I started reading a new book last week, and it's just what I'm needing to read right now.
Does that ever happen to you?
Maybe you've tried to read a certain book at one point, but you just couldn't get into it.
Then the next time you pick it up, you can't put it down because it's speaking right into your life.
That happens to me.
In fact, I had a stack of books I thought I wanted to read, yet I just couldn't resonate with most of them when I cracked them open.
But when my favorite author is releasing the third book of a four book series this summer, I went ahead and ordered the first two of the series.
Discipline is Destiny by Ryan Holiday is the book.
The book is part of a series that will walk through the four big virtues that Stoic philosophers established as the big important values to live out for a good life.
Those four virtues are courage, temperance, justice and wisdom.
Living these virtues out becomes "the key to a life of honor, of glory, of excellence in every sense."
When he begins by describing temperance as self-control in every aspect, it speaks to me.
Discipline in my Health
I am in a season of life in which my habits have set me up for success.
You may know my story of discovering cancer in my tongue last summer.
I searched for any possible solution to not have to go through an extensive surgery, something natural that could shrink the tumor and eliminate the cancer in my body, but I couldn't find anything.
So I chose to go through an 8 hour surgery to remove the cancer from my tongue and neck, to reconstruct a "new (half) tongue" with tissue from my left forearm, and to cover that forearm area back up with a skin graft from my left thigh.
It was intense and extensive.
I lay in bed with a tube in my neck to help me breathe, a tube in my nose to fuel my body, three tubes draining the excessive blood from my body, and multiple monitors to ensure my vitals remained in range.
Because I had trained myself physically and mentally to control my breathing for two years leading up to that point, I was able to not panic when the breathing tube became clogged.
When I was released from the hospital to come home and heal, I was disciplined to control my diet completely for two months. I had never eaten more "clean" in my entire life.
Slowly--and I do mean slowly--I was able to gain strength and mobility back in my body, as my wounds healed and my body recovered.
My disciplines (there were multiple) helped me regain health.
My disciplines determined my destiny of being healthy!
Discipline in Career Skills
In other areas of life, my disciplines have set me up for where I am today as well.
I have learned the balance between perfection and excellence and "done."
Some things require perfection, like my surgeon's skilled hands as they operated on me.
There wasn't much room for error, so perfection was needed.
Some things require excellence, which is our best effort at that time.
Some seasons of life allow different levels of excellence from us, because our best can be expanded and grown later in life after we have learned and grown and expanded our capacity.
And yet some things in life simply require the task to be done.
Learning to know the difference has allowed me to write and publish my first book this past December.
Learning to know the difference has allowed me to learn marketing skills for my employer, as I have taken on more responsibility and expanded my skills.
Learning to know the difference has allowed me to get hired by two other companies to do marketing as well.
My disciplines have set me up for the success I am experiencing right now.
Yet the journey is not over.
Last month I had a follow-up with my surgeon, and he was very pleased (and surprised) with how quickly my body has healed after surgery.
Most people's bodies don't heal as quickly as mine has.
Yet because I had eliminated all toxic foods and only ate foods that aided my body's healing, my body healed at a remarkable rate.
Yet I felt like I had arrived when he told me the good news.
I let down my guard.
I relaxed my standards.
I gave in to cravings for sugar and bread.
Then I got sick.
Sure, everyone in our family had been passing it around, and maybe I would have got sick anyway.
But I was sick for a whole week, before my body recovered again.
100% is easy; 99% is hard.
You see, when I was fully committed to the diet, knowing what I would eat and not eat, and I followed it, it was easy.
Yet when I compromised a little, and allowed myself to cheat, it became hard.
Suddenly I had new possibilities and choices again that I wrestled with each time.
I knew what the best choice was, but because I entertained the idea of a lesser choice, it became a struggle.
Yet when I have decided ahead of time, when I have laid out my boundaries ahead of time as far as what I will and will not eat, and why I will or will not eat them, then it's easy.
When the opportunity comes to eat the foods outside my boundary, it's not even an option. I won't eat it because I don't want it.
You see, my discipline, my self-control, my temperance, with my eating will set me up for success.
How disciplined I am with my food will determine how healthy my body will be later.
At least as far as I can control it!
And that's all I can do--control what I can control.
I can't control a lot of other things in life, but I can control myself.
And my own actions have direct consequences and reactions all on their own.
When I focus on what I can control, I am doing my part.
Because there's no way I can change the world if I can't even change myself.
Yet here's what they wisest people in the world have learned about that: we will never be able to change the world anyway. But we can inspire change within them if we learn to control and change ourselves.
Focus on your own desires.
Focus on changing yourself.
Master yourself or be mastered by someone or something else.
It's your choice.
What will you choose?
I choose discipline.
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