Without Self-Discipline You Can’t Maximize Your Potentials

Without Self-Discipline

 You Can’t Maximize Your Potentials

Dearly beloved, why do you think most people die with their potentials unused? Why do people discover their potentials and yet fail to maximize them? What is the main reason why people don’t fulfil their potentials and live their other lives(achieve their goals, dreams and ambition)? The answer is simple, Self-Discipline, the lack of it. You limit and resist yourself by your lack of self-discipline.

I will like us to start this discussion using the words of Daniel Goldstein:

 If you set goals for yourself and you are like a lot of other people, you probably realize it’s not that your goals are physically impossible that’s keeping you from achieving them: it’s that you lack the self-discipline to stick to them…

Looking at the quote above, you will realize three things: the first is that people set goals for themselves, come up with dreams and visions of what they want to achieve. That is, they have a picture of how their second life(future goals, dreams and ambitions) should be like. Fortunately, the second thing is that all these dreams and aspirations are possible to achieve. They are not beyond reach, they are not impossible. Yet unfortunately, the third thing we notice is that people don’t always achieve those possible dreams, most people never fulfil one-tenth of their goals and aspiration.

 In order words, though we have the potentials to enter into and fulfil our second life, we, however, don’t always enter. We waste all our potentials in the first life wishing and wishing and never acting. We often die with our potentials unused and unfulfilled not because we are faced with any external resistance but because we limit ourselves by our own lack of self-discipline. 

Without self-discipline, you will never be able to maximize your potentials. Without self-discipline, your dreams will never become a reality. Without self-discipline, your goals will only remain on paper and never be realized. Without self -discipline, you will discover all the potentials you have to become the best of yourself, but you will never use them to your advantage. If you lack self-discipline you will only see from afar the beautiful future that awaits you but you will never get to enter into it. 

Without self- discipline, people die with all their discovered potentials unused and all their foreseen dreams unfulfilled. Without self-discipline, you will have the potentials for becoming a king but you will die a slave. Without self-discipline, you could be so gifted and talented to become a champion and yet die uncelebrated and unheard of. Self-discipline is a kingmaker, self-discipline is the midwife for birthing greatness. Without self -discipline, potentials are useless and mediocrity becomes the plague of life. No wonder Theodore Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States proclaimed the following:

“The one quality which sets one man apart from another- the key which lifts one to every aspiration while others are caught up in the mire of mediocrity- is not talent, formal education, nor intellectual brightness - it is self-discipline. With self-discipline all things are possible. Without it, even the simplest goal can seem like the impossible dream”.

If you must be numbered among the achievers of our days, the great names that history will never forget, you must cultivate one habit, and that is self -discipline. If you want to live an exceptional life, a life worthy of emulation, a life of influence and positive impact, you must first learn self-discipline. 

The difference between people who fulfil and maximize their potentials and those who die with their potentials is self -discipline. The difference between those who die wishing and those who fulfil their wish before they die is self-discipline. If you don’t want to live a life of mediocrity, you must above every other thing, put on the virtue of self-discipline. 

The problem is not that your dreams are not achievable, the problem is not that you don’t have the potentials to maximize your purpose, your primary problem is that you lack the self-discipline to work out your dreams and maximize your potentials. Your dreams and visions are very much possible but without self-discipline, you will hastily conclude that they are not a possibility. Without self-discipline, you exempt yourself from greatness. Without self-discipline, greatness will elude you.

What then is this self-discipline? The answer is found here:

“Self-Discipline is doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, even when you don’t feel like doing it”

                                                    -Anonymous

You promised to read one leadership book per week, are you sticking to that?

You promised to study six hours per day, are you doing that?

You promised to author one book every month, how far have you kept your promise?

You promised to put in three hours of practice every day on the Piano, has that been fulfilled?

You said you were going to do a voice training every two days, are you doing that?

You said you were going to start up a blog and write articles every week, what is happening with that?

You proposed to train five hours every day on the football pitch, the basketball court, the swimming pool, etc. are you doing that?

You see, I could go on and on asking similar questions, but that will produce an unending list. People are quick to make resolutions and write down goals but are very slow and lethargic when it’s time to fulfill them. The problem is not that it is bad to have goals and dreams, but one must also be ready to fulfill them. There is no difference between a man who died with his goals and dreams unfulfilled and a man who never had one. Both will die with their potentials and as mediocre.

Most people often come up with excuses why they don’t maximize their potentials or live a great life. Some blame witches and enemies, others blame circumstances and backgrounds. The truth, however, is that it is not because you are troubled by some family witches that you are not successful in life. It is not because you were born into a poor family that you are not living a life of greatness. Neither is it because your country has corrupt leadership that you are not fulfilling your potentials, it is for the singular reason that you lack self-discipline. Your dreams are far-fetched because you lack self-discipline. Your goals are not accomplished because you are resisting yourself by your lack of self-discipline. If you must reach your goals and fulfill your potentials you must have self-discipline. The reason is that:

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments

-Jim Rohn

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