Tiny Buddha

Tag: discipline

  • The 5 Qualities You Need to Change Your Life

    The 5 Qualities You Need to Change Your Life

    “In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.” ~Abraham Maslow

    Have you ever wondered what true personal development requires? What it truly takes to change your life?

    I have, and it’s a question I have been asking myself for years.

    As someone who was on a journey that could better be described as personal decline than personal development, I felt stuck living a life I hated.

    Around two years later, after having improved or completely changed every aspect of myself that I didn’t like, I can honestly say I am a totally different person.

    My confidence went from not being able to go to my local supermarket to speaking to hundreds of people every day.

    My self-belief went from thinking I’d never leave the job I hated to believing and striving for financial freedom.

    My discipline went from being unable to stick to any exercise routines and diets to being in the best shape of my life.

    I don’t share all this to brag—I share it to inspire anyone who feels stuck to finally become the person they know, deep down, they can be.

    It’s not only from personal experience that this obsession of mine has grown but also from seeing people around me who are always attempting to change for the better but just can’t seem to make it last.

    From my own experience and observations of others, I’ve learned that certain qualities are essential for lasting change.

    Having all five will not guarantee you’ll be successful, but not having all of them guarantees won’t succeed.

    Without further delay, here are five things you’ll need to finally become the person you want to be.

    1. Responsibility

    Without the ability to take responsibility, all other principles are useless.

    By not taking responsibility for your situation, you give all your power to the external factors or people that you blame, leaving yourself helpless.

    If you can’t take responsibility for something, you can’t change it.

    Taking responsibility isn’t blaming yourself; it’s taking accountability for whatever situation you find yourself in now, regardless of how you got there.

    I used to blame my childhood for who I was, but how does this help me in any way? It didn’t. Instead, it kept me the same—a person I wasn’t proud of.

    I didn’t blame myself for it, but I took responsibility for how I was going to deal with it moving forward. This allowed me to finally take action, and my life improved greatly as a result.

    2. Self-belief

    If you don’t believe you can change, are you even going to try?

    That’s why, to grow, you must first believe you’re capable of it, and to do this, you have to take action.

    If you’re anything like I used to be, doubting your ability to break free from your situation and tired of endlessly repeating affirmations to yourself in the mirror, it’s time to get some evidence.

    This teaches the brain that really you are capable of achieving the goals you set. Without evidence, you’ll never truly believe that anything has changed, because without it, what makes this time any different from the last?

    But how do we get that evidence?

    This is all about starting small. It’s setting smaller goals or challenges, ones that you may even doubt you can achieve, and then working diligently until you succeed.

    This could be anything from waking up an hour earlier every day to taking daily cold showers. Whatever it may be, do it until you’ve gained irrefutable evidence that you’ve succeeded at something you didn’t think you could do.

    From here, you set slightly bigger goals, achieve them, and repeat.

    Eventually, you’ll prove yourself wrong so many times, you’ll have no choice but to believe you can do anything.

    3. Discipline

    Personal development is hard, and if you quit when things get hard, you’ll never succeed.

    As I said, my levels of discipline used to let me down constantly. Whenever something got difficult, I’d let the uncomfortable feelings overwhelm me until I’d quit altogether.

    With anything worth pursuing, there will come a time when continuing feels challenging. This is unavoidable. Therefore, being successful with personal development requires the ability to feel uncomfortable but keep going anyway.

    Discipline allows you to do just that; it frees you from the prison of discomfort.

    Just like self-belief, you can build discipline by starting small and working your way up.

    Choose something difficult, something uncomfortable, and do it anyway.

    You can kill two birds with one stone here by using something like a daily cold plunge or exercise to grow your self-belief and build discipline simultaneously.

    Discipline is like a muscle; it can grow, and the bigger it gets, the more it can handle.

    4. Consistency

    Without consistency, your chances of creating meaningful results are slim.

    I used to expect results instantly. I wanted results the moment I began something. This was not only unrealistic but often impossible.

    It was the lack of discipline and the inability to remain consistent that contributed to most of my quitting.

    Over time, I realized it wasn’t the luckiest, smartest, or even most talented people who were the successful ones. The people who showed up every single day and refused to quit were the ones with all the success.

    One single water drop hitting a rock does absolutely nothing, but eventually, it carves and shapes the rock. The same can be said for going to the gym or anything else in life; it’s the consistent effort over time that gets you in shape.

    And so, I applied it to my own life and finally started seeing the results I desired.

    If you want change, you have to trust the process and show up every single day. Once you see the results that consistency gets you, you’ll no longer be relying on faith but on concrete evidence, making it much easier to show up when you least feel like it.

    5. Focus 

    In today’s world, it has become extremely difficult to avoid all the noise. With a pocket full of distractions, remaining focused has never been so hard.

    With social media, endless notifications, and more content than we could ever possibly consume, it’s enough to derail even the most focused among us. This is why it’s essential to ensure your thoughts and actions align with your goals.

    If you’re easily distracted, you’ll find yourself buying into new shiny opportunities over and over again, keeping yourself at the starting line.

    You’ll either be too distracted watching useless content or too easily influenced to stick to one thing at a time—and both will keep you from succeeding.

    The longer I spent doing just that, the more I realized that every path is hard, and for every path come hundreds of differing opinions on which way is best. Only when I stuck to one thing and focused on doing it well did I finally see results.

    So, if you want to finally become the best version of yourself and achieve your goals, you’ll need to limit distractions, stay committed to your journey, and focus on mastering one thing at a time.

    —

    So there you have it, the five fundamentals of personal development. It’s time to go take action and become your best self, one small step at a time.

  • How to Feel More in Control in Life in Four Steps

    How to Feel More in Control in Life in Four Steps

    “You may not be able to control every situation and its outcome, but you can control how you deal with it.” ~Unknown

    Life is often crazy and rushed. Sometimes it’s difficult to feel a sense of control. It can be utterly chaotic and leave us feeling lost.

    This is exactly where I was two years ago. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I felt hopeless, directionless, and completely lost pretty much every day.

    I didn’t feel like I had a grip on anything in my life, including my thoughts, emotions, and actions.

    I had just returned from the local doctor, a prescription of antidepressants in hand and the first pill on its way down my throat, when something dawned on me.

    I realized that this was not the answer. I realized that thinking a drug would fix all of my issues was not only a false fantasy, but it was also extremely ironic. Because by taking them, I was actively choosing to worsen the cause of my issues.

    By taking the drug, I’d be sacrificing even more of my freedom and control. I’d essentially be putting the fate of my future into the hands of a daily dose of pills.

    I am not saying antidepressants are bad, nor am I suggesting that anyone should stop taking them, as they can be beneficial to many people’s mental health. They were simply something I realized I could avoid taking by instead addressing my problem in an alternative way.

    I believe it was at this very moment that everything changed for me. It was then that I realized that I was the cause of my problems, and only I could be the solution, so the journey began.

    Since then, I’ve been the happiest I have ever been, with a newfound sense of control and an unshakable feeling of self-belief.

    These are the four ways I managed to obtain this sense of control. I hope these steps can help you do the same.

    1. Taking Responsibility

    Taking responsibility is one of the most important things a person can do, but it might not be what you think. What was the first thing that came to mind when thinking about taking responsibility? Is it owning up to your negative behavior? Is it admitting when you’ve done wrong?

    I’d like to instead focus instead on the things that are not your fault.

    This might leave you confused at first. You might be wondering why anyone would take responsibility for things they haven’t caused.

    Just because something isn’t directly your fault, it doesn’t mean you can’t take responsibility for it. In my case, I was blaming my childhood and upbringing for the way I felt. I thought that because certain things had happened to me, and they were not my fault, I was somehow entitled to stew in my feelings and react negatively to them.

    But who does this type of mentality benefit? It certainly didn’t benefit me. In order to get better, I had to take responsibility for the way I was. Only then could any meaningful change occur.

    I’m not saying you should blame yourself. This actually eliminates blame altogether, because it doesn’t matter who’s at fault. If you’re the one suffering the consequences, you’re also the one who needs to take responsibility for them.

    The moment something negative has happened, it is done; it can’t be changed. Thus, the only thing left for you to do is deal with the consequences the best you can. Refuse to be left bitter and resentful and, instead, learn and grow.

    The next time something negative happens in your life, ask yourself, “Am I dealing with this in the best possible way?”

    2. Doing Hard Things

    The moment I started doing hard things, my life started to change for the better.

    Life is difficult, and as far as I’m aware, it’s always going to be. Have you ever met or heard of someone who has been through some extremely tough times throughout their life? These people are always very mentally strong, and less affected by tough times.

    The bad news is we can’t fake these sorts of tough times, nor can we recreate them. But we can raise our standard of difficulty in other ways. I mean, people have literally built a building and put a bunch of heavy metal things in it for others to come to pay and lift them.

    I’m not saying you have to go to the gym; I’m simply saying that to become less affected by life’s inevitable attacks, we can actively increase our tolerance for discomfort so that when they do come, we are much less affected.

    This gives us control, as we can’t prevent life from hurting us, but we can actively choose to reduce the pain it causes.

    Some examples of hard things I started to do included running, taking cold showers and ice baths, and following a healthier diet.

    Start implementing daily hard things into your routine, and you’ll notice the difference.

    3. All Wins Are The Same 

    When pursuing a goal, it’s very easy to get caught up thinking about achieving it, but this only results in an overwhelming sense of distance between you and the goal. You’d be much better off focusing smaller. Instead of comparing who you are now with your ideal self, focus on the very next thing that will move you closer to the person you want to be.

    Doing this not only removes that feeling of distance, but it will also constantly make you feel like a winner. And trust me, all wins are the same, so you might as well celebrate them all.

    What do I mean by all wins are the same?

    There is a concept I have recently been interested in, which is the hedonic treadmill.

    According to Wikipedia, “The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the observed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes.”

    This means we get used to things very quickly. So let’s say your goal is to lose fifty pounds. Losing the first pound is the same as losing the fiftieth.

    Equally, it’s the same if your goal is to reach a million subscribers or to earn your first one million pounds (or dollars).

    To lose fifty pounds, you must have already lost forty-nine. To reach one million subscribers or your first one million pounds/dollars, you must at some point be at the number 999,999.

    I’m not underestimating these achievements—not at all. And I’m also not saying you shouldn’t have big goals.

    But I’m saying the value that comes from them only comes from the context that is applied to them. People fail to understand that the value attached to the goal was given by a past version of themselves, whereas a completely different version has experienced them, so essentially, the value has gone.

    The version of you that sets the target and the version of you that reaches it are used to two completely different standards. By being able to reach your goal, you have subsequently removed all value from it.

    The difference between 999,999 and 1 million is 0.0001%, yet quite literally no one celebrates reaching the former.

    This is the reason why people feel so empty when they finally reach their goals.

    To avoid this, and to constantly feel like a winner, you should focus on the very next step and celebrate every win.

    4. Discipline = Freedom 

    You’ve probably heard of discipline and all of its benefits many times before, as it is a crucial thing to adopt if you want to be successful at anything in life. However, I’m going to be talking about a positive aspect of discipline that no one knows or talks about.

    And that’s the sense of freedom that comes with it.

    There is an obvious way that discipline leads to freedom: By avoiding procrastination and getting tasks done immediately, we end up having more time.

    But there is a more profound sense of freedom that discipline gives us.

    As I have already mentioned, we’ll all inevitably experience feelings of discomfort in life, often from things completely out of our control.

    Now, let’s say you let these feelings stop you from doing what you know you should do. You’re letting external circumstances dictate how and where your life goes.

    Having the discipline to continue doing what needs to be done regardless of external situations or the feelings that might ensue will give you the most profound sense of freedom.

    Without discipline in these situations, you’re essentially losing all sense of control.

    One of the biggest things I felt when I started to build discipline, although I didn’t know it at the time, was a wave of freedom I had never felt before.

    Externally, everything in my life was exactly the same—nothing on the outside had changed. Yet everything on the inside had. I felt free. Being in control of your life means everything suddenly no longer feels permanent and you no longer feel helpless.

    As mentioned above, doing hard things is a great way to build discipline, as you’ll most likely feel like doing these the least. But discipline can also be built by the smaller and more mundane things, like waking up earlier or refusing to snooze, starting a daily meditation practice, or replacing endless scrolling with learning a language.

    These are some of the small things I used to build more discipline. Yours could look completely different. The trick is to find something productive that’s a challenge to be persistent with—then a sense of control and a feeling of freedom will follow.

  • Why My “Self-Care” Did More Harm Than Good

    Why My “Self-Care” Did More Harm Than Good

    “Self-care is how you take your power back.” ~Lalah Delia

    Self-care is not a bubble bath.

    I mean, it might be, if you’re the kind of person who feels like they’re committing a mortal sin by allowing themselves to wade in hot water with a candle or a book for twenty minutes alone. If that’s you, then yes. Please allow yourself a bubble bath. Regularly!

    Same with a massage. Or scheduling time for exercise. Or buying yourself some new underwear. Or taking a nap.

    If the idea of doing these things makes you feel squirmy and selfish and, Nooooo, I just can’t! then this is probably your brand of self-care.

    It is not mine, though.

    You see, I’ve never had a problem giving myself more treats. More me time! More pleasures! More whatever-I-feel-like-right-now! Treat Yo-Self wasn’t something I needed to be talked into—it was just public permission to do more of what I had always done.

    By this kind of definition of self-care, I was winning the Self-Care Olympics. Why was it so hard for everyone else? I wondered, as I treated myself to another bath after my middle-of-the-day nap following by my weekly massage, while my taxes from three years ago went untouched for another day, the organic groceries in my refrigerator rotted in deference to another night of Treat Yo-Self takeout, and I canceled a therapy appointment because I just didn’t feel like going (again).

    For the longest time, I waded in an ocean of cognitive dissonance. I didn’t feel like the kind of person who had a drinking problem, or lied, or who didn’t follow-through, or was flaky, or God forbid, lazy. I mean, I had so much evidence to the contrary! I was accomplished, I got a lot of things done, I presented well, people still loved me, and I had such good intentions!

    Except my behavior pointed squarely to those things.

    The disconnect ate at me. I knew I was tap-dancing a whole lot. I knew my good intentions were an excuse for shitty behavior. I knew that I was skating by in a lot of scenarios at work, with friends, in my financial life, at home. I knew that most of what I had accomplished was done at fifty percent, or less. I cut corners a lot.

    I knew, even if I didn’t know, that much of my life was a house of cards.

    So when I practiced the Instagram brand of #selfcare by pampering myself, I had this niggling sense that maybe more pampering wasn’t what I actually needed.

    Which brings me to discipline.

    Discipline has begrudgingly become my brand of self-care. Discipline is what has actually created freedom in my life, contrary to what I long believed. I thought my free-spirited ways were an act of rebellion against the monotony of life. That I was showing some kind of ballsy dissent toward the banality of adulthood Carpe diem and all that!

    Meanwhile, through my twenties and thirties, I trembled inside, unsure as to why everyone else seemed to do adult things so easily and automatically. I thought maturity was an automatic function of time, a passive effect of getting older. Somehow, it would just magically happen!

    Alas, no.

    This one concept has made an enormous difference in my life: for me, self-care looks like discipline.

    It looks like finishing things I start and pausing for a minute before I start another thing to consider the implications of starting said thing in the first place: financially, timewise, energy-wise, and who I might be impacting negatively if I don’t follow through.

    It means boundaries on screen time. Limiting the amount of sugar I put in my body.

    It means teaching my daughter to do things for herself instead of doing them for her because the latter is easier and causes less friction in the moment. It also means following through on consequences I lay down for her, even though it makes my life temporarily harder.

    It means waking at basically the same time every morning, so I get in the practices that keep me steady before the rest of the world wakes up: morning pages, meditation, coffee, quiet.

    It means abiding by commitments and being very exact about the commitments I make.

    It means sticking to my word as much as possible, even when I don’t want to.

    It means saying no to myself more than I say yes.

    It means asking if my future self will thank me for what I’m about to do versus my in-this-moment self, and actually listening when the answer is, No, your future self will not appreciate this, Laura.

    It often means doing what’s necessary over what’s fun.

    Self-care for me means discipline because that’s what is uncomfortable for me. That’s what I struggle to do. It goes against my default patterning, and going against our patterning is how we change.

  • Doing What’s Good for Us: What We Need Beyond Discipline

    Doing What’s Good for Us: What We Need Beyond Discipline

    Meditation

    “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” ~Annie Dillard

    When I first engaged spiritual practice, I tried to meditate while counting breaths. “I can’t do this!” I lamented, “It’s too hard.” The green satiny cushion filled with buckwheat chaff felt hard and unforgiving.

    My legs ached. I kept checking my watch. My mind ached.

    Tick. Tick. Tick.

    The watch taunted me, and I did not feel the least bit edified by the experience.

    But every few moon phases, I’d try again: half an hour of hellacious discomfort, of shifting in my chair or—if I had gotten really ambitious—on the cushion.

    It was horrible. Didn’t feel life affirming at all.

    In fact, it was nothing but an occasion for self-criticism. I didn’t know how to watch my feelings and thoughts arise and release, as I had been told I was supposed to do. I only knew I had to sit there for half an hour, no matter what.

    But wasn’t it what you’re supposed to do? Wasn’t it good for me? Wouldn’t it change my life?

    As you might imagine, it didn’t take very long for me to abandon a sitting practice. I berated myself for having no discipline, and tried to move on.

    The word “discipline” only conjured suffering: Exercise I hated, housework I loathed, and foods I ate only because they were “good for me.” Besides a very limited concept of “good,” the whole idea of discipline was clearly associated with punishment and pain.

    Eventually, I did learn that “discipline”—like “disciple”—comes from the root, “to follow.” It was not derived, say, from “spare the rod and spoil the child.” Still, I struggled.

    The maxim, “Discipline is remembering what you really want” felt strange, alien. It did not comfort me.

    Sadly, “practice” was even tainted with discipline-ism. Practice makes perfect, after all, and perfection was what I thought I wanted and could never get my arms around.

    I came to dread even life-giving activities I loved because I associated them with “having to” do them because they were “good for me.” Down was up. Good was awful.

    Eventually, though, those two earlier understandings began to sink in: “Discipline is remembering what you really want,” and “discipline’s” root is “to follow.”

    How did this shift happen? How did things turn and move and change?

    In me, it happened because I learned that discipline is nothing without gentleness. Without kindness. Without understanding my own suffering.

    It was gentleness that allowed me to explore forms of spiritual practice that I had not previously considered. Gentleness allowed me to be creative and find what worked for me.

    Singing at my altar. Freewriting. Breathing over my coffee in the morning.

    And it is gentleness that allows yogis just to “get on the mat” and see what happens from there with no expectation or plan.

    It is gentleness that allows us to sit for only a few minutes today instead of the forty-five we’d like to attain or sustain.

    It is gentleness that acknowledges that practice changes us over time, not in a sprint or in a flash of heavy lifting.

    In my experience, gentleness doesn’t keep us from being disciplined. In point of fact, because gentleness helps us respond to our current circumstances, it is indeed a practice of mindfulness.

    Gentleness is a way of being kind. It both doesn’t sprint in this moment and yet it encourages us to get on the mat, to settle into the cushion, to sing for a while, to write a page or two.

    Gentleness is supple. Gentleness does not say that it’s okay to throw in the towel of practice. Gentleness makes practice possible when it feels so difficult.

    Furthermore, gentleness has rescued discipline. Discipline is the getting on the mat that gentleness encourages. Discipline is remembering that a small dose of dailiness is worth more than a single three-hundred-pound lift. Discipline with gentleness allows for dailiness.

    And dailiness is what changes us—what changes me.

    It has taken me close to twenty years to get to a sustainable, nearly daily practice. If I had pushed on with my limited understanding of discipline, my practice would not have grown, deepened, and borne the fruit it has.

    Discipline is necessary. Discipline allows us to follow where the practice leads us. Discipline is in the insistence that I do something for my practice today.

    Gentleness tells me that I needn’t judge the goodness, rightness, or spiritual muscle of my practice. Discipline reminds me that dailiness will change my life. Gentleness allows that dailiness to happen by leaving more than one door open for my practice.

    So I began again, after years of trying long chunks of seated practice.

    I began by creating beauty. I began by setting up altars with candles and objects sacred to me and by spending time with them each day.

    And then I began to write at my altar, and then to sing. I could sing for longer than I could sit, but singing led to sitting and sitting led to yoga and yoga led to swimming.

    I can engage my practice with discipline—make sure to write and sing each day, at least—because gentleness has given me permission to be shaped over time from whatever tiny efforts I could bring to begin with.

    I encourage us all—experienced practitioners and those for whom practice feels a faraway dream—to allow both discipline and gentleness to shape us. To attend to when we need one more than the other, but to keep them close together always.

    How do you keep them separate or together? Which do you need more in your life today, and how can you cultivate it?

    Blessings on your practice and your hopes for compassion, integrity, and wisdom.

    Meditating image via Shutterstock

  • How Do You Motivate Yourself: With Love or Fear?

    How Do You Motivate Yourself: With Love or Fear?

    “The heart is like a garden: it can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?” ~ Jack Kornfield

    My whole life has been a story of discipline. I started exercising and eating healthier in eighth grade. I planned out my studies meticulously so I would finish school assignments exactly on time. I always arrived five minutes early for any appointment or meeting. Disciplined.

    When I began my yoga studies in earnest at the age of twenty-two, I applied the same disciplined nature to my yoga practice. I had extensive practice plans and had scheduled in all the parts I should be doing: pranayama and meditation at dawn, asana practice after work with standing poses on Monday, hip openers on Tuesday, etc.

    People would comment about how disciplined I was. I just smiled, knowingly, because I knew what I was doing was “good” and they could learn something from my organized way of living. Yep, a little self-righteousness, too!

    Then one day, about fifteen years ago, while I was contemplating the yogic term tapas (self-discipline), I had an awakening: my discipline, everything, all that I did (including exercise, eating well, rigidity around how I used my time), came from fear, not love.

    It wasn’t focused on all the wonderful benefits I received through discipline but what I would lose if I didn’t do it.

    If I didn’t exercise, I wouldn’t have my exercise high all day. If I didn’t eat perfectly, I would gain weight. If I didn’t do my practice, I would lose my state of consciousness.

    So much fear! I knew I wanted it to change. I didn’t want this level of fear in my life, especially around my spiritual life whose very essence was love.

    I was planting seeds with my practice, as Jack Kornfield’s quote said: “The heart is like a garden: it can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?”

    I wanted to be planting seeds of love.

    While choosing to make a change in our life because we are afraid of something at least gets us going (quitting smoking because of the fear of dying, working on being on time at work because of the fear of being fired, beginning meditation after a heart attack), we ultimately want to shift from fear to love, from what we don’t want to what we do want.

    Focusing on what we don’t want simply continues to plant fear in our hearts. Focusing on what we do want, and that we deserve what we want, plants seed of compassion and love.

    So, what did I do? I quit everything. I quit my entire practice—including eating well, exercising, being rigid with my schedule—and entered into a study of discipline. Two discoveries would forever change my perspective.

    The first reflection came from the word tapas, itself. Roughly translated, it means “inner fire” and refers to the inner fire to know ourselves, the desire; and we learn about ourselves through our yoga practice, our study of life, and everything we do for ourselves.

    I like to also think of it as the inner fire to feel good, to be doing what we really want to be doing, to love our life.

    We can use this “inner fire” to inspire us to be disciplined with whatever we want to do, to continue our actions even when we feel resistance. (You know, the preference to sleep in rather than get up to exercise, to eat junk food rather than prepare something healthy, to grab for a cigarette rather than not.)

    The desire drives us to want to learn more and is stronger than the resistance when we stroke it. And we stroke it by focusing on what we want, getting excited about what our action will help us feel.

    The second transformational nugget was the word “discipline” itself. The word comes from the Latin root “disciplina” and means “instruction given, teaching, learning, knowledge.” Think in terms of a disciple learning at the foot of a master.

    Again, our discipline to do our own practice helps us to learn about ourselves, it is a teacher for us, our master, so to speak.

    Knowing I wanted my practice to be based on love, not fear, to be planting seeds of love from it, I continued to hold myself back from practicing.

    The fear bubbled to the surface. I feared I would lose “everything” for quite some time. But then, a deeper desire began to percolate up. A curiosity about a certain pose and how it would feel, a curiosity about a breath, a new meditation I felt a niggling to try. 

    I felt an inner excitement to get to my mat, and I finally did.

    Self-discipline is tricky for many of us. In my work, I rarely come upon anyone who says that what they do for themselves is deeply satisfying and they feel they do enough. Most of us feel we need to do more, we aren’t disciplined enough.

    The judgment itself comes from fear. Let me say that another way, if you are judging yourself for not having enough self-discipline, you are basing your practice on fear.

    So how do you change the focus?

    Instead, return to why you do what you do. Why do you do yoga, exercise, eat well, or do anything else you feel you would like to be more disciplined around? What brought you to it in the first place? Sometimes along the way, we lose site of our deeper purpose.

    Bring your attention back to that deeper purpose. Put your love into it.

    While I wish I could say the fear was eradicated for me, never to return, I must admit it does return. I can say that when it surfaces I now have new tools to handle it. I am better able to see it for what it is and return to the state of love quickly.

    Ironically, I realize that my fear-based discipline did teach me something about myself and led me to a life with more love.