Can I Discipline Habits?
Discipline has never been my strength.
For a long time now I have remarked about my frequent lack of discipline. While this is certainly something to take into consideration in regards to how I live my life, it is time to make another change.
Consciousness creates reality. If I say I have no discipline, that’s an expression of how I feel, ergo…surprise surprise, no discipline.
Like attracts like. When I can be disciplined to do a thing, I tend to get results. Which of course is the very definition of how we manifest anything.
This is important because a couple of the changes I desire to see in my life will need more discipline. The thing is, I need to recognize an already existent discipline, and that is in habits.
Habits are a form of discipline. These are things we do out of routine, sometimes good, and sometimes bad. Recognizing this is how we work to change it.
This is how I have stopped biting my fingernails after about four decades of this habit, and begun to meditate daily, turning that into a habit. It is a matter of practice, and choosing what to partake in.
Like pretty much everything in our lives, this boils down to choice. We have choices and options for the things we do or don’t do. When we recognize this, we can use it to work on manifesting desires, and consciously creating reality.
I have recently written a lot about changing my self-talk. While I am struggling with this to some degree, I also know getting into better habits will help me to achieve the things I desire to. It is up to me to create the best reality for my life that I can.
Creating new disciplines
Next week my work schedule changes. Along with that, I am determined to make a few other necessary shifts in my routines.
I tend to start my day playing a couple games on Facebook. Yes, this allows me to ease my mind awake, slowly start out. All well-and-good, but not, in my opinion, the most healthy regimen for my life.
Rather than continue this, I am determined to try something new. Since a particular aspect of my routine will be shifting, I am going to use this as a reason to shift another.
This will be a real change of habit. And that is how I need to approach this. It’s not about discipline, it’s about habit more than anything else.
Part of what generates my most negative self-talk, and I suspect to some degree that sensation in the pit of my heart that feels so distressing, is unchanging, poor habits. Choices that I currently make that I do not feel good about after, which I wish to alter.
Even when I am directing these changes to my habits, it’s scary. Change is scary. There is a familiarity, and from that a comfort in habit, which is part of why things are habitual. Of course, both good and bad habits contribute to our overall comfort. Whether a greater or lesser habit, these things all make up the disciplines by which we each lead our lives.
This is why making a statement such as discipline has never been my strength is incredibly disempowering. I have chosen to make this so. The time has come to remove this notion, and replace it with I have discipline.
Living in the now is another habit
How we approach life, whether working in the now or focusing on past or future is habitual. Recognizing this is the first step towards deciding if it needs to be changed.
Probably the greatest challenge for me in making this particular change is going to be tenacity. I have to have a take-no-prisoners approach, and not allow negotiations when I effect change. What does that mean? It means when I change habits, I need to stick to my change and not negotiate.
I have quit biting my fingernails. Well, ok, I did for about a month. The other night, found myself chewing on a nail. Wasn’t intended, but once I began, rather than simply stopping myself, I needed to even the nail out. I know that this habit stems from a combination of nervousness, boredom, and most likely an oral fixation.
In changing a habit, this is where application of discipline is important. There can be no other option. It is akin to negotiating with terrorists. Yes, I am more-or-less calling out the squirrels in my brain as terrorists. If I wish to wrest control of my life, it is all up to me to do what I need and desire to do.
So that is where I am at this week. Inconclusive, perhaps, but so too is life. As always, thank you for crossing the bridges between my worlds with me.
This is the eighty-seventh entry of my personal journey, the Crossing the Bridges series. My collectively published writing can be found here.
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