“Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.” 
– Abraham Lincoln

Photo: Ales Krivec

This was a quote shared in an email I received recently. Given my recent post about my attempts to learn Hindi, I thought it was a timely reminder.

Learning a language definitely takes consistency and discipline. (As a side note – so does regularly writing blog posts!). Whilst I may have reached 500 words in my Hindi app, I am by no means able to communicate well in the language.

Often in the moment when we are deciding how to spend our time, the temptation to chill out, watch TV or YouTube or stay in bed that little bit longer in the mornings is stronger than our desire to learn a new skill, study, or exercise. But if we think about our long term goals, the opposite is true – we would like to reflect back after a year (for example), and see how far we’ve come in that new skill, language or fitness level – we certainly don’t have desires to see how many hours we slept, watched TV or spent on the internet. If we did the latter, we’d certainly realise how much time we’d wasted and lost out on greater opportunities.

I recently completed a 3 month online training course. I had to study 10-15 hours a week, on top of my full-time job. It taught me that I have a lot more time than I think I do. If I put my mind to it, and if something is a high enough priority, I can actually find time to do it!


So consider this your wake-up call to go kick some goals on whatever it is you’re trying to achieve! For me, it’s the ability to communicate with family and friends from the Sub-Continent. What’s yours?

Photo: Christian Widell