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Hi Team,

Some days just suck. You try to do everything right, but things just keep going against you. So, you ask yourself, do I need more discipline or motivation or both?? That's a tough question to answer, so let me try to break it down.

Motivation is the internal (biological + emotional) process that initiates, guides and maintains goal orientated behaviour. It's the force that makes you take action.

Discipline is a learned method of making small sacrifices in the present to enable a positive outcome in the future. You set and follow your own rules in order to maintain focus and productivity.

Motivation often starts out strong but diminishes over time. Discipline is what keeps you going for the long term. So, motivation becomes redundant without discipline.

"Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you growing." John C. Maxwell

So really motivation and discipline go hand in hand. Your internal reasoning that forces you to work towards achieving your goals is motivation. How much effort you put in overtime is discipline? For example, a student's goal is to become a scientist, so in year 12 they are motivated to study hard every day. Completing 4 hours of study each day until the exams is the discipline required to achieve their goal.

"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishments." Jim Rohn

To me motivation seems like the easy part. Most of us have the motivation to step up and give it a go. But big results and significant success is still so elusive and rare because discipline is the magic ingredient and that's the hard part. Discipline is all about doing ordinary things for an extraordinary period of time, especially when things keep going against you and positive results are not forth coming.

"Extraordinary results come from ordinary people with uncommon discipline." Shane Parish

Motivation starts with necessity, i.e., finding out what really matters to you? (Is your dream more valuable than your sleep?) However, we all struggle with fear and self-doubt at times and self-discipline is the only thing that keeps us on track and moving forward. So, we need both motivation and discipline, they are both equally important.

Thanks for reading,
Stay safe and keep moving forward.
David