When we hear the word discipline we think of something that will be difficult or almost impossible to achieve, and in many cases is due to the paradigms that have been taught to us.

There is a person that has impacted me in their way of speaking about the discipline, I imagine many of you have heard from Yokoi Kenji, and if you have not heard, I invite you to look for his videos. Yokoi is a Japanese Colombian, who has had the opportunity to compare both cultures and in one of his videos makes an excellent comparison with Latin American and Japanese culture emphasizing that one of the biggest differences is the discipline. Yokoi defines discipline as the sum of organization, cleanliness and punctuality, listening to this made a lot of sense to me. Let’s see a little more about each of these components:

Organization

This should be applied to all areas of your life, the organization can be seen in everything you do, organize your time, organize your belongings, designate specific places for your things, maintain order in everything you do.

If we take it to the workplace, an organized person is the one who has a clear vision of what to do, how to do it, the order in which it should be organized and how each of the components interact with each other. Meaning, an organized person is the one who has put in order the tasks that must be performed, has analyzed all that entails needed for reaching a goal and has got all he needs to complete the tasks.

Many times we feel that 24 hours are not enough and this is because we do not have a clear vision of what we want to do and we are jumping from task to task without completing what we want or we have our workplace disorganized, or our agenda disorganized or our house disorganized and this complicates us to be efficient in what we want to do and because of this we often fall into procrastination because it is easier to leave the task aside and focus on anything else.

My advice is, take a few minutes a day to organize, be sure to designate a place for your tools, if we talk about files on the computer, create an easy to understand structure and do not put all the files on the desktop, keep your Place of work in order and when using something, return it to its place. Organize your agenda, validate that no commitments are crossed before accepting an invitation, review your calendar, in short as I said, the organization can apply to all areas of your life.

Cleaning

When we talk about cleaning, we refer to remove everything you no longer need, if you have ever seen the program “Accumulators” you have seen the situation you can fall into if you don’t learn to get rid of things you no longer need.

If we take it to the workplace, you repeatedly keep files that are no longer needed but they can cause confusion because it turns out to be an old version of a new file and you no longer know which is the right one, or at home, if you save everything just because you have some emotional attachment, often this does not allow new things to come into your life. This can be applied to all areas of your life, many times you are in a friendship or a relationship that does not contribute anything, on the contrary it affects you in a negative way, but because you do not cleane your life, you do not allow new people to arrive.

My advice, review yourself from time to time in all areas and eliminate everything that is not useful to you.

Punctuality

Punctuality is one of the biggest problems that Latin Americans have. In my country there is a phrase that we use constantly when agreeing to an appointment and it is the following question: “Chapin Time?” This means that the appointment can be at 14:00 hrs but if it is chapin time we will be arriving around 14:30 or 14:45 hrs, or similarly you have the delivery of a project for Monday and we are delivering it on Wednesday and unfortunately it is something so common and we are so used to it and for that reason they call us “the men of tomorrow” and it is because we leave everything for tomorrow and this is what leads us to delay in fulfilling with our goals on time.

Punctuality is a habit that you must create day by day and you must apply it for anything, even if it is very small, if you have to take a pill every 8 hours, do it every 8 hours,  many times we take a pill at 6 in the morning, then we remember again at 8 o’clock in the evening, and then the next day at 7 o’clock in the morning and then we ask ourselves why it did not work as how it should.

My advice is use the technology, plan ahead, make sure you have reminders, follow the schedules, get used to arriving 10-15 minutes before the hour and you will see how your life changes, new opportunities open up.

There is a phrase that I read and I liked a lot and it says:

“If you are 10 minutes early, you are on time
If you are at the indicated time, you are late
If you are late, you are not there
Punctuality means respect for other’s time”

Discipline

Now the discipline is born from the sum of these 3 elements, Yokoi says it this way:

    “When the organization makes love with cleanliness in the matrix of punctuality, a baby called discipline develops”

Being disciplined is what will allow you to reach your next level in any area of ​​your life. It is the one that will allow you perseverance and constancy to conquer yourself and create a better version of you.

My advice is do not get overwhelmed by wanting to achieve discipline in all areas of your life at the same time, start with baby steps, identify an area you want to improve and work on it, create real goals. If you want to lose weight, do not get overwhelmed with eternal exercise routines or exaggerated diets, but instead start making small changes in your daily routine, start with 15-20 minutes of daily exercise according to your ability, start to reduce your portions and little by little you can add more exercise and a better diet and you will see how you get incredible results.

The discipline is what will allow you to move forward when you are not in the mood, or when you do not feel good, it is the one that will lead you to be constant and this you should apply to all areas of your life.