Every so-called guru talks about the subconscious mind, and such nonsense.

What they don’t talk about is how much of what is happening, what is real, what is in front of you is making no impression on you… how little of what is around you, what you are reading, watching, listening to reaches your conscious awareness.

And whatever you do is based on that 1-3% that you actually aware to or the 100%… and you think you have all the facts.

“Everyone operates and makes decisions based on his or her current level of conscious awareness.”

This is why your level of awareness is the most predictive of you success.

Because success depends on the accuracy and completeness of the “data” you base your decisions on.

Myself, as a teacher, am totally stupefied at the low level of awareness. At the minuscule amount of the message getting through to my readers.

Do you know you miss things? Probably not.

One of my students has no idea that his attention wanders while he supposedly listens to the instructions that could, potentially change his life. He is not there… talking to him is a lot like talking to my kitten. Or a dog.

We all laugh at the cartoons of the man talking to his dog, scolding him. In the cartoon the talk bubble is “blah blah blah blah blah blah Fluffy blah blah blah” He hears not much more than the dog or the cat.

But why?

I am using this guy to demonstrate and do my thinking, but this guy is you.

You have no idea what you didn’t hear. Why? you didn’t hear it. You may have a sense that the whole thing doesn’t make sense. But you suppose you heard everything. Almost without exception, the mind will think it heard everything and if it doesn’t make sense, it will blame the speaker, or it will fill in the missing stuff with fillers.

You don’t know what you don’t know. And you don’t know that you don’t know 99% of what could be known.
But you don’t know what you missed.

I have been listening to the 67 steps. I have now completed each session twice. I am going for a third round. Why? Because there wasn’t a session where I wasn’t wondering if I had really heard it before…

Terrifying.

I am sharing this so you see that it is everyone. We hear what we hear, and it steals our attention… and for minutes we hear nothing, because the mind is busy with what it caught.

It is easier to detect when you are reading. You are turning the pages, and at some point, when your attention goes back to the book, you realize that it doesn’t make sense… because you missed pages after pages. Your eyes were reading it, but you weren’t there to hear it.

Most people I know get discouraged and stop reading altogether. They declare that it is useless…

Instead of…

So I am back looking at the student whose attention wanders… Now you can see that he is not alone: you are just like him.

So what happens? What is the cause of this phenomenon I’d call: cluelessness?

If you watch a puppy… it is all over the place. It bites, it chews, it breaks things.

You send the puppy to obedience school. We could call that “disciplining” training.

Every living thing does best in life, has the most chance for success, if that thing is disciplined.

Being disciplined does not come naturally.

Marshal arts is the art of discipline.
Gymnastic is the art of discipline.
Meditation is the art of discipline.

You can train discipline at any age. It is a long arduous process. Not fun. But neither is being a bumbling idiot.

Ultimately these are your choices: clueless waste of space or discipline.

I am still training myself. You can’t stop, because the undisciplined puppy in you will take over.

The mind is not disciplined. It needs to be kept in line by the will. The will is an aspect of the “orchestra” you are.

I was knocked conscious, again, to the importance of exercising my will on my mind and my behavior while I re-read the book, The Diamond Age.

In it our heroine is in school where every subject is wonderful except a class taught by Miss Stricken. She makes it difficult to stay focused… and then she punishes you when your attention wonder, you scratch your nose, or doodle.

The headmistress explains to our heroine, Nell, that every school needs a Miss Stricken,

“Miss Stricken is not someone I would invite to dinner at my house. I would not hire her as a governess for my children. Her methods are not my methods. But people like her are indispensable.

“It is the hardest thing in the world to make educated Westerners pull together,” Miss Matheson went on. “That is the job of people like Miss Stricken. We must forgive them their imperfections. She is like an avatar—do you children know about avatars? She is the physical embodiment of a principle. That principle is that outside the comfortable and well defended borders of our phyle is a hard world that will come and hurt us if we are not careful. It is not an easy job to have. We must all feel sorry for Miss Stricken.”

The reason you think you can afford to be so casual, so not-together, so la-di-da because you don’t understand the world. You don’t understand that in the cushy comfortable world of ours you become dull and lazy and useless.

Nell “had found that her wits became dull if she got too cozy.”

And being cozy is not conducive to growth, to discipline, not even to sharpen your wits, or keeping them sharp.

You bumble through your life, and take control of nothing, least of yourself.

Your life passes you like sand falling through your fingers.

How do I practice discipline?

When I go to bed, everything itches. So my discipline is to notice the itching and not move.

A few years ago in a Peak Potentials training camp the group I was in was lead to a sweat lodge. On the way we stopped for a brief rest. After about 10-15 minutes the pile of dry leaves started to move, and outpopped a young man… covered with insect bites.

He had been in that pile, motionless, for at least 15 minutes.

I was inspired. I have always slept bad, and always took me a long time to settle down and fall asleep.

I have been practicing this discipline… and I am getting the time I can control the urge to move, scratch, or fidget longer and longer. It is near impossible.

This is my daily practice. Sometimes I remember it during the day, and I do it with my posture. Or my breath.

A constant struggle against the undisciplined base nature of a human.

Am I disciplined? On a 1-100 scale I am a 3.

In some things I am a 50, in others I am a 1.

I started late.

But believe me: anything and everything that isn’t going well for you, including raising your vibration, is a result of you having never trained yourself to bring your physicality and your mind under your conscious control.

Scouring for articles on developing self-discipline… I found some gems:

Over the years I’ve come to see self-discipline as an invisible magic. You can’t see, taste, or smell it, but its effects are huge. It can transform fat into slim, sag into buff, uninformed into expert, poor into rich, misery into happiness. It’s the submerged part of the iceberg others don’t see when they see your ‘genius’.

Every single day, we’re faced with countless little decisions like this one.

In these moments, we have to decide between what’s good for us… and what’s easy, comfortable, safe.

Individually, most of these decisions are fairly inconsequential.

But together, they add up. They compound.

And it’s the sum of all these micro-decisions that determines our destiny.

Consistently take the higher road and you’ll achieve your biggest goals, reach greatness, and maybe even change the world.

Take the easy way out too often and you’ll live a life of mediocrity, constantly disappointing yourself… Until one day, you look back in regret, wondering… “What if?”

I found a bunch of great advice on

The article suggests 11 different ways you can start training yourself for discipline, and will power
#1 Meditate like a Zen Buddhist Monk
#2 Take the Magic Pill of Exercise
#3 Harness the Power of Accountability
#4 Set SMART Goals
#5 Unleash Your Inner Conquistador and Burn the Ships
#6 Remove Temptations and Distractions
#7 Eat the Big Ugly Frog First
#8 Eliminate Unnecessary Decisions
#9 Create Powerful Habits, Rituals and Routines
#10 Hack Your Mind with the 5-Minute Rule
#11 Go for 100% Commitment

Roy F. Baumeister, PhD, author of the book Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength tells us, “willpower is not a personality trait, a skill or a virtue. Instead, it operates like a muscle. And as such, it can be strengthened.”

The first millionaire I knew well told me that the secret of success, in any endeavor is consistency.

So whichever way you choose to grow your muscle of will power and self-discipline, the key to success is consistency.

Sporadic practice won’t do it.

And lastly, here is an interesting take on discipline: the author says: discipline is a myth. The truth is motivation. If you have motivation then the subtle pull of that motivation will counter the laziness…

The motivation of my practice at night is to fall asleep fast.
The motivation of my practice at my computer, when I pay attention to my posture, is to avoid the inevitable back pain.
The motivation of my practice to avoid social media, my smart phone, texting, is to amount to something, instead of being just another train wreck.

My motivation is almost always to avoid something I don’t want.

You may be different… you may be pulled by a dream.

Find what has a more consistent pull… it doesn’t have to be a strong pull… only consistent enough to counter the equally strong pull of ordinariness.

Ok, we’ve made a huge circle.

But if your issue has been similar to the issue of the guy who can’t hear anything… and is oblivious about it… I hope you heard that the thing to practice is the consistent small actions that do look like self-discipline.

Where your will obeys you not the triggers from the lower self or the outside.

You can do it. You know you can.

And once you do it, life will start to become brighter. Hell… isn’t that worth it?

Read the original article: Conscious Awareness is the greatest predictor of happiness, success, and health… but what about self-discipline?