Who doesn't want to change aspects of his life? In fact, we all want to earn more, or just have more money left at the end of the month. We'd like to be skinnier, or just "feel" skinnier (yes, there is a big difference). We want to feel stronger, more social, better liked, better-looking, mentally stabler, etc. etc. We always want something. So, that's something like that we have the motivation to change.

However, motivation comes and goes. It depends on our overall feel factor. It may fluctuate on the basis of how much we sleep, how tired we are, and how happy or sad we are at times. And this again depends on whether we had a good day at work, a nice lunch. Something as small as a bad interaction with a colleague, customer, friend or relative can throw us into a pit of bad mood or highly demotivated.

If you're able to change your mood to make you feel more motivated, it can be very useful for your life. However, it can be fickle as it is too dependent on external factors. So what actually works when it comes to achieving our goals? Ultimately it will have to come down to discipline.

While understanding or defining motivation is a simple task, people often limit discipline to self control. However, discipline is sticking to orderly or prescribed conducts or patterns of behaviour.

So, what are these orderly patterns? In simple terms, these are habits with better choices. But again, habits are not a simple thing to form, albeit they are also hard to break. To connect it to pursuing goals, we need to form those habits which will take us nearer and nearer to our goals.

Now onto the Motivation vs Discipline debate: the other day a friend asked me “How do you stay so motivated after all this time?” And my answer to that question is I don’t.

Motivation a great wave to ride when it strikes but it’s a finite feeling that comes and goes for everyone. Whereas, discipline is something you do and choose to do everyday. I like to think of the two as “Why I do” (motivation) vs “What I do” (discipline).

So, remember, when you’re looking to improve an aspect in your life or reach a goal, let motivation inspire you but focus on building disciplined actions to get you there.

With that being said, I want Stackers to kindly enlighten me on the following: