When I first heard the word discipline my mind raced to those days at school where a teacher would hold sjambok and bark instructions to us as primary students. As a result we used to run away from the teachers even if you met him/her at the shops or church. Truly this used to send shivers down my spine when my name is mentioned by the teacher.Dictionary.com define discipline as bringing to a state of order and obedience by training and control. Most people have failed in life because of lack of order and obedience all attributed to lack of self control.
To start with most cases of obesity are attributed to lack of discipline when it comes to eating. Some people eat food for one week in one day; they don’t stop eating as long s there is plenty of food in the fridge. We surely need to exercise discipline so that we don’t abuse food. I have realized that because of lack of discipline many people eat the food because it is there, not because they are hungry, if you are one of them then you surely need serious self discipline. Some people have become moving bottle stores and wine cellars because they don’t have discipline when it comes to alcohol consumption. Instead of drinking enough alcohol for the day some people end up abusing themselves resulting in some being hospitalized and worse situations resulting in death attributed to alcohol. What is the cause of this? Lack of discipline. The money is yours, so is the alcohol, why then should you abuse yourself as if the beer will develop legs and run away from the fridge.
Last week I spent sometime with a very successful businessman, who happens to be my friend. I surely learnt lot about self discipline. To be honest with you it was indeed Christmas for me because he was buying me whatever food and drinks I wanted. It was really festive for me, but what was really nagging me was that he slept 6 hours, which means by 12pm he sleeps and 5am everyday he is up and running while I am still sleeping. My first lesson was oversleeping is lack of discipline .the other thing is that my friend was not eating like a pig the way I was doing. He had proper time for eating and ate to suffice the body not to injure his body. My second lesson was that disciplined people don’t develop pot belly neither do they become obese. If you want to see if a person is disciplined or not, just look at the stature, remember this is off-record.
I am one of the people who like to join the gym for exercises, but I have realized that in three month time I would have gone there less than seven times. This is a typical failure to exercise discipline. Surely this is for my own health, but I fail because of lack of discipline. Most men struggle in their lives with a single woman, but the moment they start acquiring wealth they increase the number of wives, this is attributed to lack of discipline. It’s possible to have a millionaire in the village that has 4 wives, 6 mistresses or small houses and 37 children from different mothers. After few years you would hear that he is broke because the women stole from him. All this is attributed to lack of discipline. Worse still some people are supposed to be multi-millionaires and running successful businesses, but all this foiled because of lack of discipline. When you get money you buy flashy cars and go for holiday in resort areas with beautiful women who will quickly finish your money and go to the next victim leaving you to leek your wounds .You find yourself the next day with no money to buy stocks for the business. Its not like I blame those women, it’s their opportunity to plunder from an ill disciplined person (after all it was you who was boasting that my middle name is money) otherwise if she feels pity for him someone else won’t. The difference is the same except that it might be a light or dark woman.
A lot of children are being looked after by their mothers with no fathers because of lack of discipline. You know that you are not ready for a child but you don’t use condoms resulting in you scattering children all over the place. Some man end up working to maintain the children they did because of lack of discipline .Surely we need discipline so that children can be fathered when people re ready. If all people could be disciplined, surely HIV AIDS will be history because everybody would abstain while others could use condoms as well as being tested.
We surely need discipline as a society to succeed, if there was discipline in society there would be no criminals, drug dealers and thugs. You find a situation where someone is earning enough money to survive, but still that person will go and break into people’s houses and rob banks. When the DIS and police shoots the criminal people cry foul. The person who breaks into the people’s houses is surely failing to exercise discipline; there is no need to blame the national security agencies. After all Botswana is not the only country with national security agency such as DIS, however it is unfortunate that top officials who were leading crime syndicates are scared of being caught up with the law and hence the need to tarnish the image of an objective organization. These officials surely need to exercise discipline and learn to live within their means rather than throw spanners in the progressive work which will benefit the nation.
Some people seems like they are working for free because of debts. Due to lack of financial discipline they take every opportunity to borrow money without fear .They have becomes heroes and permanent residents of debts, worse still they would have borrowed large sums to plunder recklessly. Some people are now known by every financial institution by name because of their courageous stance when it comes to borrowing, because they don’t have fear in their vocabulary as far as borrowing is concerned.
Discipline involves depriving your body of every little craving it might have, so that you can succeed in your endeavors as a person. Stop blaming anybody for your failures in life and start exercising discipline. Start setting a budget of what you can spend within the month and when friends come to you when the budget allocation is finished tell them that I can’t go anyway because I don’t have money or I am busy. It is better for them to say you were given a love portion by your wife whilst saving money for your projects, that’s 100% discipline.
President Khama has surely proved beyond reasonable doubt that he is a visionary who is not taking chances, but knows what he is doing. It took me months to understand the meaning of discipline, but now I do and I desperately need discipline which according to my analysis is the missing key to most people‘s success. Most of President Khama’s opponents are shallow minded and hence misunderstand concepts and then miscommunicate to us the ordinary masses. This discipline is not adopted from the military, but it’s actually an ingredient for self control for all and sundry adopted from everyday life. With discipline clear to me like this I can declare that anyone who doesn’t want discipline in his life has failed before he or she starts. With discipline surely the sky is the limit and hence the question who does not need discipline? Surely it’s no force matter, but if you decide to fly high you need discipline and surely you will get there.
Justice Tau
Gaborone
