The Practice of Discipline in your 20s

Sorry for the skipped letter last week, got a bit sick and was traveling!

I think discipline is a word some people are a bit afraid of. They may think it’s a bit too hardcore, too strict, too intense.

We can likely thank the meaning of discipline to be skewed by the verb ‘to be disciplined’. This could be by your parents, your teachers at school or any other traditional authoritarian figure.

Discipline is also defined by (Cambridge dictionary)

(N.) the ability to make yourself do something, even if it is difficult, so that you can achieve a goal:

Now this is something we can work with. I’ll repeat for those who saw some bold/italic text and skipped it (lol). Discipline is doing something, even if it is hard, for your future self.

I think everyone, especially those of us in our 20s, can really learn a lot from this concept. Even just knowing it exists is better than most.

In today’s world, media and entertainment is so fast. From the rise of short-form video with TikTok and reels to people still using snapchat as a main form of communication (kmt you children), our brains are sooooooo overstimulated. Majority of us, without a doubt (from my highly speculative hypothesis), have ADHD tendencies solely from the speed of the media we consume. Not blaming anyone at all (cause I have them too), but acceptance is the first step to change.

A bit of a rant but my main point: a lot of us don’t think about the things we can do for our future selves. Mainly because they take too long. We want things to happen now, today or within 5 minutes because we just can’t seem to cope with waiting for anything unless we can see a defined outcome.

I am a huge consumer of this thought process as well. I want to be successful and financially free by tomorrow, to wake up and have abs next week or even sometimes believe, ‘Why aren't me and X closer?’.

The reason I even came to this realisation is from running. ‘Why am I not getting faster?’ ‘How can X run a 3:15 km/min when I can’t do 5:00 km/min?’ ‘Why are my legs absolutely destroyed from 10k, when Y did 35k today?’

Fact is, good things take time. (Especially when you are built more like a pug than a greyhound)

I know that’s a huge cliché. I’m not going to tell you everything you do in life needs to be a struggle or take 10 years of walking on legos cause that’s not true.

I think we tend to believe everything should have a rapid progression. It’s ok for things to move slowly. It’s ok to take your time. Look at this newsletter, we have a whopping 22 people subscribed! (Bless you for reading this) Would I love for this to go out to more than 100,000 people each week? Of course! But it’s not going to happen overnight.

In my opinion, discipline is about keeping consistent and getting a tiny bit better everyday. I’m definitely not the best example, skipping an article last week but at least I’m self aware :p

Thanks for reading another week of Two Steps Ahead. I would love to hear what kinds of things you are pursuing that takes just a little bit more time than you’d like and what you are doing to keep consistent! :)

See you next week!

Max