It’s hard to get things done, and I think the key to the struggle lies in discipline.
I don’t have much of it anymore, and I don’t think anybody else does either, by and large. I feel like I, and everybody else, has such enormous potential, yet I don’t feel like we’re reaching it. I don’t know that I can do anything about it for humanity at large–nor would I presume to such hubris–but I’d sure like to do better at getting out of bed in the morning and accomplishing my goals.
So I’ve been thinking about the subject, and I think that discipline itself isn’t quite so simple as this innate drive to do what has to be done.
You might say, “Well, I have discipline. I get up in the morning. I go to work. I make dinner. I honor my commitments. I don’t always want to do things, but I do them anyway.”
And maybe that’s true; I’m certain that different people have different levels of innate discipline, and that I might just struggle with it more. But I also think that, in a lot of our lives, what we have instead is perhaps discipline’s little brother, ritual. We do things by rote; we do things because we’re used to doing them, not through some sheer force of will.
But I don’t think it’s quite the same thing as discipline…