Perfect Practice Produces Proper Payoffs!

Hahaha. And if you don't know who that is, take a couple of hours one day and watch Mr Popper's Penguins - it's worth it just for her. And penguins are always cute; even CG ones have the potential to make your day better!

On a more serious note, I was clubbed over the head with something brilliant the other day which I've been mulling over. The source of said brilliance is a musician friend, but what applies to musical mastery applies almost universally to any kind of endeavor where the goal is lifelong habit change: sport performance, art, business, LIFE...you get the idea. And the only possible thing to do when one is clubbed on the head with brilliance is to steal the bludgeoning tool and club more people on the head. Are you ready? Hold still...

DETERMINATION VS. DISCIPLINE

Determination

Whenever anyone starts a new project, or is even enthusiastic about an ongoing one, determination is present. Determination is awesome because it is what gets you going every day. It is the driving force behind everything that is worth working for. The decision to go to the gym, to sit down in a practice room, to spend your Sunday afternoon cooking for the week, or to do anything else that's worth doing but takes some effort - that's determination.

But.

Determination can bite you on the ass if you aren't careful. Ever set out to do something and spend a few weeks or a few months trying really hard at it but don't see the results you're looking for and feel like you deserve? We've all been there, right? The problem there is (you guessed it)

Discipline

Discipline is the tough part to get control over. It's working smarter, not harder. Discipline is the will to do it RIGHT - every damn time. Ever hear the saying that 'practice makes perfect'? It's baloney. You can practice something a million times, for hours on end. You can go through the motions while you're watching TV, while you're driving, while you're thinking about what you're going to do this weekend...and it'll never be perfect. You know why? Cause you practiced it kinda half-assed. And now you have a really rock-solid habit of doing a half-assed job.

DISCIPLINE IS THE ART OF DOING IT WITH YOUR WHOLE ASS. 

Have you had enough of asses?  Good, me too.

So what to do? Show of hands, please: who has heard the saying "perfect practice makes perfect"? Whoever came up with that one nailed it. For example, take a relatively healthy person who'd like to lose 10 or 20lbs. They start out all enthusiastic and determined and ready to get the job done. For the next three months they go to the gym every day that they feel like it. They eat as clean as Tosca Reno - during the week. (Hey, on the weekends you can afford to cut loose, right?) They take bathroom mirror selfies and start a fitness blog about their journey. They think about it all the time and talk about their newfound fitness incessantly. And after three months, they're down 5lbs. And they quit because something must just be wrong, cause there's no way they should have been working that hard and only seen miniscule results. And a month later they're back where they were. What was missing? It wasn't determination. It was the discipline to get to the gym even when they felt tired or down or had a cold. To stick with eating good, nutritious food in moderation on the weekends. Now, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with eating well most of the time and working out sporadically; in fact if you do that you're doing pretty well. But if you want something amazing to happen, there has to be discipline.