By Dina Aldabbagh

Discipline. It’s a word that has been commodified and packaged up to fit into the narratives of our progress and production culture — but I think it’s been skewed. We understand discipline in a more negative connotation than it merits. We understand it to mean force, restriction, exhaustion, but I think it really means reprioritization. 

The way we’ve come to understand discipline through our current culture, we think it means doing everything you’re already doing and then adding in another element that you must charge through and get done. So then, even at the end of the day, when you’re exhausted, when it’s late, or when there’s something else important to do, you feel like you must work out, must write that chapter, must do whatever thing that you feel you must be disciplined in. 

And that almost sounds right. Because discipline represents to us all the idea that you do it no matter what. No matter how you feel. No matter what else there is. No matter what anyone else does or does not say. In a way, that’s almost accurate. But again, it’s skewed. 

But perhaps discipline isn’t how well you can force yourself to do it all, but rather how much your life becomes organized around your goal. Because then, for that thing specifically, you are absolutely disciplined. 

If you want to be someone who exercises every day, then there are two routes for you. Firstly, you can choose to take exercise and superimpose it on the exact life you have now. You can find whatever time you have to workout in your day and force yourself to do it — regardless of how you feel. But the problem is that sometimes our bodies are tired. Sometimes they do need rest. In this way, then working out is working against you. You’re not listening to your body. But does that mean that you are always at the will of how you feel and can never really be disciplined in exercising every day? No. 

This leads to the second route. If you genuinely want to exercise every day without it destroying you, then you will need to allow your life to organize around that goal. You will need to get proper sleep. You will need to eat in a way that gives you proper energy. You will need to manage your time to give yourself those couple hours a day to get it in. The job of doing it already requires enough effort, you need to make the systems in your life conducive to that goal. Because you can brute-force it for a long time, but if the systems aren’t set up, when that temporary structure eventually breaks, so will the “discipline.” 

Your life needs to become reorganized in a way that supports that goal. This is ultimately the work of changing your identity. A truly disciplined athlete makes sure to sleep enough, eat correctly, and say no to anything that can’t fit in their training schedule. Why? Because they are an athlete. Their entire life is organized around this identity point — and yours will have to be, too.

Surely, discipline does require some level of “pushing through discomfort.” You will often want one thing, and have to do another. You will often have to feel one thing, and decide to do something else. Wisdom lies in understanding which moment is the one native to discipline, and which one is because the rest of your life isn’t actually supporting your goal. 

A few years ago, when I got into running and started increasingly racking up my miles, I often felt pain while I ran. I pushed through it because, of course, pain is normal when you’re running. Eventually, I injured myself, and I learned that there is a very delicate balance between the pain you push through and the pain that is the wise signal to stop.  

I didn’t injure myself through running — it was in a soccer game — but all my habits played their role. I was running five days a week, playing soccer three days a week, playing volleyball two days a week, and lifting weights four days a week. No where in there was time for my body to rest. Instead, it was one intense activity after another. I’d run five miles and then go play a soccer game as a midfielder. So, naturally, I sprained my ankle. 

Further, even my strength training wasn’t doing all that it needed to. I was lifting weights, however, the tendons and ligaments in your legs don’t get stronger from just constantly lifting heavy. They often need another type of work that is less glamorous, less impressive looking, and much more humbling. 

At the time, just 23 years old, I thought I was invincible. I had played sports all my life and never suffered a serious injury. In the soccer game that I finally got injured, I showed up late and immediately went to play. No warm up. No stretch. We were even short on girls so after I got hurt, I kept playing — until I literally couldn’t anymore. The next morning I couldn’t walk. I could bear no weight on my ankle. 

We often consider discipline to be the choice to show up no matter what, but it’s actually every little choice that feeds into the greater goal. Everything you do will need to pay forward towards the goal — that’s discipline. People don’t really see nor applaud that part. No one will give you a high-five for going to bed early so you can wake up and workout before work in the morning. But that’s where the work is. 

Discipline isn’t the ability to ignore your needs and physical signals to get the job done at any cost, it’s the ability to choose — in all the little moments that don’t always seem like they matter — to cast a vote for your ultimate goal. To cast a vote for who you are. The discipline isn’t really getting to the gym every day. It’s not in that act alone. It’s in all the other acts that support getting to the gym. 

There is a gap between our desires and the reality we live in. Desires exist in your mind, but reality exists in your actions. True discipline is the only actual bridge to that gap. It is the only thing that translates a wish into a physical reality. It is the daily, boring, unglamorous work that turns “I want” into “I am.” You can stretch yourself for a while to bridge the gap, but it will not actually close it unless discipline is in each of your choices. 

It is difficult, of course, to resist being the person you’ve always been. But to permanently shift your identity to become the man who is calm in any situation, the woman who skips the unnecessary dessert, and the person who moves with total confidence, you have to change how you handle that psychological rubber band snap. 

Oftentimes, we justify not being disciplined towards our goal because we don’t think it’s important yet. We want to be fit when we start going out with someone, but there’s no one in our lives today. We want to be a gentleman or a lady with that partner, but we are single today. We want to be hardworking at that dream job, but today we’re just working at a restaurant. Because our current reality doesn’t look like our dream, we think it’s all inconsequential. 

When I did work at a restaurant, I showed up in my uniform one day completely wrinkled. My coworker asked, “Why didn’t you iron your shirt today?” I told him, “I don’t care about this job.” He said to me, “But it’s not about this job, it’s who you are. You’re not this person.” He was saying, “You’re not the person that shows up in wrinkly clothes.” And he was right. But I can’t be that person if I only show up in ironed clothes for the “important moments,” I have to be that person always. 

It feels like no one’s watching, but the habit is creating you anyway. But today I tell you, this time isn’t just dead time while you wait for what you want to enter your life, it’s exactly where you form into the person who takes you there. Every time you practice discipline, you are casting a vote for the version of you that is ready for the light. Every time you give in, you cast a vote for the version that wants to stay hidden in the dark.

Romans 13:11-14 says, 

“And do this, understanding the present time: The hour has already come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the flesh” (NIV).

The version of you who thinks your little choices don’t matter is the one who doesn’t believe this time is important. But understand the present time; it does matter. Character, confidence, and readiness are not light switches we can flip on the moment the dream walks into our lives. They are built in the dark, one ordinary choice at a time.

This is what discipline truly is. It’s making a choice that you know wouldn’t change the course of your life either way if you did or didn’t do it today. So, we often “gratify the flesh” — we satisfy a temporary desire, but steal from our future confidence. Greatness is only built in the dark. By the time you are shown to the world, you are seen for only who you have been. 

When your discipline today makes the choice to go to bed early, respond with kindness, not judge immediately, skip the second chocolate, and stay on the task a little longer to make it right — you are acting on the belief that the “day is near.” Our dreams don’t come into our lives slowly, and they don’t stay if they come before we’re ready. The greatest shame isn’t waiting a while for what you want, but rather getting the opportunity and not being ready for it. This “dead” time, the quiet moments in the dark — that’s when you get ready. There is a window for every opportunity, and if you are not ready, you just lose it. 

Therefore, discipline isn’t this forceful act to get one thing together, it’s the creation of an ecosystem and the devotion to it. You won’t be fit by forcing yourself to go to the gym every day — not if you aren’t eating right, or if you aren’t being consistent. You will be perpetually fit when every habit of yours plays its role. When you workout daily. And mealprep. And eat good portion sizes. And generally eat very consistently without big swings. And get enough sleep so you have energy to workout. And say no to some things so you have enough energy and time. 

We have been sold that discipline is force, but it’s devotion. It’s the devotion to your future self and the belief that you, today, are near that.