eBusiness Weekly
Arthur Marara
As the famous motivational speaker Jim Rohn once said, “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments.”
No matter how many talents or skills you possess, without discipline, achieving your goals can seem insurmountable. Self-discipline is a crucial attribute that sets peak performers apart from those who struggle to succeed.
In fact, it can be the determining factor in whether you are successful or unsuccessful in reaching your goals. By honing your self-discipline, you can unlock your full potential and achieve the success you desire.
Discipline is essential in all aspects of life, including personal and professional domains. It is especially crucial in business as it can have significant implications for the success or failure of a company. In fact, discipline can be seen as the cornerstone of a successful business.
In any business setting, there are numerous factors that can distract you from your goals — unexpected challenges, competing priorities, and even your own impulses. Without self-discipline, it can be easy to lose focus, become overwhelmed, or make impulsive decisions.
On the other hand, developing self-discipline allows you to stay committed to your goals, even when faced with obstacles or distractions. It helps you stay motivated, maintain productivity, and make sound decisions that align with your goals.
Moreover, in a business setting, having discipline includes creating routines and processes that allow you to work efficiently and effectively.
It means following through on commitments, meeting deadlines, and holding yourself accountable for your actions. All these qualities build trust and credibility with your colleagues and clients, which can have a significant impact on the success of your business.
In life, discipline is just as important. It helps you set priorities, make good choices, and develop healthy habits. Practicing self-discipline in your personal life can promote self-improvement, which can lead to greater satisfaction and happiness.
Discipline is crucial both in life and in business. It helps you stay focused, motivated, and productive, and ultimately enables you to achieve your goals. By prioritising discipline and making it a habit, you can unlock your full potential and achieve success in any area of your life.
Increase your discipline
“Strive to increase order and discipline in your life. Discipline usually means doing the opposite of what you feel like doing. The easy roads to discipline are setting deadlines; discovering and doing what you do best and what’s important and enjoyable to you; focusing on habits by replacing your bad habits and thought patterns, one-by-one, over time, with good habits and thought patterns”(Dave Kekich).
The difference between successful and unsuccessful people lies in their level of discipline. The difference between goals and accomplishment is discipline. Discipline is an ability to force yourself to do what you do what you are supposed to do even though you do not feel like doing it.
There is no success without pain. Reading a good book, might not be easy, but discipline tells you, you have to do it, going for a jog might not be easy, but discipline forces you do it for the sake of your health, staying indoors while others are partying every weekend might not be easy, but discipline forces you in so that you can focus on yourself, switching off that television might not be easy, but discipline tells you, you are watching other people work. Discipline entails going against what is convenient now in order to create what is long lasting in the future.
Discipline births habits
With discipline comes habits. It has been scientifically proven that you need 21 days to develop a new habit. What this means is that you have to commit yourself for the next 21 days to do something repeatedly and then you have a new habit.
Aristotle the Greek Philosopher once said something very profound, “We are what we repeatedly do excellence then is not an act, but a habit.” The interesting words there are, “repeatedly do”.
You are what you repeatedly do. What you repeatedly do can either raise you or bring you down. You can be disciplined to do the wrong thing or you can be disciplined to do the right thing.
Many people have become serial liars by simply lying daily about basic things including where they are, what they are doing and even time on the watch. What are you repeatedly doing? Peak performance is also a habit! Do what is easy, and life will be hard on you, do what is hard, life will be easy on you.
Discipline audit?
For a moment I want you to think, and travel back into your life. If you had been more disciplined in life, where will you be by now? Where would you be now had you been more financially disciplined? The devil is not necessary your problem, indiscipline is. In life you can only go as far as your discipline takes you.
The majority of problems the world is facing today are discipline problems. Financial indiscipline has led many people and companies to bankruptcy, time management issues have cost some people their jobs, and infidelity issues have cost people their marriages and relationships.
There are so many areas people have failed to be disciplined. Discipline brings order to your life, your business, your family, your church and any organisation that you may be part of.
Success is not an accident!
“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort. (Paul J. Meyer)”. Peak performance is not an accident, it is a choice. You do not wake up to find yourself and your team peak performers. It’s a conscious decision that you have to make and manage till you get the result that you want.
Success and failure are predictable. Success is not an accident, and it will never be an accident. Failure as well is not an accident, and will never be an accident. Successful people have however arisen from accidents and made history.
What this means is that I can look at a business and I will tell you that it is going to succeed or fail. How do you do that, you simply look at the choices and actions they are taking.
Success people do not wait for the climate to improve, they create their own climate. Successful people do not wait for “things to improve”, they rather improve themselves. Peak performance is deliberate, and intentional.
Success is never for a chosen few, it is for the few that choose. Are you making the choice for success in 2023? I do not know what your goals are for 2023, but I am very convinced that you can be a success story if you make the deliberate choice to be successful.
There is no shortcut to success
“There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.”(Beverly Sills). We live in dangerous times, where people want overnight breakthroughs. Some people go as far as “seeding” for the breakthroughs for overnight success.
The tragedy that will befall any church or any society is the moment that we start to teach and preach “shortcuts” to success.
This even seems to be the trend in Zimbabwe as I write now. Look at every poster for a crusade, the selling attractions are related to “financial breakthroughs”, jobs after deliverance, and marital happiness among other things.
If you also want to start a church, structure it along prosperity lines and you will have crowds of people coming after you. Do you know why? We are a shortcut generation; we want wealth without work, a good life without sacrifice.
Some people have been conned of their hard earned cash through pyramid schemes because they wanted returns quickly. There is no shortcut to success! Be prepared to walk and work the journey.
Success is a journey
Success is not an overnight walk. Many a times we put ourselves under unnecessary pressure by comparing ourselves to people whose source of income we are not aware of. Never admire a person who cannot account for the source of their wealth.
Why? You may ask that question. The answer is very simple; there is nothing much to learn. I respect people who can sit down with me and tell me the steps, and the journey that they walked to get to where they are.
There are so many unorthodox ways to make money. Never make money at the expense of your integrity.
Success is a journey.
Many people want to be successful, but very few people are prepared to walk the journey. Success is a response to laws. If you study the laws of success, and follow them you will be successful regardless of your race, creed, religion and gender. If you want to be successful, commit yourself to studying successful people and do what they did you will be successful.
Join me on Star FM on Wednesdays (09:40am-10:00am) for some moments of inspiration on the Morning Galaxy with V Candy.
Arthur Marara is a corporate law attorney, keynote speaker, corporate and personal branding speaker commanding the stage with his delightful humour, raw energy, and wealth of life experiences. He is a financial wellness expert and is passionate about addressing the issues of wellness, strategy and personal and professional development. Arthur is the author of “Toys for Adults” a thought provoking book on entrepreneurship, and “No one is Coming” a book that seeks to equip leaders to take charge. Send your feedback to [email protected] or Visit his website www.arthurmarara.com or contact him on WhatsApp: +263780055152 or call +263772467255.
