Teach Self-Discipline

Teach Self-Discipline

Discipline is remembering what you want. —David Campbell, Founder, Saks Fifth Avenue

The myth that nearly everyone believes is that we “have” self-discipline. It’s something in us, like a genetic gift, that we either have or we don’t.

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The truth is that we can all “have” self-discipline. The question is really whether or not we learn to develop and use self-discipline.

Here’s another way to realize it: Self-discipline is like a language. Any child can learn a language. (All children do learn a language, actually.) Any 90-year-old can also learn a new language. If you are 9 or 90 and you’re lost in the rain in Juarez, it works when you use some Spanish to find your way to warmth and safety. It works.

In this case, Spanish is like self-discipline in that you are using it for something. You were not born with the language, but you can learn it and use it. In fact, you can use as much or as little as you wish.

And the more you use, the more you can make happen.

If you were an American transferred to Juarez to live for a year and needed to make your living there, the more Spanish you spoke, the better it would be for you.

If you had never spoken Spanish before, you could still use it like a tool.

You could open your little English/Spanish phrases dictionary and start using it. You could ask for directions or help by using that little dictionary! You wouldn’t need to have been born with any special language skills.

The same is true with self-discipline, in the same exact way. Yet most people don’t believe it. Most people think they either have it or they don’t. Most people think it’s a character trait or a permanent aspect of their personality.

That’s a profound mistake. That’s a mistake that can ruin a life.

But the good news is that it is never too late to correct that mistake in yourself and your people.

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Listen to how people get this so wrong:

“He would be my top salesperson if he had any self- discipline at all,” a company leader recently said. “But he has none.”

Not true. He has as much self-discipline as anyone else does; he just hasn’t chosen to use it yet. Just as we all have as many Spanish words to draw upon as anyone else.

It is true that the more often I choose to go to my little dictionary and use the words, the easier it becomes to use Spanish. If I go enough times to the book, and practice enough words and phrases, it gets so easy to speak Spanish that it seems as if it’s part of my nature, like it’s something I “have” inside me. Just like golf looks as if it comes natu- rally to Tiger Woods.

Self-discipline is the same.

If the person you lead truly understood that self-discipline is something one uses, not something one has, then that person could use it to accomplish virtually any goal he or she ever set. That person could use it whenever he wanted, or leave it behind whenever he wanted.

Instead, people worry. They worry about whether they’ve got what it takes. Whether it’s “in” them. Whether their parents and guardians put it there. (Some think it’s put there experientially; some think it’s put there geneti- cally. It’s neither. It’s never put “in” there at all. It’s a tool that anyone can use. Like a hammer. Like a dictionary.)

Enlightened leaders get more out of their people be- cause they know that each of their people already has ev- erything it takes to be successful. They don’t buy the excuses, the apologies, and the sad fatalism that most non- performers skillfully sell to their managers. They just don’t buy in. 

Taken From 100 Ways to Motivate Others by Steve Chandler