I recently had a conversation with the great Willis Bright of Bright Visions LLC. When he and I talk, our conversations tend to range from business related topics to light, fun topics, and quite often, topics relative to the community.
Whenever I chat with Willis, I feel renewed in a sense, because his perspectives are always fresh, relevant and certainly on target with what is going on in our city, state and nation.
During our most recent conversation, Willis told me of a book he was reading. The title of the book escapes me, but something he read in the book resonated with me. I am paraphrasing, but he said the book’s author explained self-discipline as knowing what we have to do and going ahead and doing it even when we don’t want to.
I think my response was something like, “Wow, that is so true” – not quite as eloquent as the author’s comment or even Willis’ interpretation of the comment, but I digress.
Later as I pondered on what Willis shared with me, I realized that self-discipline – and more specifically, the author’s description of self-discipline – is something we all need and can utilize in our lives–relevant to a multitude of areas including our approach to our physical health, the grades we earn in school, our spending habits, etc. The list can go on and on.
Sadly, however, self-discipline is the very thing many of us lack in life. Because of our lack of discipline, we can often fail in various areas. And when we fail, the only person to truly blame is ourselves.
Think about it: there are people who are morbidly obese because they lack the discipline to stop overindulging in food. There are students who receive terrible grades because they lack the discipline (structure and guidance) to study or properly prepare. And there are millions of people who are in financial ruins because they lacked the necessary self-discipline needed to help them resist the temptation of overspending.
I am not passing judgment on anyone because I have certainly lacked self-discipline a time or 20 throughout my life. However, I am issuing a clarion call in an effort to evoke change in our individual lives as well as the community as a whole.
Quite simply, African-Americans need to do better. We need to be better.
Many of the issues that plague our community are the result of us failing to exhibit proper self-discipline. We don’t have the discipline to think before we act in certain instances, so rather than utilizing strong conflict resolution skills, we kill each other. And the number of Black-on-Black crimes steadily rises literally day after day.
We lack the discipline needed to be exemplary students or employees so we settle for lackluster performance. And so many of us become underemployed or even unemployable.
We fail to properly prioritize our needs from our wants and we focus more on “slaying” than we do on saving. And so fewer Blacks own their own homes, build generational wealth, or even have a sustainable savings account.
We need to do better. We need to be better.
During my conversation with Willis, I told him how strong our people are and how I often reflect on the struggles of the past and how we overcame one after another. I also shared with him that sometimes I get despondent because I look at the state of Blacks and the level of complacency that some of us exhibit. We have gotten comfortable and because of that, we are hurting as a people and we are in a critical state.
Certainly, all of the challenges that Blacks face are not our own doing. Police brutality, unfair sentencing and loan discrimination are examples of unjust treatment Blacks are often subjected to at the hands of non-minorities. However, we must be honest with ourselves. And the honest truth is many of the issues we face are self-inflicted. We cause some of the very challenges we currently endure, so it is up to us to exercise self-discipline so we can improve our individual lives as well as the community as a whole.
So here is my clarion call.
Part one: Develop healthy habits that will make you more self-disciplined, thus enabling you to obtain the goals set for yourself.
Part two: When you meet one goal, set another, then another and yet another. Setting goals, achieving goals and setting new goals is what will take you from bad to good, good to great and great to successful.
Part three of my clarion call is simple: Pay it forward by motivating someone else.
Remember, it is up to us to fix us.
