Superstition... or Discipline?

This week my travels take me to San Francisco. You would think that all trips are the same, and logically they should be, but there's something about the longer trips. I live outside of Washington, D.C., so San Francisco is about five and a half hours in the air. Most trips that require connecting flights are about as long, but for the sake of this story, let's just stick with the fact that San Francisco is a long way from Washington, D.C.

Line up a bunch of Road Warriors, and you will hear the strangest superstitions you can imagine. Line them up for longer trips, and those superstitions tend to increase in number. Here are just a few of mine for those longer trips.

'¢ I like to work out before trips. Before West Coast trips it's an obsession.
'¢ I wear special socks on these trips.
'¢ I wear a special shirt and pants as well.
'¢ I won't read the sports page from the Washington Post.

I suppose I could go on, but by now you are getting the gist of it. Like most Road Warriors I have my superstitions, but I don't call them superstitions, and contrary to popular opinion from my friends, I don't call them compulsions either. To me, they're logical.

'¢ I like to work out before trips. Before West Coast trips it's an obsession. That's because there's a lot of sitting and the better the workout, the easier it is to sit.
'¢ I wear special socks, shirts and pants as well.They're soft, and they're comfortable enough to sit in for five to six hours.
'¢ These compulsions crisscross many of the things I do including never eating popcorn until the first words are spoken in the feature film I've come to see. But that's because I want to eat my popcorn while watching the movie I paid to see – not the advertisements I didn't pay to see.

Now before you say, "Could this be more silly? I think Jolles and his blog have jumped the shark!" I say to you I'm quite proud of my superstitions, but if it's okay with you, I'll call them my disciplined moments. In my humble opinion, I think discipline is the secret of many successful people. No, I'm not talking about the military discipline we so often associate with that term. I mean something much deeper.

It starts early in life. Maybe it's piano lessons, maybe it's school homework, or possibly shooting baskets. To be successful, they all required some form of discipline. The discipline to play piano for 30 minutes a day, or the discipline to wait to turn on the television until the homework is done, or even the discipline to take 50 lay-ups a day using your other hand.

As we get a little older, the concept of discipline remains with us. Once we get our first job and move out into that first apartment, a new series of disciplines are needed. The discipline to begin saving money, or the discipline to put up with a low-level manager, or even the discipline handle our new-found, late-hour freedom.

As we mature and get a little older, that one word continues to permeate our lives. Now on the discipline table the stakes continue to grow. The discipline to manage money, manage what we eat, to find a spouse, and the discipline to work hard and stay put when that marriage requires effort.

If you don't believe in the powers of discipline, answer the following questions. First, "What is the one goal in my life that is not impossible, but I have not conquered?" Once you've written the answer to that question, ask yourself this question. "What effect would a disciplined approach to that particular issue have in my quest to achieve this goal?"

Lesson: Road Warriors learn this lesson of discipline, or they don't remain Road Warriors for long. It's not superstition to set small goals, and maintain the discipline to achieve them. One step at a time…

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