Choosing Change: How Leaders and Organizations Drive Results One Person at a Time

CHAPTER THREE

Discipline

What Are Your Small Steps to Big Success?

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

—Aristotle

DISCIPLINE CAN BE one of our toughest challenges in achieving any goal. Our desire may be clear, but applying the necessary discipline takes energy, focus, and considerable effort. Many of us start an initiative but stop when we find it too difficult to sustain the effort. This is the reason why fad diets and quick-fix pills make so much money. However, there’s a different path—a harder one—that is defined by the reality that the more you do something, the more you practice, the better you get. This applies to all types of practice, from exercising to golf to managing change at work.

We each ...