Brandon Coppernoll Internet marketing, social media, web based strategy and development in Indiana

Discipline is put to the test early

I didn't sit down as promised last night to put goals together. Instead I talked to my wife about discipline and what it means to me. We talked about what works for us. I talked about how setting long-term goals for myself was important, but more importantly I needed to do the little things to have the discipline to accomplish the goals. It was a good eye-opening discussion that I feel was needed.

Miranda's approach was slightly different. Long-term goals do not work for her. She works much better with simple smaller tasks of to-dos. She likes writing out her "smaller goals" in her mind and working to those ends. The example she came up with was instead of stating "I need to lose ten pounds" it is much simpler to state, "This month I am losing two pounds." When she accomplishes that goal she moves to the next.

What I find interesting in this conversation is that it takes discipline to accomplish what she's describing. She visualizes the discipline to accomplish these goals by first writing them down. As stated before this will be my first step. Either way we are supporting each other and approaching 2010 as a team. It's not that we weren't a good partnership before, but we generally tackled our goals separately. Now we're doing some things together such as watching what we eat and eating differently which is refreshing.

Today she took a big step to the discipline and the sacrifices of her own comfort level to accomplish an early goal. She paid off one of our credit cards as of this morning. With the debt now gone and her mild panic attack over she's ready to move on to the next goal. It was very uncomfortable for her to do what she did. She knew for a short time period her out-of-pocket cash would be smaller, but in the end the weight of debt has been relieved and the accomplishment of a goal so early in the year (even after Christmas) is a great adrenaline rush to urge her to do more.

More to come. Please share your stories as well. I'm thinking of compiling them over the year to discuss.