On Discipline+Habit

I was raised in a military family where order and discipline were instilled in me daily. “The way you do one thing is the way you do everything” was the teaching and unsurprisingly I was not always a willing participant as a child nor teenager. What sounded most times as nagging was truly some of the best guidance I could have ever received in this lifetime. And let me tell you- these teaching were not only drilled into me by my parents, they were repeated by my grandparents and Aunties and Uncles. As part of a very large and close-knit Pacific Islander family, I had many adults teaching me the ways.

Naturally I adapted and followed suit and those teachings of order and discipline eventually became my own way and have served me well in work and in personal pursuits.

I do plan to go deeper on the word discipline alone but for the sake of this post, simplifying the word discipline to the word “habit” may help make it feel more possible. In general I believe that people would like to be more disciplined but it likely sounds like too much of a task, more work to do or incredibly boring. Sometimes yes, being disciplined about some things do feel this way. But what I know, truly know, is that eventually, through a consistent practice of discipline, whatever it is you are being disciplined about eventually becomes a habit if you stay the course.