Are we disciplined enough to stay motivated or

motivated enough to stay disciplined?

Confusing? Following a discussion on Zen Habits about this really has got me thinking about these concepts.

Discipline seems to be connected with doing things most people dislike e.g. getting up early, training everyday. And for doing things a prolonged time. “He gets up at 05.00 for 15 years, he really has discipline”.

Motivation however seems to be connected with the initial act. People first starting out with something are motivated to try something new or are motivated by someone.

But is there really a difference between the two or are they simply different sides of the same coin? I believe the latter and I also believe they are part of something else…inspiration.

Going with the coin analogy; motivation is heads, discipline tails and inspiration the coin itself.

I will try to explain my thoughtprocess. One must first be inspired to change, through inspiration you are motivated to take action and continious motivation leads to discipline.

One does not exclude the other, I will go as far to say that they excist because of each other.

Knowing this we can also understand why changing our habits can be so challenging. If one of these three essential components is incomplete or missing the whole chain will eventually break and this happens all too often. In order to successfully change we must pay attention to our inspiration, motivation and discipline. We need all three and we need to make sure they stay strong, we need to nourish them.

Inspiration- Try to recreate that feeling you first had when you realized something needed to change, keep that feeling strong and let it empower you.

Motivation – Read up on successful changes others have made, emulate others as they too change, keep your motivation alive.

Discipline - With strong motivation and inspiration discipline is easy, effortless. Others will want to emulate you because you make changing look easy.

However here lies the catch, it may look easy but you now know that in order to make it look easy you have to work hard at keeping your inspiration strong and your motivation alive. It will take constant effort in order to succeed.

I’ve got a habit….

Or actually several…

Why is it that we are inclined to see a habit as something negative?

I mean there is nothing wrong with the habit of waking up early and eating breakfast, meditate and going for a run if this helps you to activate your day in a positive way.

Habits can help us streamline our daily lives and give a feeling of security. It only becomes a problem when we are no more in control of these habits, when they take over. The problem is that some of them will and we will not recognize when that happens. After all a habit is basically automated behavior, we are supposed not to think about it nor do we want to.

How can we recognize if a habit is beneficial to us?

The biggest clue that something is amiss has been given by asking yourself this question. If you find yourself regularly asking if doing this and that is really helping you than it is most likely not. It is really that simple and we all do this at one time or another.

Just a couple days ago one of my friends asked me if I found that checking your email every hour was too much because he felt that every time he got into a work-rhythm he just had to check his mail. All I asked was who was making him check his mail, turns out nobody but himself made him do it.

Obviously something he had known all along but just needed to hear from me. And we all do it, we ask our friends and loved ones these things that we know ourselfves but are too afraid to admit.

And there is nothing wrong with that, because this makes us realise that this is a habit that is not helping us and it needs to go. However giving up on a habit that we have had so long is not that easy. Not at all…

It takes reprogramming, we have to either unlearn certain behavior or learn new behavior. And the easiest way is to learn new behavior that we feel absolutely positive about.

We need to replace our old habit with one we are positive about because this one will benefit us. Let’s say that my friend wants to change his habit of checking his mail. If he tries to do it by thinking “I must not check my mail because i do it too much” he will probably do this a couple of days before reverting back to his old ways. If he tries it by thinking “I will check my mail at X o’clock because I will get my work done at a pace I like and I will have plenty of time to reply to my mail” he will be more likely to succeed than before simply because of the positive structure of his thinking.

We like to learn with as little effort as possible, so if you are able to keep up new behavior with less effort due to positive structuring you will be able to do this longer.

Hopefully long enough to create a new positive habit!