Five years ago, I felt a little lost.
I was about two years into freelancing and had a lot of goals I wanted to accomplish, but I wasn’t making any progress toward them.
I had a lot of ideas on where I wanted to take my career, but I couldn’t pick a direction or make a decision.
This left me feeling paralyzed and helpless, like I was destined to only dream about “what could be” instead of actually living it.
At the time, the only thing that seemed to make sense was this:
No matter what goals I want to achieve, I can only succeed if I am disciplined enough to follow through on them.
I knew it didn’t matter what the goals were. It didn’t matter if they were lowly or lofty. I would never get anywhere if I didn’t have discipline.
The problem was, I didn’t have any (at least in the areas that were related to my goals).
I didn’t have my goals written down. I didn’t know what steps I needed to take to accomplish them. And I didn’t have any habits that would help me make progress.
No wonder I felt lost, right?
So I did a little research on self discipline and found a book called No Excuses!
I had never heard of the book nor the author, but the first line of the description sold me:
“Most people think success comes from good luck or enormous talent, but many successful people achieve their accomplishments in a simpler way: through self-discipline.”
The book was cheap, had good reviews, and it’s not like I was making progress on my own, so I thought “what the hell?” and decided to give it a shot.
Long story short, the book changed my life.
But not in the way you’re thinking.
It didn’t give me all of the answers and I still had tons of work (and many more books, courses, and coaching) ahead of me.
But it was like the first domino I needed to knock over before I could start making meaningful progress toward the things that were (and are) important to me.
Five years later, I still use many of the tactics I learned in that book to structure everything from my daily schedule to my short and long-term goals.
While I still struggle with “choosing the right path,” I struggle far less with self discipline, as I now have many of the tools I need to follow through on whatever goals I set for myself.
If you’re struggling with discipline, habit formation, or making progress toward your goals, I highly recommend reading No Excuses! as a starting point.
There are no affiliate links here, just good old fashioned advice from someone who’s been where you are and wants to help you succeed.
No matter where you are with life, career, goals, etc, I wish you all the success, health, and happiness in 2022 and beyond! 🙂
