On Discipline

By the time I got to Psenti sem in BITS, I felt like a failure. I had not done well academically at BITS, had not cleared the CAT, and had not been placed. I was also unhealthy. I was directionless, not having a routine, whiling away my time watching movies or TV series and eating junk food.

Then, one day, it hit me that nothing was going right in my life. I had to change. The main trigger was the CAT results. Most of my friends had cleared them. Some others were going to the US to pursue master’s degrees, and here I was, unemployed, unfit, and not getting any calls.

I did not know where to start, so I just started getting my life into a routine. I started getting up at six and going for a run. I could hardly run but would jog, walk, and crawl for about an hour. I would come back, take a bath, have my breakfast, and visit my classes ( there were very few as I only had three subjects). I would then return and try to do the required readings - again spending the time in front of the book, trying to solve CAT, and doing bodyweight exercises in my room.

Progress was slow. It is not easy to change lifestyles, but I stuck to it. I had nothing else to do. Discipline gave me a routine. It cleared my mental space for deciding what to do now. Those mental faculties could now be applied to learning and achieving things. I felt fitter ( though it was not visible), started enjoying my courses, and thought I could solve better question papers. Luckily, BHEL came on the last day of campus and decided to recruit me.

I went to Hyderabad and remained disciplined. I used to wake up early, do some exercises, attend the office, come back, rest, then go for a six-kilometer run ( I had gotten much better and could now run the full length), come back, start preparing for CAT, sleep, wake up in the middle of the night, prepare some more, and then sleep. I had gotten much fitter, got 99.83 percentile in the CAT and also filed for a patent at the office.

Since then, whenever I have been lost, I have tried to follow a routine and bring discipline into my life. The discipline allocates time for all the necessary activities I have to do. In that time, I may while away, but I will not do any other activities. It also ensures that I follow the routine, not chase the results. At some point, the results start showing up.

Looking back, the lost guy did try to get better. The discipline helped. The core message of Gita—Karm kar, phal ki icha mat kar—resonated.