Many of life’s failures are people who did not realise how close they were to success when they gave up.
Thomas Edison
Sometime between the ages of 12 and 15 I decided to stop drinking carbonated drinks. The exact age that I made this decision is not important but I can still remember the day clearly enough. It was a typical Christmas dinner at my Aunty’s place, I had just drunk my third bottle of cola in the space of an hour and I remember thinking that this cannot be good for me. I was too young to know, or even understand, the science behind sugar’s effect on the body yet somehow my mind made the connection between drinking these sugary drinks and my health and weight issues at the time.
Discipline as a Source of Transformation
So I decided to quit. Then and there I told myself that if I could make it through the next 100 days without having another drink of cola then I would break the habit for life. Each night before I went to bed I would mark off on my calendar the number of days since I last indulged and as the numbers started to grow so too did my motivation to reach that 100 day mark. Once I saw 20 days on there I knew that it would be such a wasted effort to give up now that the next 80 days flew by.
It helped that my goal was being driven by a bigger purpose. I had recently started swimming and found that it was a sport that I did not suck at. I had played rugby during primary school but could never make it into the first team in a school of 100 children (50% being girls), and I was always coming last during the school cross-country runs. But swimming I could do. Quitting the un-healthy drinking habits was an action I could take that would make me a better swimmer and I pursued that with a sheer single-minded obsession.
I had learned early on in life of the importance of discipline. Discipline is the key factor in success. In fact, I would go so far as to say that success in life has nothing to do with intelligence, or luck, or skill. Yes, each of those elements will no doubt assist you in deciding what you want to pursue. But success only comes to those who are disciplined enough to go out and consistently work towards their goals. Over the course of five years, through hard-work and discipline, I transformed myself from the overweight kid who came last every year in the school cross-country run to a multiple regional and national swimming champion.
Discipline + Hard Work = Success
In many respects my efforts to grow this site have failed to date because of a lack of discipline. It is not through lack of ideas, or even lack of quality content. The feedback I receive is always overwhelmingly positive. My downfall here is my lack of discipline. I have not yet been able to consistently sit down and write. The mission of this site is something that a lot of people can buy into. I can see that and I know that you see it as well else you would not be reading this. As a teenager I successfully applied discipline to an area of my life and achieved an amazing result. When I hit my early 20′s I was able to apply that same discipline towards the completion of a law degree. It is a proven formula. Discipline + Hard Work = Success. Perhaps it is time to start paying more attention to my younger self.
