Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Discipline

Yesterday I wrote a little about the idea of “showing up” and being faithful to the demands of your life. Showing up and being faithful requires discipline. I am generally not a disciplined person. I’ve never been able to get myself to exercise or meditate on a regular basis and I still have a weakness for chocolate donuts. However, I am a creature of habit and I do best when I have specific routines in my life. I guess auto-pilot can be a form of discipline. Some of my co-workers work at home and there are many days I wish I did the same. However, my lack of discipline and the fact that I am easily distracted makes me realize that I need some structure in my life so it’s a good thing for me to come into the office every day. I have to show up physically as well as mentally.

As far as my writing goes, I try to write thoughts that are good and hopefully meaningful to people. Most of the time I am not satisfied with them. When I think they’re great, no one seems to agree. Some days I am even hesitant to send them out to friends or publish them on this blog. However, sometimes I get emails like the following that I received last week. One person wrote, “Michael, these were the best words you’ve ever written.” Another made me laugh as I read, “You write with such brilliance! Why can’t you be my therapist?” Finally, another friend wrote, “Your words are so dead on.” Writing is a discipline for me and I like the challenge of trying to write something that others will find worth reading. I rarely know if I am successful because most of the time people don’t write back to me. I just put it out there and hope it touches someone in a positive way. The important thing for me is to keep trying, to maintain the discipline of writing something every day, and to try not to judge it’s value. I now believe that writing is part of who I am so I need to keep “showing up” to a blank page every day and to maintain the discipline to be faithful to it. The same goes for you. Keep showing up to something.

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