What Is Personal Development Plan
You may ask, "What do I do now? I'm not a naturally disciplined person. I can be lazy at times. I have a lot of bad habits. I don't even know where to begin to become a self-disciplined person." Well, let me suggest some practical ways to discipline yourself for success:
1. Commit Yourself to a Lifelong, Year-Round Lifestyle Change
We tend to make temporary commitments in hopes of producing permanent changes. We say, "I'll go on Weight Watchers or Jenny Craig for six months so I can get into my skinny clothes again." But what we need is not a "weight-loss program" but a whole new approach to health, exercise, and diet that we can live with for the rest of our lives.
In professional football, it's not uncommon for players to come into training camp overweight and out of shape after an off-season of lounging around. Many players continue eating pasta, pizza, and fried chicken, yet they never go near the weight room and never burn off those calories. As a result, many players are doing lifelong damage to their arteries, heart, and other body systems. To counteract this problem, some teams have begun offering off-season conditioning programs to keep players lean and mean all year round. As Mike Shanahan, head coach of the Washington Redskins says, "If you want to be good at anything, you've got to work at it all year."
The legendary players all know the importance of year-round discipline. As NFL cornerback Kevin Smith once said of 49ers running back Jerry Rice (now retired), "What a lot of guys don't understand about Jerry is that with him, football's a twelve-month thing. He's a natural, but he still works. That's what separates the good from the great."
2. Self-Discipline Isn't Easy, but the Gain Is Well Worth the Pain
Robin Roberts is a television personality and coanchor d ABC's Good Morning America. She attended Southeastern Louisiana University and finished her college career as the school's third all-time leading scorer in basketball while graduating cum laude with a degree in communications.
She recalls, "My freshman year in college I remember doing a drill during basketball practice. We had to stay down in a crouched defensive position and slide our feet all the way around the court. I was in the middle of the pack. It was painful to stay down all the way around the court, but Coach Puckett told me to stay down and so I did. We're all huffing and puffing. She gets right up in my face and says, 'Hon, hon, you're going places in life became you listen. You're disciplined. You're the only one who stayed down.' That meant so much that she acknowledged me like that. It was a simple thing of just following the rules.''
3. Seek Out Mentors Who Exemplify Self-Discipline
When singer-actress Lena Horne died in May 2010 at the age of ninety-two, jazz historian Will Friedwald wrote a fond obituary for the Wall Street Journal. Singer Tony Bennett had toured with Lena Horne during the early 1970s, so Friedwald related some of Bennett's recollections of working with Miss Horne.
Despite suffering a number of painful personal losses during those years, Lena Horne shut out all the distractions and gave herself totally to her rehearsals, to her performances, and to her audiences. "She taught me discipline," Tony Bennett recalled. "Even at rehearsals, she'd be sweating to get it just right. I never saw that kind of intensity in anyone else.''
Tony Bennett is just one among many successful people who is grateful to have had a mentor, a role model, to demonstrate the power of self-discipline. As you are discovering what it takes to be successful in your chosen field, seek out mentors who can show you how to discipline yourself for success.
4. Be Disciplined in the Small Things
Every big picture is made up of small details. In order to be successful in the big things, you must be diligent in all of those details. Are you careful to listen well and follow directions? Do you proofread all of your written work – your resume, your reports, your PowerPoint presentations, and even your e-mails?
Are you attentive to the fine details in the way you dress, your manners, the way you speak and conduct yourself? Are you thorough in your attention to detail in the work you do and the image you project? All of these details add up to excellence – and SUCCESS.
As Gen. Colin Powell once observed, "If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.
Discipline Yourself To Keep Your Commitments
Al Kaline is a Baseball Hall of Famer who played his entire career, 1955-74, with the Detroit Tigers. He still works in the Tigers front office today, and is fondly known as "Mr. Tiger." During his boyhood in Baltimore, Al's family was poor. But his parents could see that he possessed a ball-playing ability beyond his years. To build on those skills, they entered him as a player in several different amateur and semipro leagues.
On Sundays, young Al would play two or three games. Between games, his dad or one of his uncles would pile him into the car to rush him to the next game while he changed uniforms in the backseat. It wasn't easy playing all those back-to-back games in different leagues when he was growing up. "I suffered a lot as a kid playing in all those games," Kaline recalls. "When everybody was going on their vacations, going swimming with all the other kids, here I was Sundays playing doubleheaders and all because I knew I wanted to be a ballplayer …
There were a couple of times when I told my dad I wasn't gonna play Sunday, I was going to go down to the beach with my girl or with a bunch of the guys to go swimming. And he says, 'Now look, like I told you in the beginning when you agreed to play for these people, they're going to be counting on you, so if you're not gonna play, tell 'em to tear your contract.' So I would go play, but it was these things he did to me that showed me the right way and pushed me in the right way."
By the time Kaline turned eighteen, he had caught the eye of Major League Baseball scouts, including the Detroit Tigers. Though he was young, he had more baseball experience under his belt than most players five years his senior. The Tigers never even put him into the minor leagues. Instead, the team paid Kaline a $50,000 signing bonus (a whopping sum of money in 1953) to start his career in the big leagues. He turned half of his bonus over to his father to retire the mortgage on the house and to pay for an operation to save his mother's eyesight.
Kaline's dad taught him to discipline himself and to keep his commitments. The values he learned at an early age served him well throughout his career. Kaline – "Mr. Tiger" – is still living his baseball dreams to this day. To learn more, you can check out What Is Personal Development Plan.
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