Discipline
The word is hard to spell, but having discipline is even harder.
I am a special education teacher during the day and a running coach and runner all day long. I see firsthand how hard it is to have discipline.
Doing what you’re supposed to do instead of doing what you want to do isn’t an easy task. In a perfect world, we’d all do what we want to do instead of what we need to do.
So it begs the question: is discipline a skill you are born with or is it something that you can learn to improve?
When I first started thinking about discipline, I thought that it was either something you have or something you don’t. If you weren’t blessed being disciplined, you were just SOL.
But the more I researched and read up on discipline, I learned that it’s a skill that we can develop and improve upon.
As with running, we can get more efficient at doing the same amount of work. We can do hard things that take discipline and use less mental, emotional, and physical energy to complete the task.
If and when things start to go south - whether in sports or in life - if you have discipline you’ll also have the coping skills to deal with those situations.
When a workout or a race is going bad, having discipline means not dwelling on the situation you were dealt with and throwing in the towel. Instead, it means having the skills to deal with the situation that you’ve practiced before it matters.
It just takes time. And it takes practice.
In my observation of both students and athletes, I see a lot of people rushing to get through whatever it is they are doing and then worrying that it might not have gone well. Instead, flip that script: practice the skills before it matters and then you won’t have to worry because you’ve done the best you could have done.
Tips to Improve Discipline:
Practice staying calm during non-stressful situations
Set clear, SMART goals
Model what overcoming would look like
Create stressful situations in “practice” and find strategies to solve the problem
Mindfulness practice can improve focus
Prioritize what’s important
Expand your comfort zone with self-awareness
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