What Discipline Feels Like
A Blank Mind, A Kept Promise
I’m writing this because I promised myself that I would write this blog before going to sleep tonight. My mind is absolutely blank. Not a single sentence is forming with ease. But I am gonna write anyway. This rhythm of writing two blogs a week for the past five months, is the only thing I’ve followed without fail. And I’m not breaking it tonight.
In the last five months, and especially in the last one, I’ve made some of the biggest changes in my life. May 2025 will go down as one of the most disruptive, stressful, and yet rewarding months of my journey so far. Right up until the last day, when I finally moved to Panvel with a friend. I took a leap of faith I had been preparing for months, maybe even years.
The Plan vs The Path
At the start of May, I had put together a thoughtful list of blog topics to write about. Planning and whatnot. But the funny thing is, I didn’t write a single blog from that list.
Every blog I wrote last month came from a spontaneous moment. A fleeting thought turned into a story. The only part of the plan that stayed intact was the goal of writing two blogs a week. And honestly, that in itself feels like a miracle considering everything that was going on around me.
It amazes me that amidst all the chaos, I kept showing up to write. Maybe that’s because writing these blogs became more than a promise to myself. It became my anchor. My way to stay grounded. My way to remember who I am, no matter what was happening around me.
Discipline: A Paradox in Motion
Until recently, I thought of discipline as something cold and mechanical. A cage made of routines. But now, I see it in a completely different light.
This is the first time in my life I am truly experiencing what elders mean when they talk about discipline. And I get it now. It is both the easiest and the hardest thing in the world.
Jimmy Carr, one of my favorite comics, once said,
“You have to give the world an irrefutable proof that you are who you say you are.”
That, to me, is the true definition of discipline. Not just proving it to the world but to yourself.
Freedom Through Discipline
For the longest time, I believed discipline takes freedom away. That it turns you into a slave of your own habits. But here’s what I have come to realize. If those habits are truly chosen by you, discipline becomes the greatest form of freedom.
There is no joy like the joy of having done the work. Not just the joy of the result, but the quiet, proud freedom of knowing you did what you said you would.
I didn’t know what I was going to write when I started this blog tonight. I had no plan. But I sat down, stayed with it, and now I am ending this as a blog about discipline, something I never intended.
I once heard this line on the DOAC Podcast:
“People think writing is fun. Having written is fun, But writing is one of the most excruciating things in the world.”
And today, I felt every word of that. Writing this blog felt excruciating at first. But now that it is done, it feels like freedom.
