SISTER WISDOM : build a better life

I tend toward what is easy. Discipline, pain, sacrifice? I shudder at the thought. Yesterday the sermon was on being spirit-led. Sounds nice, but it was uncomfortable: controlling your appetite, saying no to what you want, realizing that the urge toward what is easy, comfortable, and instantly gratifying is probably the opposite of what spirit-led means.

Everything worthwhile that I have done has required discipline, pain, and sacrifice. Think about pregnancy and birth. Even getting married, candy-coated as that time was, required change, which is always difficult, and leaving behind the old life to begin a new one.

I have never regretted doing what is necessary to reach a worthy goal, to accomplish something important to me. Often I have regretted waiting, procrastinating, dumbing down the process until I've removed any thing really painful or fulfilling.

I don't know why there is this necessary friendship of self-discipline and fulfillment, but it is undeniable. If you want to get anywhere that matters , it's time to embrace the pain and learn the process.

1. Convince yourself of the benefits of the particular action. Write down the pros and cons. Show yourself on paper that it is necessary for you to do this in order to reach important goals. Don't just focus on the goal, here, but on the difficult action to reach the goal. Don't sugar coat it. Recognize that it is difficult but worth the difficulty.
2. Read a bout people who have done this sort of thing, any aspect of it. Read about their struggles. Memorize their quotes. Contemplate their success and what they gained by overcoming their own resistance. Saturate yourself with stories of these people until the difficult action seems normal, the very least to be demanded from you.
3. Create a plan and a schedule, define your specific action(s), make a checklist for every day for a month, and set up your surroundings to help you, not drag you back into old habits. Throw out the stuff that kept old habits alive. Clean out your refrigerator, or cancel your cable, or delete that number from your phone. Bring in the stuff that will help you with this new action. Set up your writing area, or buy fruits and vegetables and a healthy cookbook, or write a list of the qualities you're looking for in a mate.
4. Get a daily accountability system in place. This could be a friend you phone or email for a progress report, your spouse, a blog ( like this one) or social site where you make a public commitment and then give daily updates, or a group working toward the same goal together.
5. Write a statement, just a sentence or two long, that reminds you of why you're doing this, what the consequences will be if you don't stick to it, and what the rewards will be if you do. Read it every night before bed and every morning when you wake up and every time you can through the day, especially when you're tempted to cut corners on reaching your goal.

Persistence is key; make progress one day at a time and don't let up. The more you repeat an action, the easier it becomes. If you make doing difficult things part of your life, you'll come to enjoy the challenge each one brings and you'll be rewarded by a life that is rich and fulfilling and inspiring to others. Someday people will be copying your own words down as motivation to help them do their difficult things.