Overcoming Roadblocks in Discipline

Just wanted to share a recent experience I had in regards to my personal development, what happened to me and what the end result was. I think a lot of people could learn from this because it's something that people go through all the time and maybe don't know how to get out of or how to correct it when it happens, so hopefully this helps some of you.

I found a lot of success and happiness in my life recently by being disciplined and sticking to a schedule. Planning out what I wanted to accomplish and creating a road map for myself that I could execute on in order to get to my destination gave me a lot of purpose and allowed me to wake up each day with a clear plan for success. In life there are two things only that you need for happiness: love and work. You need to be understood and to share yourself, and you need to produce something through application of yourself. What I found was that maintaining a schedule allowed me to produce a lot, and that process was very rewarding for me, both personally and financially.

I had a big distraction that took place in my life two weeks ago that I have taken some time to recover from. Basically, a friend asked me to go to a different city with him where he was traveling on business. I reasoned that I could work remotely while we were there and he was busy taking care of things and that I wouldn't lose any productive time. What actually happened was that his meetings got cancelled at the last minute and we ended up hanging out - I got no work done.

This disruption in my plans caused me a lot of stress and I ended up leaving in the middle of the night to drive back to my house which was several hours away. I lost days of productive time, got behind in my work and suffered a lot emotionally because I was behind on critical deadlines for my work.

The lesson I learned is basically that discipline and schedules are a precarious thing. When you break routine, you risk having your entire life derailed, and this isn't a risk you can afford to take when you're just starting out new habits. Even something like a night of excessive drinking can cause a huge disruption in your normal routine when you're sending positive habits for yourself - you really have to stay in your right mind, be in control of yourself and continue planning for the future in order to stay happy.

Don't let other people take you off your path - a lot of people are just trying to kill time in between Friday night and Monday morning when they have work again. Those people would love to party with you all weekend, but if you have other plans, stick to them. Don't put yourself on somebody else's schedule. You might think it's a win/win situation if you can get work done, but if things don't go according to plan you'll have nobody to blame but yourself.