There are many glitches in many systems that I'm involved in right now, including one in my company, as they lent me to the CEO's other company to film a TV advertisement, but they were so disorganized and worked so slow that I didn't get home until 11pm. The glitch however is in my self-discipline, and I felt helpless against it this morning.
Self-discipline means that in any situation, in the face of emotions, if you are set on doing something it will get done. I have been set on my morning and night routines, including studying chinese / reading / blogging / sleeping early at night, and studying chinese / exercise / reading / planning in the morning. Last night and this morning slipped completely out of my hands, and even though I was conscious that it was slipping, I allowed it to happen. I tried to force myself to do it, but my mind kept rejecting the tasks and insisted on very simple MSN chatting, forum surfing, and finally sleep last night, and a morning full of nothing but harry potter.
Luckily the walk to work sparked something inside me again, but I have to rethink my plans as my self-discipline "muscle" is not strong enough to handle any more of a work load right now. As the last 2 weeks have been going really well in terms of building strong new habits and personal development I was planning on finally getting on the musical side of my plans, but after today I realized that I'm not quite there yet and should exercise my Patience as well as do more reps at the current discipline weight.
For a recap: I've already kicked the hard-core video game habit, but I still have a tendency to surf forums and waste time. I study chinese in the morning and night, but I still do more random MSN chatting than anything. I've been reading a lot. I've been doing little exercises in the morning and wake up at 7:30, but I want to eventually wake up at 6 and go running (the best time to go for a full-time worker).
Overall there are little things that I can improve in the current system, without adding things that might throw a wrench in and blow it up, which has been my tendency in the past. I always told myself that if in my entire time in China i did nothing but learn and absorb the patience of the Chinese people I would be happy, as patience is one of the most important character attributes that I can think of, and that I could use a lot more of. Obviously too much patience isn't patience at all, but just the inability to action, but I won't have that problem. I was planning on starting to cook more - bad idea. I was planning on tagging on guitar playing into my daily routine - good way to get myself to stop doing other things.
For the next week or few I will be doing what the Chinese love the most: reform. No radical change, but just reform. I'm not going to go overboard on the personal development, but focus strongly on building self-discipline and exercising my patience. I will continue to work on my sleep patterns by sleeping earlier and waking earlier, my productivity by slashing so much random MSN messaging and warcraft forum surfing, keep up my blog, continue me morning and night study routine, and pick up slightly on the exercise as well as healthy eating.
Anyway, off to work.
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1 comment:
I hear you man. I think self discipline is one of my biggest vices too, and it's definitely cost me a lot in my life. I hope that you are able to flex that muscle proudly one of these days, because I think we could both work that out more often. Good luck with that man, and stay strong. We can do this.
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