from within. You won’t go hungry if you don’t get into your dream university. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still fight and try your best to get into that university. In a land of opportunity, we have the freedom to choose our battles. So choose wisely. Set goals you are passionate about, and discipline yourself into achieving them. I won’t lie- discipline is never a 100% guarantee to success in achieving your goals. Unfortunately, we don't live in a perfect meritocracy where everyone who works hard achieves their success. There are just too many outside factors in play. But disciplining yourself sure as hell maximizes your chances of achievement… and teaches you character and perseverance in the process.
Read more about how to attain self-discipline here.
