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This is part 8 of a series of articles on Top Secrets to Achieve Success, please go to the Category Top Secrets for Success to find the rest of the articles. You will surely enjoy the reading.

As I started my martial arts training I was just as anyone else in this world: insecure, undisciplined and lacked control on myself.

And it was when one of my Martial Arts Teacher told me: “You always have an excuse for whatever happens to you” that everything clicked and I finally could see myself in the mirror and see that the only one who I was cheating was I and no one else.

I am writing here about discipline, I am trying to let you understand that no matter what you decide to do with your life discipline is a key ingredient for success on what you are doing.

Maybe you have already noticed that you cannot predict the future, you can have an idea of what the future could be and mold your PRESENT thoughts in order for them to be your future, but, How do you achieve the consistency you need to make that happen? There is where discipline plays the biggest role of them all.

The untrained human being will just be able to focus on one single thing for about 6 seconds per every minute, the rest of the time your mind is wandering around and chattering, with such a small concentration time span it is no mystery why is it so hard for people to achieve their goals.

Consistency is a direct product of discipline and there is nothing more desired in a person’s life than to have a consistent rate of success, at least, that is what I believe.

Your only weapon and the only thing that can make things happen exactly as planned is to be disciplined. Disciplined! I hear you say…

Yes, disciplined with your Business plan
Disciplined with your life plan
Disciplined with your thoughts and actions

If you do exactly what you decided to do over and over again with minimum deviation then you are set to succeed.

It is from my own experience that I know that: “the shortest way to riches is to follow your business plan”. It does not matter if your business plan seems to make a lot of curves instead of going direct to the objective it will be a million times better than just having no business plan or even worse have one and just bail out because you lack discipline.

In order to illustrate my words let’s exemplify:

On May 2007, I decided to start this blog, my reasons to start it were:
1) To keep a log of all that I learn from my own experiences and be able to pass them to those who would like to learn from them.
2) To earn some money with it but keeping the information free.

My initial goal is quite simple: Reach 100k visitors per month and earn around 1200$ monthly.

From the very beginning I knew the following:
1) There are over 70 million blogs out there
2) The big money is earned by 10% of the total blogs
3) The Blog mortality rate is high.
4) What I like to write about is really kind of hard to understand and requires effort from my readers to understand.

Knowing all that, it looks like a loosing proposition from the very beginning, so then why do I do it?

1) I have faith.
2) I believe that whatever I put my thoughts and will I will succeed and I want to make proof of that.
3) I am disciplined enough to carry out with the decision I made.
4) I am persistent and I never give up.

For some reason I am a person who really likes to excel and to achieve hard goals, because that is my passion.

I once read that people resist changing because they use their qualities in order to be accepted socially. For example, a person who is always sick is because he/she decided to be sick all the time and one of the reasons this person have no intention to change is because every time his/her friends talk about him/her they will remember that this person is always sick and when he/she meet with his/her social group talking about his/her sickness is what brings the most acceptation from the group.

How many times have you gathered with people or friends and when you ask him/her “how are you?” they will immediately start by telling you all the bad things that are happening on his/her life and you will show amazement about what he/she is living and then feel pity, give some advice and create an acceptation which reinforces this mental state of your friend.

The reason I explain that is because if that is the case… then Hell!!!! I want to be remembered as the guy who is a great martial artist the one who opened a school totally free for everyone which he is able to support thanks to his great businesses, work and dedication in many areas of his life. I want people who talks about me to say: amazing this guy is always healthy and as time passes he looks younger everyday (LOL :D) … get my point?

I have managed to install discipline in my subconscious, to be a smart worker in order to work more in many areas (I mean work hard but with a much better time management). To achieve ultimate goals and influence people to understand that if you train yourself enough you will be able to achieve whatever goal you impose to yourself is my motivation.

For all that you need discipline, but How do you get discipline?

Discipline like anything else is something you learn and you really need to start small in order to not get frustrated, once you work over your own “I can” scale then you will be able to do some amazing feats. Do not try to be a Shaolin Monk tomorrow

Start Small

1. Small things are great things to get disciplined.

Let say you have planed to clean your house on Saturday, nothing spectacular right? But then, a couple of friends call you to invite you to a party on Friday, you go and party all night! … you come home and sleep almost all Saturday, it’s 5:00pm , What will you do? Will you move your house cleaning plan to Sunday? Or will you start your cleaning on Saturday?
Discipline starts even before, if you knew you would clean your house on Saturday then why did you stay so long partying on Friday?

I am hearing your excuses now: “Life is one and you have to enjoy it, I enjoy going to party and not cleaning my house”…

Let me tell you one thing, even though you might not be aware, you are surely doing the same thing in other aspects of your life. You are just evading your plans and responsibilities in exchange for entertainment, leisure and pleasure.

You are just a pawn of your desires, fears and greed and the only way to get rid of that is to be strict with yourself and follow your plans for the day.

With this said, get your hands on discipline and you will increase your chances of success.