Thursday, October 14, 2010

Discipline: The Glad Surrender

I read a book in high school called Discipline: the Glad Surrender, written by Elisabeth Elliot. It was such a great, straightforward look at how discipline is something that we all should incorporate in our lives. For the next week or so after reading the book, I was SO disciplined about everything. Then, I got over it and went back to regular life.

Over the past few weeks, I've found myself really interested in stories that revolve around discipline. For example, tonight M.E. and I watched Julie and Julia. It was so good! I loved almost every moment of it and was so inspired by the discipline involved in Julie's undertaking.

To read more about the project behind and the plot of the movie, click here.

I had decided to watch the movie because I'd read about how it had inspired the author of newdressaday.com. I LOVE to check this site on a regular basis to see what kind of crazy creative contraptions she's been designing. It's fantastic! Both of these women (Julie from the movie and Marissa from the blog) chose to tackle year-long projects: Julie- 500+ recipes in 365 days and Marissa- 365 new clothing items in 365 days for only $365. Di-sci-pline.

On a smaller and less famous note, I even drew motivation from here. I liked her ideas and the way she broke down her objectives into categories that would enrich her life or someone else's.

So, how do I make this applicable into my life? I want to be disciplined to do something cool and that plays up to a creative strength of mine. I also want to be disciplined to tackle some sort of spiritual discipline, like finishing the large sections of scripture that I often set out to memorize and only get partway through. I also want to commit to something that would serve others in an intentional and consistent way.

Do any of you kind and faithful readers out there have suggestions for a disciplined experiment to commit to for the upcoming year? I'm thinking and praying about how to become disciplined in my life...and how to actually structure something to make it happen.

On a different note, this time last year, I was in Budapest! In memory of that occasion, here are a few pictures to enjoy:

Oh, how I loved Budapest! Must go back one day.

2 comments:

Jennifer said...

I don't have a suggestion for you, but I wanted to let you know that this post motivated me to think about discipline in my own life. Thanks!

Lee Ryan said...

very nice pictures of Budapest.