In my own experience in having casual conversation with people concerning health, diet, fitness and anything related, as I love to do, it seems that most people express a desire to take their physical condition or composition to the next level but very few are willing to do the work it takes to get there. Instead, they complain. They complain about their weight or their often reversible health ailments. I reached a point where I remember starting to feel frustration when having these casual conversations. The thought came to me, this is one of my favorite topics so why should other people’s lack of discipline and complaining frustrate me? In addition, I couldn’t forget that there was a time when self discipline was not exactly one of my strong suits.

Its my belief that many of us mistake motivation for discipline. This can typically be seen every January with all the new years resolutions. Gyms are packed with people around this time of year excited and determined to loose the fat, build the muscle develop a cleaner diet etc. They’re going all in until around March. That’s when the excuses piled up. That’s when life got in the way so to speak and that 4 to 5 time a week work out routine died down to nothing. What is the reason for this pattern? Initial motivation is easy to come by. Its the hype and the novelty of a thing that maybe came about through a powerful and dynamic speaker you listened to or maybe you saw something on TV. Maybe an idea just got drummed up between chit chatting friends. Either way, this easy to come by motivation feels good, but what most of us don’t realize is that initial motivation is just that… initial. Its a kick starter and yes it makes the start of any journey exciting and even fun but it is the self discipline that will keep us on that journey when things get hard. When we start a path towards health and fitness, we make the mistake of hanging it all in the initial motivation and not realizing that while good, it does ware away and therefore cant be the main component of staying driven. What should be the main component which most of us don’t have is self discipline.

Perhaps we don’t realize how key self discipline is to success with anything in life including health and fitness goals. I would venture to say that most of us tend to loose sight of the goals we set in the first place and start to focus on how hard things are presently getting. We forget that this setback or failure on our journey is only temporary or that the feel good dopamine rush from that donut is only temporary and does last as long as the fat crappy state we live most of our lives in. Instead of eating mindlessly, ask your self are 10 or 15 feel good minutes worth the unhealthy physical bodies that most of us live in? When you consciously decide what you want more between that and living in a body that will give you a better quality of life, the likelihood is that tempting crappy food will no longer be that tempting and self discipline will become more friend than foe. Through self discipline we choose actions that are beneficial to us instead of ones that feel good for 10 minutes but harm in the long run. So, my wild idea is to love your self by embracing self discipline.