Commit, be disciplined

Success is just the progression towards a worthy ideal. The foundations of success are commitment and discipline.

Explore your relationship with commitment and discipline

Discipline is a big word, that many of us struggle with. If you hear the word discipline, what connotations does it bring up for you? To really be successful you have to be willing to explore your relationship to success and discipline.  We've really been thought about discipline and why it was activating. It came back to exploring family dynamics, Audrie was raised in a Church/Religious environment and Kristina was raised in an Army environment. In both of those environment’s things were done in a particular way and as a child you stepped into line with that whatever the family dynamic was.

The idea of being disciplined can be aggravating if you were disciplined growing up. Sometimes it can lead to becoming a perfectionist as an adult, resulting in not being as happy as you can be.  Because you can get caught in the thinking that life must be done in a particular way. This thinking narrows your life down. So, the first step in your journey to success is to explore your relationship to commitment and discipline.

Audrie and Kristina are naturally disciplined people, probably due to their childhood environments. But this means they will join a 28-day challenge and do it, they will wake up early to do an hour of power.

Yoga enables you to progress towards your ideals

Yoga is a practice that teaches you that you are perfect just as you are. But this knowing comes from being committed and disciplined to your practice.

The idea is discipline is a progression towards your goals. For example, if you want to be a good yogi, or a better yogi than you were yesterday, you must do some yoga today. Authors become authors because they get up and write a little bit every single day. You know you can’t become a better writer unless you write something down. It's the same for any area of your life.

The concept of being committed and disciplined came through quite strongly when training in the Anusara Yoga method. The concept of discipline was taught often, where we were told discipline has the same root as disciple.  The teaching was to clarify that you are a disciple to that which you devote your time to. Through the practice of yoga, you begin to focus your time and efforts on that which is most important to you.

If you want to be more like somebody you admire you have to be disciplined to bring out the quality, you want to be embodying within yourself. You must become a disciple to that quality. If you want to become kinder, then you must be disciplined and committed to kindness. To you and everyone else.

Commitment versus Interest

An area many struggle with is knowing the difference between being committed and being interested. If you are interested in something and then when things come up that could be distractions, suddenly you will be doing those other things and won’t have enough time to do the thing you are interested in.

When you are committed, you will prioritise this, make the time, put in the effort, and say no to the things that are a distraction.

As an example, every morning Kristina does meditation, reads a course in miracles lesson for the day and every evening she practices yoga, completes her gratitude journal, reads her affirmations, and meditates before she goes to sleep. This is commitment.

But if you are just interested in something, then the discipline will not be there, and you will not follow through. Intrinsic motivation of moving towards what you really want is not there to make you follow through.

Commit to seeing life differently

The practice of reframing what has happened in your life is a commitment and discipline. You must be willing to see things differently, that is the commitment, the discipline is then being willing to see things differently.

 However, most of us hold a lot of resistance to being willing to change ourselves and our life circumstances. If you are particularly stubborn, then you must be willing to soften to progress towards your goals. If you are particularly malleable, then you must be willing to have boundaries in place to progress towards your goals.

You must know what you want

 Many of us are easily drawn off our paths because of other people’s influence in our lives. We will sacrifice our vision to fit in with the people around us. But you know that ultimately that doesn’t work and can result in you falling emotionally.

Yoga teaches us, we can have whatever we want, we just have to know what it is, and we just have to know to ask. This is particularly a problem for women who struggle to voice or commit to their own personal vision.

We can lack the discipline to stay on track, instead we drop our vision to support another’s.

Commitment and discipline should be easy

 Depending on your connotations you might think discipline should be hard. But we disagree. If you are truly committed to something, then being disciplined to progress towards it should come easily. Because your discipline lines up with the vision that you have for your life, and it becomes easy because it is moving you in the direction of what you want.

Getting your life on track requires commitment and discipline. Your commitment to a value or a goal will drive you forward. The discipline to regularly act towards your vision will be easy when you are committed to it.

Your life will be a gradual movement towards knowing what you want and committing yourself to it. You can start progressing towards a worthy ideal at any age. There is no timeframe for you figuring out when to begin. You will figure out what you want in one area of your life, then move towards figuring out what you want in another area. And you can change your mind and progress towards a new goal at any point if it doesn’t feel right anymore.

Whatever you are doing remember it should be simple, easy, and fun. If you are really struggling with committing to a goal then take the time to reassess the goal, or your motivation to achieve it. If you must force yourself to do something, then you probably shouldn’t be doing it. Your commitment and discipline should be moving you towards more bliss and bringing more value into your life. If it is causing you pain, then reassess.

 The price of discipline

So, when you are committed to something like losing weight, that becomes your worthy ideal, so the time you spend going to the gym, and eating better are some of the prices you will pay directly for committing to that vision. This is because when you choose to invest your time in going to the gym, you can’t invest it in other things, like spending time with friends.

 But if you neglect to be disciplined about achieving your vision then there is the counter price of potentially regretting your lack of action or reaffirming negative self-talk or negative self-worth may be confirmed by not achieving your goal. Which is a far bigger price to pay.

 Discipline weighs ounces, regret weighs tonnes.

Watch our YouTube video ‘Commit, be disciplined’ - https://youtu.be/b4gp_IbvhDU

Download our free ebook “The five keys of Yoga to Transform’ here - Free eBook - Keys of Yoga to Transform

For the month of July we have a special offer to sign-up for our $199 lifetime Flexibility course and we will throw in our month long Flexibility group coaching starting on 1st August for FREE!

You will get 28 days of daily emails that you can work through with the group to encourage each other along and support from Audrie and Kristina to stay committed and have the discipline to keep going - this is the best way to improve your flexibility, mobility and find out all the other benefits that a yoga practice offers. The deal ends 31/7/22 - buy the flexibility course today to be part of our special offer.

Visit our store to buy your lifetime access to our Flexibility course AND you will be automatically contacted to join our Flexibility group coaching course starting 1 August 2022. www.yogatotransform.com/store

What others have said about our Flexibility course:
"Thoroughly recommend the flexibility course - helps so much with stress and strains of life!" - Jacqui