Self-discipline is Freedom
"You can't cheat the farm" says Covey.
You can learn a lot from the natural world. Nature provides us with a seemingly infinite repertoire of solutions to our human problems - from medicine to learning how to fly.
Yet, as humans we tend to believe we can short-cut the process. Rather than labour diligently in watering and nurturing our skills we'd prefer the shortcut.
When we think habit we often think of trying to kick smoking or a nervous tick. We rarely talk of habits outside of the pejorative. Yet, when you grow up there is one book I truly wished I had read earlier - Stephen Covey's "7 Habits of Highly Effective People".
I know a lot of people have tried to read it and have dismissed it. Why? Because it was too much work. You'll hear them talk about "The Secret" and other self-help silver bullets that involve improvement only at the superficial level.
Habits are your foundations. All you are is what you do on a regular basis. Habits are "uncool" because they require exercising the D-word - discipline - and when you talk to people of the D-word they visualize authoritarian teachers and parents.
Self-discipline is, however, freedom. As Aristotle said "Discipline is remembering what you want". See how those who lack discipline spend their lives unsure of what exactly it is they want out of any given scenario and constantly grasp at new ideas and "the next big thing".
Your strength of your ability to exercise and control your thoughts is the distance between your freedom and your lifetime bondage to blame, other people's agendas and opinions.
As Goethe said "things that matter most should never be at the mercy of the things that matter least". As you grow and get to know people in the professional domain see how many people's lives exist in the whirlwind; busy-busy, firefighting, always "bouncing" somewhere, dealing with some crisis, spinning plates and ultimately achieving nothing.
"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing" as Covey says is the ultimate challenge - the truest test of our integrity. Maturity at this level releases us from the terror of deriving our security from the outside - from labels, from isms, from signposts and the opinions of others.
When we are able to exercise these 7 habits effectively we are liberated from a life of fire-fighting yet most people you meet will inevitably see the uphill effort required to conduct such interior work as too much effort and settle for the quick fix, the 60 minute synopsis, the success-in-a-box formula, or weekend course.
80/20 and Pareto will mean absolutely nothing to you, but what will resonate is that 95% of the people you meet spend their lives keeping themselves busy, keeping themselves insulated from the "main thing". They work harder, longer and experience far more stress than you but ultimately still spend their lives at the mercy of others.
The difference between you and them is your ability to exercise self-discipline and these habits.
