Discipline vs. Disappointment

Disappointment is impossible to avoid.

If you care about an outcome and get something other than what you wanted, you’ll feel it. Disappointment is simply the gap between expectation and reality.

I was reminded of this recently when my 13-year-old son lost a qualifying match for his wrestling team. You could see it in his face and body language. To his credit, he said, “I’m happy for the kid who won, but I wanted to win.”

In that moment, I reminded him of a powerful lesson from Nick Saban. “You know we don’t like the Alabama Crimson Tide, but Coach Saban once said, ‘If you can live with the pain of discipline, you’ll never have to live with the pain of disappointment.’”

What Saban meant was this: it’s okay to be disappointed if you chose discipline every day and gave your craft everything you had. The problem is when you feel disappointed and know you didn’t.

Most people struggle to understand those who live with real discipline. But here’s the truth: no one celebrates your discipline until they need to borrow your results.

So when disappointment comes, and it will, you can live with it if you know you paid the price of preparation and discipline. That’s the only kind of pain worth living with.

Daily Reflection:
Are you choosing the pain of discipline today or the pain of disappointment tomorrow?

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