Friday, April 14, 2006

Discipline #3

In browsing my "favorite quotes" file, I came across one that was captured nearly half a year ago when I began to follow flylady's advice about establishing routines and "changing one thing." This whole paragraph made me so uncomfortable that I had to keep it where I could read it over for encouragement to change.
A lack of discipline in one’s life just keeps you from growing and being obedient. This is in JOY AND STRENGTH by Mary Wilder Tileston, "As Paul said, ‘I therefore so run not as uncertainly, so fight I not as one that beats the air, but I keep under my body and bring it into subjection.’" This reading is from H. L. Sidney Lear. "The slack, indolent temperament disposed to self-indulgence and delay will find a very practical and helpful discipline in strict punctuality, a fixed habit of rising to the minute when once a time is settled on, in being always ready for meals or the various daily matters in which our unpunctuality makes others uncomfortable. Persons have found their whole spiritual life helped and strengthened by steadfastly conquering a habit of dawdling or of reading newspapers and bits of books, when they ought to be settling about some duty."


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In browsing old journals, I also came across this which (thanks to God, drB, and the YMCA) has now been almost completely fulfilled in my life. "Not that I have ....already been made perfect, but I press on..." [1]

I know I can’t (lose weight) for anyone else. I won’t do it for anyone else. Weight loss has to be about how I want to live my life. It is about fitness, about feeling healthy, about being able to give out to others and still have enough energy left for me. It is about creating an exterior appearance that matches the character of who I am inside, emotionally and intellectually.

I want to be asked to sing again and have people listen. I want my son to be proud to say: “That’s my mother!” I want my husband to enjoy introducing me to his colleagues. I want to be able to keep up with him when we walk. I want to be able to run up a flight of stairs without needing oxygen at the top. When I wake up and when I go to sleep, I want to say, “I feel good,” and really mean it.

And in six months, I want to be sporting a body that matches the woman I (will become): disciplined, toned, healthy and beautiful, inside and out.

If you'd like to read the rest of the two page 'commitment' I made three years before I actually began to do something concrete about it - find it here.

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