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You Must Be Prepared To Pay The Price

by Stuart Goldsmith

Successful people know that they must sacrifice something today in order to achieve a lot more tomorrow.

For years I denied to myself that this was one of the secrets of becoming a millionaire, or achieving anything else of note for that matter.

I think the reason that I avoided naming this secret was because I dislike the word 'discipline'. There's something Dickensian about it—more than a whiff of the workhouse and shades of "honest toil for the bosses", but there isn't a better single word which adequately covers this concept.

"Focused Will" is close, but that's two words. Single words work better for concepts like these, so we're stuck with discipline.

In my discussions with other multi-millionaires, this was the word they used most frequently when trying to explain their success. I became really excited when I finally accepted this. A lot of things fell into place. This was the key concept which differentiated the rich from the poor; the successful from the failures.

Discipline.

Without it, you're one of the 80%—the failures in life. Remember, this is not my judgement on others—I have no right to judge. These people are failures by their own admission and definitions. If you were to ask them if they feel they have succeeded in life, or failed, they would readily confess to having failed, although they would, of course, blame factors outside of themselves for this failure.

With discipline, you have a good chance of rising above the crowd and retiring early as a wealthy man or woman.

Everything I write is aimed at preventing you from reaching retirement with nothing. If you reach retirement as a pauper dependant upon charity, having lived a life of quiet desperation, frustrated, never having achieved anything much of note, not really having had a good time (apart from the odd high point), never having dreamed, never beaten a real challenge, then your life is a failure by any standards, but certainly by your own. Of course, if you are happy in your powerlessness and poverty, then none of this matters.

Are you a disciplined person, in general?

There are hundreds of indicators of a disciplined mind, not one of which is essential, but put together, they start to add up to a pattern.

Can you get up in the morning? Are your shoes clean, your hair and teeth brushed? Are your car and house tidy? Are your personal papers (gas bills, bank statements, etc.) filed in some sort of reasonable order? Do you turn out a good job of work, even when nobody is looking? Do you ever get drunk? (No disciplined person would ever get drunk!). Do you use recreational drugs?

I could think of five hundred more indicators, but you get the idea. It's up to you to look at your life and make an honest assessment of your level of discipline or lack of it.

Again, I am not judging you. Live how you want to live, including in a pigsty, unwashed and doped-up half the time—it's your life. But if you want a life of power and wealth, then I can guarantee you will not get it if your life is anything like I have described.

Discipline is vital.

When I meet consultation clients face to face, I often say something like this:

"There's nothing really special about me. I'm just an electronics engineer made good. You could do what I have done."

I say this to try and remove the "guru factor". You can't get people to emulate you if they think you're the incarnation of a sun-god!

So I tell them I'm just a regular guy, and that's the truth. Yes, I have an education and a certain amount of common-sense. But I also have discipline.

Often, the people sitting opposite me do not have discipline, or at least they haven't made it central to their lives because, heck, it takes discipline to be disciplined! I can see the lack of discipline in the way they dress, the way they sit, and the way they talk.

Until next time...

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