I was browsing LinkedIn this morning when I came across a Steve Chandler quote. (If you don’t know Steve, you really should.) It went something like this: Discipline has nothing to do with personality, it has to do with practice. In other words self-discipline is something you use, not something you have.

I love to beat myself up when I fall out of my routine, when I ignore my disciplines. I love to call myself lazy, inconsistent, and (my mother’s favorite) slovenly. I see it as a sign that I’m bad to the bone.

Walt’s away in Ireland, so I’ve stopped making my bed, shaving my legs, eating normal meals, taking my vitamins….you catch the drift. It’s the inner rebel.  As if at 52 I need to rail against the man, in this case my nice husband.

I keep thinking about something one of my writing clients said about beating his drug addiction. His recovery began with the regular practice of making his bed. That one small change, that one small discipline, shifted the game up for him.

I’ve been super busy the last two months, I mean CRAZY busy, so I’ve let my running go for a few weeks. And, man, now that I have the time, have I avoided going back to that practice. Because I hate how it feels to have no flow. I hate to run like a grandmother. I think it shouldn’t be this way; after all I’ve been running for 20 years.  WTF?!

And I know it always goes this way. That it takes at least three runs to feel like I’m a runner again. But I avoid it. And I beat myself up. And I accuse myself of having no discipline, as if that’s a reflection of who I am as a person, as opposed to simply having fallen out of practice.

Practice is a very different thing than a personality flaw.

And I see this problem with my writing clients. They haven’t gotten to the discipline of writing. Of sitting down and practicing. Of working through the first three consistent sessions so they can start feeling like writers, albeit shitty writers. Their avoiding the discomfort. They’d prefer to think of themselves as undisciplined human beings that deserve to be shot. But they’re not. They’ve just fallen out of practice.

All it takes is the decision to sit down now and practice.

I’m just back from my run. It sucked BIG time. But I’m back to my practice. And it will get better. It always does.

Now I’m going to go and make my stupid bed.