I’d Rather Be Disciplined Than Ambitious.

I’d rather be disciplined than ambitious.  

Over the last couple of years I’ve realized that my goals are not as ambitious as they used to be.  I used to want to be the best speaker and writer in the world.  I used to want to fight professionally as a Mixed Martial Artist in my 40’s.  However, in the last couple of years these desires have faded.  My goals now are very normal but still very challenging:  Having children, buying a home, financial security, getting my mother moved here to Arkansas, continuing to stay fit and improve in my daily workouts, earning my black belt in Jiu Jitsu, writing/podcasting regularly etc.  

I’ve also gotten more in tune with the reality that our everyday habits are what create our future reality.  I suppose that is an age thing.  It was easier to dream bigger when I was younger because I felt like I had all the time in the world.  As a 43 year old man I recognize how limited time is and I don’t want to waste it.  Furthermore, I now have enough data about accomplishing difficult tasks to know that hitting a big goal is about all the small steps that lead up to it.  This understanding has led me to meditate more on daily acts of discipline.  It’s tough to write everyday.  It’s hard to do some meaningful exercise everyday.  It’s damn sure hard for me to eat a relatively clean diet everyday.  There was a time 6-8 months ago where I was struggling to show up to work on time, consistently.  I was doing a poor job of managing my workout time in the morning and that was causing me to run a few minutes late at least once a week.  I tightened up and got things back on track.  These are all just daily disciplines and the longer I live the more respect I have for the effort it takes to get these things right on a consistent basis.  

There’s nothing wrong with ambition but it’s discipline that gets things done.  It’s discipline that makes me sit down and write daily.  It’s discipline that makes me record and edit another podcast.  It’s discipline that lets me get off work at 3 pm on a Saturday afternoon, go get my running/sprinting workout done, and not go out for pizza for dinner that night (I certainly don’t win this battle everytime!).  It’s discipline that has me keep a note in my phone where I gather gift ideas for my wife.  It’s discipline that gets me to Jiu Jitsu class in the evening after the last day of my work week when I just want to go home and chill out with my wife.  

When we are young it’s so fun to talk about our big goals and the things we are going to do in life.  However, what we aren’t  tuned into as children is just how difficult it is to conform our daily habits into lining up with the big goals we want to achieve.  

I was 25 years old when I joined the Army.  If you would have come to me and said, “Do you think you can save $120,000.00 dollars in the next 5 years?”  I would have thought that was an ambitious target and I probably would have said, no.  Maybe $50,000 would be more realistic.  Especially considering I was $60,000.00 in debt when I joined the Army.  5 years later when I left, I had $60,000.00 cash in the bank and I was debt free.  If you do the math, that’s a $120,000.00 swing.  Again, it’s fine to be ambitious but at the end of the day, it was discipline that got my financial house in order and it’s discipline that’s gotten me to any meaningful accomplishment I’ve had the privilege to experience in my life.

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