Discipline is a learned method of maintaining productivity over time and sustaining a clear pathway towards achieving your goals. According to entrepreneur and self-made millionaire Jim Rohn “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment”.

Most of us nowadays want to be motivated, however, there is a thin line between motivation and discipline. Motivation is an inner force based on inspiration and your own internal and external reasoning.

Motivation is the reasoning as to why you are attempting to achieve a certain goal, while discipline could be defined loosely as the strategy or route you follow regularly in order to achieve your goals.

Motivating yourself is great but it provides a relatively short-term boost of momentum that can quickly burn up.

Discipline, however, is a learned method of maintaining productivity over time and sustaining a clear pathway towards achieving your goals. Discipline is cultivated over time and provides a template for developing strategies to achieve your goals.

Discipline can drive a person to succeed in face of adversity – it drives you to complete the work you don’t enjoy but is required for the progression towards your goals, and it keeps you going when you run out of motivation.

An example of the difference between the two could be a student preparing for an exam. The reason they are preparing for the exam is that they dream of becoming a scientist. This would be their motivation for success in the exam. The student then commits to a schedule of study – for example, five hours a day – until the exam. This would be the discipline that the student was following.
As you can see, both discipline and motivation are uniquely important but co-dependent in achieving the goal. The only thing that makes a difference between one student and the other is their level of discipline.

Discipline doesn’t apply only in academics, it also applies in Christian growth and achievement of life goals. A motivated man with no discipline will only enjoy the fantasies of being great or getting things done. Being disciplined is not easy, however it is not unachievable. Therefore, we must strive to disciplined in all we do as teenagers, because that is what makes us different from everyone else.
Choose to be disciplined today!