By: Leo Fontana

When you hear the word “discipline”, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Take a couple seconds to think about this, a lot of us will think about or relate to something negative. When we were in school and got disciplined we didn’t like that , when our parents disciplined us we didn’t like that either.

Now for those who have kids, if you decide to discipline your child, do you mean to harm them or do you just want what is best for them and for that reason discipline is necessary? Think about back when you were a kid and you got disciplined, why did that happen? Were your parents or teachers being unfair or did they also just want the best for you? Now, imagine a world with no discipline? Crazy right?!

Discipline allows us to have freedom, sometimes people think this is completely opposite but they are not, if you have discipline you have freedom it is really simple and I will try to convince you in the rest of this post.

If you don’t have discipline in your life with something as simple as going to bed at a certain time, let’s say 9PM. You know you want to do the 7AM class at Midtown with Coach Sabrina and myself because you know we party, but you decided to watch Game of Thrones until 11:30PM. Your alarm goes off in the morning and you hit snooze, not once or twice but three times. Now you are late for work, you didn’t have time to make a healthy breakfast so you stop at Starbucks, spend at least $10 and you are hungry 2 hours later, your day continues to not go so great. You feel guilty and you know you should go to the gym but the only class you can make it to is 6:30PM and now you are not getting home until 8PM. You lost the freedom to spend time with your family and get stuff done for the next day. All because you didn’t have the discipline to stop watching TV a little bit earlier.

Another example of discipline is your diet. You want to lose weight and you know what it takes, you’ve always wanted to see that 6 pack and you have a nutrition consultation with Coach Tammy, she tells you your numbers and she knows that’s the best way to get to your goals, then you decid to hit your number 3 times then cheat twice then back on the number then cheat again. Not having the discipline to stop yourself from the things that you know is not the best of your interest takes away the freedom that you wanted to have and the power of you hitting your goals. Now you go to a bachelor party with your friends but you are not confident about taking your shirt off because you didn’t have the discipline to stick with your new diet/lifestyle, now you don’t have the freedom to do what you really wanted to do, show off those great abs.

One last example is financially, if you don’t have the discipline to save money every month, now you don’t have any financial freedom to do the fun things you always wanted to do. Isn’t one of the best feelings in the world is when you pay off a debt or a Credit card bill? You just had some discipline to make payments that now you have the freedom to not worry about them anymore.

Find yourself some discipline in every aspect of your life, get a routine that you enjoy and that you know deep inside is in your best interest.  Start in the morning and go on with your day, do what you need to do so you can do the things you want to do later.

Feel free to send me an email ([email protected]) with any questions or concerns, I would love to share a couple videos with you to help you get motivated to become more disciplined!

(Featured Image: Ang Fontana Photography)