MM156 - Discipline: Do You Have It? | MM Book Study Pt. 14

We need to have discipline to be productive and to advance. How do we learn to instill discipline in ourselves? How can we help others to be disciplined in their behavior?

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[INTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Welcome to Morning Mindset. A daily dose of practical wit and wisdom with a professional educator & trainer, Amazon best selling author, United States Marine, Television, and Radio host, Paul G. Markel. Each episode will focus on positive and productive ways to strengthen your mindset and help you improve your relationships, career goals, and overall well-being. Please welcome your host; Paul G. Markel.

*Professor Paul*

Alright hello and welcome back to Morning Mindset. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to join me and to talk about well today. We're talking about the Morning Mindset book a 30 day plan for more positive and productive life. We are almost to the very center where 14 sections or chapters in to the book study.

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Morning Mindset: a 30 Day Plan for a More Positive and Productive Life, if you don't have a copy, it's really easy to remedy that. Go to amazon.com and get a paperback version or Kindle version and join us on our journey and follow along and if you've already read the book and you're done with it, and you're glad to be done with it.

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Well fantastic, please do not me but other people a favor and leave a review, okay? So let's talk about discipline today. Let's talk about discipline. How do we discipline ourselves? I've got a little story about discipline and it goes something like this when I was in the eighth grade. I was going to a parochial school was a Lutheran Church based.

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School and my 8th grade teacher was also at the principal of the school, and because he was the principal, in addition to being the 8th grade teacher often he had principal duties that he needed to attend to, which meant that he needed to leave the class unsupervised, to do what needed to be done.

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He would give an assignment and then he would leave and then he would come back, expecting that we would have accomplished that. I remember on the first day of the eighth grade, he walked into the classroom and he was and he went up to the board and we had chalkboards, you know, and he wrote the word Discipline in large block letters on the chalkboard, and then he turned around and he proceeded to give us a speech, lecturer, what have you. about discipline and personal discipline and what did he expected out of us.

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So, and you may think “Oh Paul you're a Square, you’re a nerd. You probably ate that up, didn't you?” No, it's exact opposite. Myself and my fellow young teenagers, 8th graders, you know, you start eighth grade you’re generally 13 years old, we laughed to ourselves and we laughed and we made fun of him when he wasn't in the room and so forth because we were young.

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We were men. Well, we were young men and we were full of chemicals, this chemical called testosterone, and to us this was an authority figure trying to crush our groove and put us down discipline to us was punishment. Discipline wasn't something positive, when the way discipline was, well perceived by us is that it was a negative not a positive.

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Now you may understand or realize. I hope that you would that the word discipline has been used in both ways. You know, when you discipline a child, most often you think that your discipline of the child is punishment and punishment is a negative. But when you administer discipline, is it really a negative or are you attempting to help that child or criminal or person to fix their sell themselves and lead a better life and make better choices.

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Now obviously as we grow the farther away from our parents, we get the farther out of our parents direct control, we get the more choices, we make for ourselves. The more we decide what we're going to eat, what we're not going to eat, where we're going to live, what job we're going to have or going to do what we're not going to do how we can spend our free time how we spend our money, but all that stuff right?

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So if you don't have discipline instilled in by the time you reach adulthood, it's really difficult to change your ways, because there's no one there to make you do it. Now you have a boss and you can push your boss so far before they discipline you, through you know, fines or a docking your pay or what have you, or just firing you, but how do you discipline yourself to improve your own life?

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Because no one is going to make you put down the Doritos. No one is going to make you stop drinking three Diet Cokes a day or five Diet Cokes a day or you know, eight Mountain Dews a day or whatever. No one's going to make you stop doing that. No one is going to make you get on the scale, look at those numbers and realize that you need to deduct about 20 pounds or 30 or more.

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No one's going to make you do that. How do you do that? You have to discipline yourself. You have to develop discipline and that's extremely difficult. We know this based upon. Well look, look at our capitalist market system here where we have a billion dollar a year industry. That is the Fitness Wellness and diet industry, and why is that?

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Well, it's there because people grow into adulthood and they no longer have to discipline themselves. So they become fat and lazy and then they realized that they want to be that way anymore, but they don't have that discipline. How can you learn to instill discipline in yourself? Well step number one. You can't do it. Well step number one is you can't do it all overnight.

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You actually have to learn it a step at a time. Now maybe you were fortunate, maybe you grew up in a, you know a situation where you participated in team sports, or maybe you are in the United States military and maybe you learn to discipline in the military. Maybe you learn discipline through team sports. That's one of the big benefits.

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You know, I really don't care whether you're a fan of baseball or football or basketball or hockey or whatever. If you’re a girl, soccer, I don't care or whether or not you're fans of those sports, but when you put children when they're active in team sports, what that forces them to do is it forces them to consider the consequences of their actions. Not just for themselves, but for others and that instils, you know normally at you know kids are selfish creatures.

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They're born that way. They grow up that way we have to teach them to not be selfish and one of the ways we teach them to not be selfish is introduce them to team sports because once they're introduced to a team sport is not just about them anymore. It's not just about their feelings and their desires and their wants. If they don't practice, if they don't put forth effort, if they don't do what they're supposed to do as a member of a team, the whole team suffers and it doesn't take very long for them to realize that if they're lagging behind, if they're not paying attention, if they don't show up for practice or do what they're supposed to do, it's not just them that suffers.

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It's the team, and the team concept can help them learn discipline. Yes, indeed. But how do we do it as adults? Well, number one, you need to establish good habits positive habits one day at a time. It's one of the reasons that I wrote this book when we're talking about right now Morning Mindset a 30 day plan, snd at the very beginning in the intro in the how to read the book I said, “Hey, I don't want you to sit down over a two-hour period and read this whole book beginning to end” or whatever 3 hours or however long it takes you read it. I don't want you to consume the entire book in a weekend. That's not the point.

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The point is for you to discipline yourself. Each day to read one section and they're not long sections, you can read them 10-15 minutes, you're done boom. But if you do that, you instill a positive habit, you instill discipline you move that onto whether it's exercise or training or what have you when you feel like you really don't want to.

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Go to the gym where whatever you're doing, whether you're running or treadmilling or bicycling or maybe you're lifting weights or whatever. You're going to get that feeling because humans do you like I just don't feel like it today. I was going to I thought I was going to this morning when I left the house, “My plan was to go do this, but then things changed and I got frustrated, now I don't want to.”

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When you don't feel like it and when you decide it when you know, you don't want to that is absolutely when you have to make yourself do it because anybody can do it when they want to anybody can train or workout or exercise when they're in the mood the people that advance and move forward and Excel. Are those that can make themselves do it?

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Even when their body says “Hey, I don't feel like it. Let's go home and lay on the couch. Watch TV.” No the plan was to go to the gym, we're going to the gym body, whether you want to or not. That is your mind taking charge and disciplining yourself. So two things you can do number one establish good habits one day at a time.

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I don't expect you to do it all overnight, but establish good habits one day at a time, do something positive and productive deliberately every day. Even if you only do it for 15 minutes and then you need to make that commitment to yourself, you know, you made a decision to do it. Whatever it is, bicycle, walk, jog, lift weights, whatever. You made the decision to do it. Now, it's three or four hours later now you don't feel like it.

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Make yourself do it go put your clothes on go change your clothes put your gym clothes on and get your butt to the gym. Discipline yourself and the more you do it and the more you establish discipline. The greater discipline you will have in your life and you need it. It's a positive, it's not a negative. Even if you thought your junior high or 8th grade teacher was a joke or trying to keep you down or whatever.

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Discipline is a positive in your life, and if you want to leave a positive lead a positive and productive life you gotta have it. Alright, ladies and gentlemen, I will be back with yet another episode very soon. I am your host Paul Markle, talk to you later.

[OUTRO]

♫ Trenches by Pop Evil ♫

*Alex*

Thank you for spending time with us today. To get show notes, submit a topic request, for more from your host Paul G. Markel, visit MorningMindsetPodcast.com. That’s MorningMindsetPodcast.com. Please leave a review of this podcast on your favorite podcast player, we appreciate your time & effort, and we look forward to reading your honest feedback.