Delightful Discipline: Rituals, Routines, & Results

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Every week, I share stories, lessons, encouragement, and practical healing and growth practices from my life and work with others.

Hey Beloved, I'm Nakeia

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“Discipline is a practice, not punishment.”

Today I want to introduce you to what I call delightful discipline.

The reason I had to reframe the concept of discipline is that I had a client who just didn’t like the word “discipline.” She fought me on it. She didn’t like the idea of training or forming new habits. She was triggered by the idea of work, and there were very valid reasons for her resistance. She came from an abusive home. She was always compared to her siblings and felt like she came up short, and she was emotionally exhausted from living in survival mode. So she was tired and worn down. And so any talk of discipline, work, training, or consistency felt like more of what she had already experienced, and she didn’t want any part of it.

She was like, I’m just gonna do my thing here, live on autopilot, get whatever life has for me, and go on about my business. I kept telling her, “No, beloved, there is more for you. No, there is greater for you. There is so much inside of you that has the potential to really bless your life and bless the people in your life, and you deserve to experience that which is in you.” And she was like, Okay, but we can’t do it through discipline. We can’t do it through hard work.

I don’t know about you, but understanding that healing, growth, and purpose are work was so healing for me. When I integrated the concept of practicing and being consistent and training and researching, when I integrated that into my healing journey, it got easier. I wasn’t in this mode of resisting. I wasn’t tussling with the process. I wasn’t at war with the work.

Everything requires some form of work, even if it’s not hard work. Everything requires some form of effort. Some output. And you can call it discipline, you can call it effort, you can call it work, but you gotta call on it to experience the life that you want and you deserve.

So the problem with my client is that healing requires work. Growth requires discipline. Change demands better habits. So I had to come up with a creative way to get her on board. And I did that through what I call “delightful discipline.”

Doesn’t it sound good? Delightful discipline.

Discipline

Let’s talk about discipline for a second. Discipline is control gained by order. It is the practice of getting yourself to do what you need to do. It is guidelines or standards for living. Discipline is loving instruction, self-regulation, and careful control.

In order for you and my clients to digest it, discipline is control that is gained by order, it is a practice of getting yourself to do what you need to do. It is guidelines or standards for living, it is loving instruction, self regulation, and careful control, whatever you need to call it, that is what it is, but essentially

Discipline is doing what you need to do to experience what you want in life.

Delight

Let’s spend a couple of minutes with the word delightful. When you delight in something, you experience joy, happiness, pleasure, and deep satisfaction. You experience a high degree of gratification when you are experiencing this thing I call delight. When you are happy about something and joyful about something, and experience pleasure from something, you are experiencing delight.

Delightful Discipline

My children are a delight to be around. I delight in writing and teaching and working one-on-one with my clients. I delight or I feel this level of delight that I can’t even describe when I watch people transform.

My children and I have a good time because I am intentional, consistent, and supportive as a mother. And you know what I had to do to be that version of myself? I had to work through and heal childhood trauma. I had to make sure that I didn’t project my hurt and my despair and my uncomfortable feelings around motherhood because of how I experienced motherhood as a child. I didn’t want to project that onto my babies. So it took discipline, it took consistency, and it took work.

Writing takes discipline. My work with clients requires education, research, certifications, and personal integrity. In other words, beloved, it takes discipline.

If you have been struggling with this concept of discipline, you’ve been watching online, and people are talking about hard work and how healing is working. You’re like, “I’m tired of healing. I’m tired of doing the work. It’s unfair that I have to work on things that I didn’t even cause in my life.” What I am inviting you to experience is what’s on the other side of the work. I am inviting you to experience the benefit of your discipline.

Discipline becomes delightful when we align it with a desired outcome. When we see discipline as a practice and not a punishment, self-regulation and not a tool that someone else uses to control us… When we reclaim the word or the idea from the people who used it against us and make it a healing practice that helps us cultivate the lives we desire, delightful discipline takes us from triggered to transformed.

It’s about transformation, beloved. It’s about getting into that place or that space of joy and contentment and happiness and delight.

Practicing Delightful Discipline

So, I want to share some ways that you can practice delightful discipline in your life.

Create rituals and routines that inspire consistency.

When you think about consistency, you think about doing the same thing over and over again. Maybe that triggers you a bit because in the past you had trouble following through. In the past, you had difficulty completing your goals or your tasks or whatever it is. Instead of thinking about it as this big goal, and all these steps and all this effort, I want you to create daily rituals and routines around it.

I’ll give you an example of my morning routine, which I call the daily setup. I look forward to my daily setup because I wake up to prayer. I wake up to reading. Sometimes I wake up to singing or dancing and listening to music. I have this ritual around taking care of my skin, my face, showering, and my hair. While I’m doing those things, I’m reciting my affirmations. I’m speaking life into myself. And I do this every single day. What this does is set the tone for my day. Before my mood does what it wants to do, I demand that my mood is set to a certain frequency. I create a certain energy. I cultivate a certain energy with my morning routine. I do the same thing at night. There’s a routine around what I cook every day, so that I am disciplined when it comes to eating. There are routines around my workout. I have my music set. My playlist is bangin’. I get new headphones. I get cute workout clothes. I do things that make it a joy to actually show up for myself. That is why I call it delightful. It’s pleasant, It’s joyful. I’m happy.

I found a way to finesse the process.

Identify your core values and standards.

Let’s say you need to create boundaries in your relationships, and you have not been consistent with holding yourself accountable to your boundaries. Often, it is because you are thinking about the boundary and the difficult conversation around it, and not the value or the standard that it upholds. You deserve to be loved tenderly. That is your value. And that is your standard in your relationships. Tender love.

So instead of thinking about how you need to talk to your sister about how she talks to you, you’re thinking about how you can be tender with yourself in your relationship with your sister. Maybe you don’t need to have a conversation with her. You need to have a conversation with yourself. What is your standard when it comes to her? Are you answering every text and every phone call? Are you meeting in her environment, or are you setting the atmosphere in your home?

Delightful discipline means, “Hey, sis, I can’t wait to meet up with you this weekend at a new brunch spot.”

There is a way to delight ourselves in our relationships, but it may mean we need to create rituals, standards, or boundaries, or whatever it is. The ritual is: we meet every fourth Saturday of the month at this particular place. The standard is: when we’re together, we don’t talk about our spouses.

Practice keeping promises to yourself.

The way I do that is by making small promises every day.

That looks like: Today I’m going to get my 10,000 steps in by standing up every hour from my desk and walking around. I’m going to walk instead of driving to the corner store. I’m going to walk up and down the stairs a few times today just to get my steps in. I’m going to use the bathroom upstairs instead of downstairs. Small promises. And then we’ll get to the bigger ones, like: I’m gonna have that conversation I’ve been avoiding for years. I’m going to submit that application and enroll in that program. I’m going to ask for the raise or the promotion at work—and I’m going to do it by September.

We delight ourselves in the practice of discipline by keeping small promises to ourselves.

Set boundaries that keep me soft, safe, and supported.

I’m going to set boundaries in my relationships because boundaries are what I set when I want to preserve them. Boundaries help maintain relationships because people are now aware of what they need to do to keep you safe and supported. And that takes discipline to set boundaries and honor them.

Having good conversations that are safe, being supported around the house, and feeling connected to a partner… Those things are a result of clear and consistent boundaries.

Set healthy goals and develop ways to stay accountable.

People live longer when they have goals in their lives. That is a fact. You have to identify something that you want and need in your life, and then identify the steps that it will take, every day, to achieve it. And we can build this into our lives through our rituals and our routines.

And hold yourself accountable.

Align yourself with your purpose.

Purpose is becoming who we are meant to be. It is fully standing in our truth. It is meeting our every need, in every season of our lives. Align yourself with what you need in this season, and it won’t feel like hard work. It’ll feel like you are getting your needs met. It’ll be more easeful because it is aligned. It will feel more delightful because it is true to who you are in this season.

Attach a desired outcome to every single thing that you do.

So, everyone who knows me knows I don’t do anything for nothing. There is always some kind of outcome that I have identified. Every single piece of effort that I put out, every single ounce of effort every day, has a clear benefit. I do this during my daily setup. I sit down, create a to-do list, and identify what I will get as a result of doing it.

So drinking water every day will nourish me, hydrate me, and give me good skin. It will help with my joints and bones. I’m not going to hurt when going up and down the stairs. Those are clear desired outcomes.

Attach a desired outcome to every single thing you do, and you are more likely to do it.

Final Thoughts

I’ll end by reminding you of this: Delightful discipline is gaining control of your life through practices that bring you pleasure, joy, contentment, and happiness.

Discipline is not punishment—it is a practice. And we are doing it because we want to get to what’s on the other side.

We want to go from triggered to transformed. We want to go from potential to purpose. We want to experience the fullness of who we are and not allow ourselves to be held back by our lack of effort and consistency and routine and practice.

You deserve every bit of what this life has for you. You deserve everything that God has assigned to your life, but it’s going to require delightful discipline. You need to create rituals and routines. You need to identify your core values and standards. You need to practice keeping promises to yourself daily. You need to set boundaries that keep you safe and supported. You need to set healthy goals and develop ways to stay accountable. You need to align yourself with your purpose, and you need to attach a desired outcome to every single thing you do.

Triggered to transformed, beloved. That is where you are going from triggered to transformed.

Until next time, beloved, I hope this helps.