Fight for your limitations, and they are yours.

When presented with a new idea that is outside the boundaries of your own limitations, you set for yourself, do you automatically say, “I can’t do that?”  Do you strive to convince the presenter that you cannot do it?  Do you spend your energy defending your own limitations?

If you do, you will surely keep them.

Instead, you could envision how you might be able to do it – how you might be able to go beyond what you thought was your limit.  You could dig in and figure out how you could get there, instead of how you can’t.

Let’s try it.  Pick one of these things you have never done – 

Can you kayak down a river?

Can you change the tire on your car?

Can you fix the gutter that is hanging off your house?

Can you read a 300-page book and pass a test on it?

Can you learn to read a Profit and Loss Statement and a Balance Sheet?

Can you use an AI app to study how a bumblebee flies and have it create a one-page summary report on the subject?

Can you use AI to make a photo of yourself and your child in a rollercoaster car speeding down the track?

Can you get a surfboard and go surfing?

What does your brain say to things that are foreign and out of your self-imposed comfort zone? 

Do you fight for “no”?  Or do you figure out “yes”?

Discipline = Freedom

“Only the disciplined ones in life are free.  If you are undisciplined, you are a slave to your moods and passions.” – Eliud Kipchoge

It’s a paradox.  If you do whatever you want to do, you will run out of options and be forced to accept whatever you get – and that will not be much.

Do you know someone like that?

However, if you discipline yourself, you will have options. 

Options = freedom. 

You will be able to call the shots in your own life.  

I like self-discipline – because if I discipline myself and hold myself to a higher standard than anyone else does, then I will never have to be disciplined by anyone else.  I don’t like to be disciplined.  I don’t like when people have to tell me I am doing it wrong or have done wrong and am subject to penalties – even if that penalty is just someone else knowing I’m a slacker who didn’t do their homework.   

No way.  You don’t discipline me – I’ll do it myself.

I’m the boss of me. 

My character and self-discipline keep it that way.

How about you?

Tolerant of others, strict on yourself.

“In others, look for virtue.  In yourself, look for vice” – Ben Franklin

Look for the good in others, and look for areas you can get better in your own life.

If you do this, you will have many friends who are happy to see you, and you will be humble.  And after years of trying to fix or neutralize your flaws and improve your strengths, you’ll be pretty damn good.

It’s easy to see how living this the other way around can get you in trouble. 

If you “Looked for the flaws in others and the virtue in yourself”.  That’s not going to work out too well.  People will hate you as you think you are better than them (you aren’t) and you won’t be trying to get better.

In looking for virtue in others and vice in yourself, what you are doing is holding yourself to a higher standard than everybody else.

Meeting a higher standard than others is a good way to become better than average.

Don’t you think?

To be a success, self-discipline is necessary

You know what the right thing to do is to move yourself toward your goals, to be a good citizen and neighbor, to be healthy, and to advance your career.  But who is making you do those things?

As a grown adult – nobody.  You want to drive your life/health/career/relationships into the ground? Go ahead.  Nobody is there to tell you to eat your vegetables and take the garbage out.  

Only you can do that.

Some of us do the right thing when we feel motivated.  But motivation comes and goes.  Most days we do NOT feel motivated.  We want to do things that are pleasurable and that take the least energy.  

This is where self-discipline comes in.  Self-discipline is doing the things you know you should do, even when you don’t want to.

It’s called SELF-Discipline because only you can do it.  From the inner…comes your outer results.

You can look at someone’s life and tell the amount of self-control and self-discipline they have in various areas of their life.  You can tell what they value and a lot about their character.

“If you do not have the ability to discipline yourself, the seeds of greatness are not within you.”  W. Clement Stone 

Can you do the right thing day after day even when you don’t feel like it?

What are you good at?

When people are not good at anything, they do not feel good about themselves.

For example, we can be average at work, and not great at some things, but when we step on the basketball court, we are good, and we know it.  Guess what we find ourselves doing a lot? Playing basketball.  And we get even better.

When we are good at things, we feel good about ourselves.

What are you good at?

That is probably the source of a good deal of our self-esteem.

We all have the talent and capacity to be good at something. 

Find it.

Heal ourselves, heal everything around us

This is something I found true.

If I am troubled, I live in a troubled world.

If I am unclear, the world is too.

If I am hurting, sick, heartbroken, angry, or bitter, the world will reflect my ailments and be ugly or cruel or cloudy.

When I get well, the world does too.

As we heal ourselves, we heal each other.

As we heal each other, we heal the world.

After all, nobody talks to me more than I do.

I am my world.  You are yours.

When you heal, your world does.

When you come together, your world does too.

You go first.

Fear and faith

Both fear and faith ask you to believe in something you can’t see. 

You choose.

This is an important choice.  It could mean everything, and probably will.

Fear or faith?

You can’t change the people around you

You can’t change the people around you, but you can change the people around you.

If the people around you are holding you back, bringing you down, and not supporting your moving forward, change the people around you.

Your reference group, the people you associate with, has a LOT to do with where you end up.

Who are the five people you spend the most time with or listen to the most?

Hate hurts you

If you hate someone, then you are defeated by him. – Confucious

You know it’s true.  Hate is hurting you more than the other guy.  It’s eating you up inside, costing you valuable energy.

It’s draining your happiness.  

Let it go.

Stop tuning into voices that say you are right, reinforcing your hate.

Let it go – for your own sake.

Evolving beyond your friends

Most of us have friends who are about like us.  Same interests, same vocabulary, same habits, and same level of success.

We like people who are like us.  

The problem is they keep reinforcing a life that we already know the results of when we live it.  If we want more and better, we have to learn new things, talk in different ways, and take different actions.  We will have to give up (some or all) of the old activities in favor of something new that yields better results.

Many of our friends won’t like that.

They don’t like it when you evolve beyond their own comfort zone.  They don’t like it when you do what they are unwilling to do but know they should.  They don’t like it when you are doing better than them and making them look bad.  

There are exceptions.  A real friend who truly cares about you will want you to do better even if you leave them behind.

If you have friends who want to hold you down for their sake, you don’t have to tell them you are right and they are wrong, or say goodbye.  You don’t have to say anything at all.  Just stop hanging around them (so much).

You have a life to build.  Move forward.

And don’t worry, you’ll make plenty of new friends on the way up.