To follow the footprints my entrepreneurial dad had left me was undeniably painful. The hard work, commitments, and long hours were misery. But like every celebrity chief and their secret sauce, entrepreneurship demands a secret ingredient too. Discovering that secret is the easy part, but using it is hard.
The secret sauce of successful entrepreneurs is plain-old discipline. Intriguingly, everybody knows discipline is the golden key and fails to imply it. The top sales training and personal success coach, Brian Tracy, urges discipline to be a master element for success, and countless other researchers confirm the same. The powerful fact that a river cuts through a rock, not because of its power but its persistent discipline, is a significant example. The 10,000-hour rule by Malcolm Gladwell postulates how an individual requires 10,000 hours of practice in any arena to be world-class. The figure of 10,000 hours is wickedly hard to accomplish, but one can move mountains with the sauce of discipline.
A fictional story of a monk and a prostitute showcases the competency of discipline once a monk who had carried the meditation routine and eluded the path of materialistic needs traveled from village to village preaching life lessons. Under a hailstorm, he found shelter in a prostitute’s house in a certain village. His disciples and the folks around had turned it into a ruckus; the word that the monk was corrupted and had lost his enlightenment ran around the village. The next day, after the storm cleared out, they found the monk and the prostitute walking side by side; the disciples questioned the monk about what he had done, and before the monk could respond, the prostitute replied: “ this man has taught me that he’s unshakable and has inspired me to abandon my work of prostitution and join him as a disciple.” The story portrays how years of discipline can prevent you from distractions and secure your goals.
Discipline can trigger from the smallest of steps; personally, my dive into discipline started with a simple To-do list. A list where you write down the tasks for the day and strike them out as you complete them; this To-do list is the most effortless way to catch the train of discipline. This idea can be refined by the concept of “Eat the Frog”. This concept is a treasure and is best said by Mark Twain “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.” The frog here can be referred to as tasks that make you uncomfortable or seem the most difficult. Battling such tasks earlier in the day gives more time for the tasks you feel more love towards. The idea is to use a To-do list, inculcate discipline, and take steps toward reaching your goals. Sticking to the habit of the To-do list will help surge and conquer the element of discipline.
Truly, discipline isn’t the only ingredient that forms the secret sauce of success; motivation, vision, and other vivid ingredients go into the mix, but discipline is like the salt that makes it complete. Nothing matters if you don’t push forward with discipline, as discipline helps you do things even when you don’t want to do them. Discipline is the fire from which champions are forged.
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