21 Days to a More Disciplined Life

So many of you mentioned yesterday that it was really hard to choose just one bad habit to focus on for the next 20 days. I know the feeling! At any given time, it can seem like there are a hundred and one areas that I need to improve in. In fact, when I start dwelling on all the bad habits I want to reverse or the good habits I want to implement, I can become overwhelmed!

Over the summer, I attended a workshop at our local homeschool conference by Susan Christman. She was encouraging moms to making habit-training a priority in their children’s lives. (You can see her hand-out here. If you’re unfamiliar with the term “habit-training”, be sure to check out this free ebook for more helpful information.)

The one thing that she emphasized was not only important habits are to develop in our own lives and the lives of our children, but how important it is to focus on one new habit at a time. I left the conference with this nugget of wisdom forever lodged in my brain.

In fact, it was the answer to my lifelong quest for more discipline. You see, for as long as I can remember, every few months, I’d realize that my life was in serious need of more order and discipline. In a flurry of resolve, I’d make this huge list of new habits I was going to begin implementing immediately.

I’d do really well at my new resolutions for about two days. And then I’d crash and burn from exhaustion, or something unexpected would come up and catapult me off course. When this happened, I’d throw up my hands in despair and defeat, feeling like a failure.

Instead of trying to implement two dozen habits at once, pace yourself and just focus on one habit at a time. Yes, it will take longer to actually see big changes, but those changes will be much more long-lasting.

In the long run, it’s better to only focus on and master three habits each year that actually stick, than to try repeatedly to develop 30 different habits at a time and end up overwhelmed, frustrated, and back to where you started from.

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Practical Application

Sometime in the next 24 hours, find 15 minutes to sit down and make a list of all the good habits you want to develop in your own life and the bad habits you want to reverse. This is not an exercise to overwhelm you; it’s an exercise to just get it all written down on paper so it’s not sitting in your brain nagging at you.

Once you’ve made an exhaustive list, prioritize the top three habits that will make the most difference were you to implement them tomorrow. Then, take a deep breath, set your paper aside in a safe place (if you’re prone to lose things, consider emailing yourself the list or saving it as a file on your computer!), and keep working on the habit you’ve already committed to make your focus for the next 19 days.

When you feel like the current habit you’re working on has truly become a habit, you can then pull out your exhaustive list and start making the next thing a priority. Remember to take it slowly–even if you’re tempted to accelerate onto the next habit.

Yesterday’s project update: The habit I chose to focus on is to get up early every single day for this whole 21 day challenge. I’m three days in and already dragging, but I know that it takes awhile to “reset” my clock again. So I’m pushing through the tiredness, making early bedtime a priority, and not allowing myself to find an excuse for sleeping in in the morning, even when my warm bed feels so nice. How’s your daily habit going?

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Yesterday we discussed how living a disciplined life is dependent solely upon me and the choices I make on a daily basis. You are not only the problem, you are also the solution.

So how do we change from the inside out? Well, first, we have to realize that it will be a process. You can’t just decide to go from zero discipline to 100% discipline overnight.

Unfortunately, there is no magic pill you can take that will suddenly make you a disciplined person. Instead, you need to just resolve to change something and then follow through with it–even if it’s as simple as resolving to put your purse away in a designated spot when you come home instead of dropping it wherever you feel like when you stumble into your front door.

It’s easy to want to overhaul our whole lives in a matter of hours or days. But I promise that if you set small, simple, and achievable goals to begin with and stick with these over the long haul, it will be much more beneficial and effective than trying to radically change within 24 hours and ending up exhausted and burnt out after three days.

I love how FlyLady encourages her readers to start changing their lives by shining their kitchen sink. Again, this task might seem so small that it’s hardly worth the effort. But it really can make a big difference.

For instance, not too long ago, we started making a big effort to go to bed every night with a spotless kitchen. I’ve been amazed at how much more peaceful my mornings are when I don’t wake up to a sink overflowing with dirty dishes. It just makes my whole day seem bright to walk out of my bedroom and into a sparkling kitchen in the early morning! The opposite effect is true if I wake up to a messy kitchen: I feel overwhelmed, defeated, and behind before my day has even begun.

It’s a simple thing to whip the kitchen into shape at night. In fact, if my husband and I work together, we can get it completely clean in ten minutes. But developing the habit of not going to bed unless the kitchen is clean can change my whole outlook on the following day.

Remember: Moving in the right direction–even at a microscopic rate–is still moving forward. Slowly making seemingly tiny changes can add up to major differences over a period of time.

Practical Application

Choose one small bad habit you will commit to reverse or one good habit you will aim to implement in your life for the next 20 days. Use the Habit-Forming Chart or Habit Tracker (if you’re ambitious, there’s a 3-habit 100 days chart here) if that helps. Or, you can track your progress online through DailyFeats and earn free gift cards!

After you’ve put some thought into it, come back and tell us what one small change you decided upon. I’ll share mine tomorrow.

Yesterday’s Progress: The laundry is DONE. Well, at least until tomorrow. Yay! How did your project go? Did you get it finished?

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Based upon your responses to yesterday’s introductory post, many of us are longing for more discipline in our lives. We crave order and peace. We want to be better managers of our time and life. We want to follow through with our good intentions.

But so many times I’ve found that I try to go about developing a more disciplined life in all the wrong ways. I check out a book on living an organized life from the library and think it will make all the difference. I download a printable household organization planner and think it will magically whip my house into shape. Or I think that if my house or life or responsibilities were different, then I could achieve a disciplined life.

Instead of addressing the root issue–my lack of self-discipline–I think that a fancy new system is going to fix the problem. A bad system is not the problem. I am the problem.

Oh sure. Life throws curveballs. There are job losses, babies born, illnesses, moves, and projects that can get one off course. But ultimately, whether or not I live a disciplined life is dependent solely upon me and the choices I make on a daily basis.

Those are tough words to swallow. And I could wallow in frustration over my short-comings and failures. However, instead, I want to let it motivate me. I am the problem, but I am also the solution.

I don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars on organizational products. I don’t need to buy 20 books on living a disciplined life. Instead, I need to resolve to change from the inside out.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about how to start making specific, realistic changes to transform a cluttered, chaotic life into an orderly, organized life.

Practical Application

To jumpstart the 21 Days to a More Disciplined Life Challenge, choose one small project that has been nagging at you for the last few weeks or months and go start and complete it in the next 24 hours. You may find that it didn’t end up taking you near as long as you thought it would and you’ll feel so good to have it done.

I’m tackling the laundry pile (no surprise there, I’m sure, as this seems to the area I’m constantly struggling in!). Ever since returning from Relevant, I’ve been woefully behind on laundry. So I’m going to aim to get completely caught up within the next 24 hours. And then I’m going to be intentional about keeping the momentum going… more on that in a few days.

Come back tomorrow afternoon/evening and I’ll tell you how it went–and you can tell us how your project went, too!

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As I’ve alluded to over and over again recently, I’ve fallen off the bandwagon. And I’m struggling to get back up on it again.

I’ve been mulling over how to break the bad habits I’ve been developing and stop this downward spiral. The idea came to me to spend 21 days focusing on intentionally developing more discipline in my life. After thinking about it for a few weeks, I finally pitched it to my husband last week.

His response? “I think it’s a great idea. Can I join you?”

We sat down over the weekend and discussed what areas he and I are particularly struggling in and what specific changes would result in the most immediate and effective changes. We then came up with a gameplan for the next 21 days for each of us.

Since I know that public accountability works wonders for me, I’m going to blog daily about discipline (I’ll be preaching to myself when I write them, but you’re welcome to listen in if you need some extra motivation, too!) and I’ll also have a practical application project for each day. The following day, I’ll share the results of my project.

My hope is that, at the end of three weeks, I will have developed better habits and I’ll be pulling out of some of the mess and chaos that have resulted from my lack of discipline recently.

You’re more than welcome to join in this challenge, but please don’t feel obligated. Save the idea for later or skip over these posts if your plate is already brimming full.

By the way, thanks for bearing with me and my eclectic blogging. You all are the best!

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