Most people want to lose some weight, have happy relationships, achieve financial independence or get a 20% raise and be very good at their job. Some people even want to win an Olympic gold medal.
Most people who have accomplished great things in life such as becoming an outstanding athlete, musician, teacher, businessman or leader, started from the bottom without a lot of help. Many who became millionaires started out poor. Many sports stars started out awkward and slow. Many musicians started out without any apparent talent.
Kop Kopmeyer wrote four bestselling books which each contained 250 principles for success, for a total of 1000 success principles. When asked which was the most important he replied, “Self-discipline.”
Longfellow aparently felt the same way:
“Those heights by great men, won and kept,
Were not achieved by sudden flight.
But they, while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.”
A person who is willing to do what he needs to do, when he needs to do it whether he feels like it or not is going to do great things in life. Usually the only way to achieve this is to learn to enjoy your work.
Brian Tracy said:
The payoff for developing high levels of self-discipline is extraordinary! There is a direct relationship between self-discipline and self-esteem:
• The more you practice self-mastery and self-control, the more you like and value yourself;
• The more you discipline yourself, the greater is your sense of self-respect and personal pride;
• The more you practice self-discipline, the better is your self-image. You see yourself and think about yourself in a more positive way. You feel happier and more powerful as a person.
Kopmeyer said the second most important principle is “to learn from the experts.” None of us lives long enough to learn everything on our own. Reading a book about how to do whatever you want to accomplish will propel you much farther ahead than you can do on your own.
Motivating people to achieve self-discipline is what my blog and my book are all about. http://bradstanton.com/10-keys-to-success/ Buy one book, get four free ebooks!
