Sep 29, 2019
The world around us can be chaotic. The older I become, the more I realize the beauty of simplicity.
Trillions of bits of information is piped to us from media outlets around the world as if all of it mattered and urgent. Equal numbers of choices in food, clothes, socks, people to date, jobs to look into, races to sign up for … total chaos. Each choice seems to lead to another set of equally chaotic outcomes and opinions from the uncommitted social media opinion world. I feel sorry for the youth who are inundated with so much chaos, they never get to see the beauty of simplicity.
Breaking through the chaos to carve out simplicity takes the one skill set that no longer is in favor. Schools do offer it as a subject; businesses don’t demand it; athletic teams can no longer hammer it into the athlete; and it is no longer the corner stone of marriage. Actually the opposite is now the norm. Hacking is taught at every school, test guides for dummies are even published. In businesses extended apprenticeships are taboo, everyone wants money and results and a salary without earning it. Athletic teams of all sports no longer preach grinding out and slower development of skills. Marriage, as an institution of simple steady growth, is replaced with fake everything in the first year.
The simple art and science of discipline as a baseline skillset and attitude is the most foreign practice of all. Without discipline there is only chaos.
Another way of saying that is chaos is the life you get until you learn discipline. Discipline is how you dissolve the million bits of chaos to simplicity. Until your day to day or moment to moment actions are simple you are stuffed.
Coaches make things simple. Good business leaders make things simple. Good athletes practice simple basic activities. Great sales people make one call, just one.
Do you have a complex chaotic life? All you see are too many things to do and not enough money or time to get it all done? If you are a runner do you look at all the miles you need to put in to get ready for the race, or do you just see the next mile you have to run? If you are a student do you look at all the classes you have this week or do you focus on the next class?
I have a challenge for you to break through your chaos, and to see how disciplined you are this week.
Can you work out one hour a day for 7 days?
Can you wake up and for the first 10 minutes each morning do 10 pushups, then sit and write down your goals for the day?
At work, can you be disciplined enough to spend one hour making one new client call, call one old client, and make a written plan for the next 7 days?
Can you spend 30 minutes with your wife or husband or kids or lover, with no phone just listening and sharing?
It is simple but not easy, because it takes discipline. Few have the discipline to do that challenge. If you want a harder challenge I dare you to join our community of others seeking discipline by trying lesson one online.
I dare you to try because lesson one is hard on people who have no discipline.
Sign up here. https://www.unbreakablelessons.com/