In the Runners Loving Runners Facebook group, a member asked, “How do I stay motivated to go out and run?” The answers—most of them anyway—treated the word motivation like a dirty one. Discipline, instead, was the focus, along with “I just do it.”
The distinction I understood. Whereas motivation is sought after like the last unfound Easter egg, discipline is action. With discipline, there is no space, no pause. You just go straight to Go and collect that $200.
Ooh, how I used to love Monopoly.
A memory of lying on my tummy on the carpet on my aunt’s floor, me focusing a little too long and with too much interest not on the game but on the protrusions on her bare feet. I later learned that bunions and varicose veins.
But that wasn’t the story. The story was that she, my uncle, and I were playing that dang game for hours. Or at least, to my 8-, 9-, or 10-year-old self, it seemed that way. Also, directly overhead, lining the periphery of her kitchen were Care Bear glasses, forty or more of them on a shelf. How cute were they? Sheri and Kerry calling each other Sher Bear and Ker Bear?
Where was I? Oh yes, discipline.
Choices that raised the bottom for my mood have consistently been related to discipline. Left to my own devices, without structure and my daily have-tos, I won’t. I know because I’ve been there. By setting non-negotiable habits around exercise, eating healthily, and certain hobbies like writing and practicing Spanish, I stay accountable. I keep doing the thing.
And like I tell myself—and will tell you—I do it this way because these are things I want to do anyway. What I don’t want is to neglect them.
And so I won’t.
Love, jaclynn