Think you can wait for great things to happen in your life? You can wait, but nothing’s going to happen, and you’re not going to be able to accomplish anything. Nothing, that is, without the will to do it.

If you want change, you have to take specific action to bring about that change. Whatever you need to do to make it happen — build, create, persuade — you’ve got to do it.

No one’s going to do it for you.

You have to start now.

Take a disciplined approach to your daily tasks to improve your skills and get where you want to go. I know I just finished writing about being happy in your day to day life, so at first glance this might seem like a contradiction. It’s not.

Some people view “daily discipline” as some despised task that must be done to get from point A to point B (the goal). If you don’t enjoy the act of doing whatever it is that will get you where you want to go, why do it? I’m not talking about discipline as some trying event you must go through to prove your worth of the goal. I’m talking about practice without fail.

Let me give you two examples from my own life. Ev Bogue recently said in an interview, “If I’m not experience telling, I’m bullshitting.” I like that. So in that same spirit, here are two examples from my personal experience…things I do daily to get me where I want to be.

I lift weights. Since I was a teenager, I’ve always loved lifting. It centers me. It clears my thoughts, my emotions, everything. It’s just me, the steel, and my movement of it. Even when things have gotten rough or busy or stressed in my life, and I take months off from exercise, I always come back to it. It’s my zen.

That being said, I often have some specific short-term goals along with the long-term goal of being as fit and healthy as I can be. I might want to lose a few extra pounds I put on from eating too much junk food, or I might want to increase my muscular endurance. Whatever the goal, I have to attend to it with this daily practice to get there.

If I slack off, I won’t get there. Even on days when I don’t feel so good – sleepy, lethargic, stressed out – I still make myself lift. I know that once I start pushing the weight, everything will work itself out. I will become centered in the act. Even on my rest days (if you lift, you must have 1 – 3 days of rest each week), there’s the subconscious focus on the goal.

My second example is my writing. I don’t profess that I’m an awesome writer now. I’m sure many professional writers would look at my work and say, “…looks like the village idiot wrote that.” To be honest, that doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that I get better with every sentence I write, rewrite, cut, and improve.

If you look at my writing now and compare it to my writing around 2007, it’s like I’m a different person. I like to write (the entire process of thought to publication), and I want to make a full-time living off of the skill. I’m not there yet, but the goal and the enjoyment of the task drives me to improve every day. And so I’ll get there, to the goal.

Even if I don’t publish a blog post, I’m always writing something. I usually have a book project I’m working on, or some other type of article, or I’m just brainstorming ideas. Each day, I write and improve my craft. Even on my day off from writing (writing can’t be that different from lifting, so I take a day off), my mind is working its creative juices through play and extra sleep.

I do what I do as a daily discipline to improve myself, my skills, and my life overall. If you have some place you want to go in your life – whether it’s a lifestyle design idea, a career goal, or some skill you want to perfect – practice daily. Daily discipline is the key to reaching your goals.