Do or do not. There is no try. ~ Yoda
In my early forties I decided to start the long path to becoming a medical doctor.
While not easy, I believe that the end goal is worth the years of effort. It takes a lot of balancing and planning. Often parts of my life are out of my control, like when I have to be at the hospital early or on weekends. The cornerstone of my approach is having discipline. I have a few things I do each day, regardless of what else is happening. These are small things that don’t take much time, but they help me to feel like I have some control, and when everything else is feels like it’s falling apart — I still do these things.
My first practice starts with mindfulness, sometimes sitting, sometimes pranayama, often just drinking my tea on the porch with my dog Bernie. I then get some physical movement – a few minutes of yoga, indoor biking or weights. These two things set the tone for my day. I haven’t missed a day in three years of medical training. Sometimes i cut things short, like one minute of silence and 10 minutes of movement when I had to be at the hospital at 5:30am. Most of the time I have enough time to wake up at 5am, do my thing, and arrive by 6:30 or 7am. This has made a huge difference to my mental and physical health. I realize that before I started medical school, my discipline was to practice pranayama and ashtanga yoga on a daily basis.
Now I’ve expanded my repertoire, but the practice of Ashtanga helped me to develop discipline and see that I could do hard things.
I’m curious if you have activities that you do daily? What are your daily disciplines?