The Bridge Called Discipline

By Les Brown

Do you see the person you are? Or do you see the person you could be?

Do you see your circumstances, your history, your bills, your problems? Or do you see your potential?

Do you see a destiny that's so big it scares you and excites you at the very same time?

Let me tell you something. Most people go through life never asking that question.

They live their lives as a quiet apology. They negotiate their dreams down to a manageable size. They drink just enough to numb the pain of an unlived life. They accept the labels that other people put on them and they wear 'em like a name tag for the rest of their days.

Most people, ladies and gentlemen, fail in life not because they aim too high and miss, but because they aim too low. and hit.

They hit a target they never wanted in the first place.

But you... you are not most people.

The very fact that you're holding this book, that your eyes are on these words, tells me something about you.

It tells me that there's a part of you that refuses to settle. There's a part of you that's still fighting. There's a part of you that knows, deep down in your heart of hearts, that you were born for something more.

It tells me that "you. you gotta be HUNGRY!"

You see, that hunger is the starting point. That hunger is the divine dissatisfaction that says, "I am more than this. I can do more than this. I can have more than this."

But hunger alone is not enough. Desire is not enough. You can want a thing with every fiber of your being, but wanting won't make it so.

You need a bridge. You need a bridge to get you from the hungry person you are today to the fulfilled, destiny-driven person you were created to be.

And that bridge... has a name.

That bridge is called Discipline.

Now, don't you turn away from me. I know what you're thinking. "Oh, Les, not that word. Discipline sounds hard. It sounds like punishment. It sounds like restriction."

No, no, no. You've got it all wrong.

Discipline is not your jailer; discipline is your key. Discipline is not what holds you back; it's what pushes you forward.

Discipline is the strongest form of self-love. It's saying to yourself, "I love myself enough to do the hard things NOW, so I can have the life I want LATER."

It is the bridge between your goals and your accomplishment. It is the architect of your destiny.

In this book, From Discipline to Destiny, my friends and I have come together to give you the blueprint for that bridge. We are a team of dreamers and doers who have walked this path.

We've been knocked down, counted out, and left for dead.

But we got up.

We found the discipline to build our bridge, and now we want to help you build yours. We want to show you that no matter where you are right now, no matter what has happened to you. *it's possible!*

I know what it's like to be counted out. I know what it's like to have a label stuck on you that you didn't ask for.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was in the fifth grade. Just a little boy, sitting in a classroom, trying to figure things out.

My twin brother, Wesley, he was smart. The teachers loved him. Me? I was the clown. I was the talker. I was. different.

One day, a teacher, Mrs. Mary Ford Williamson, she called me to the front of the class. And she said to me, right there in front of everybody, she said, "Leslie Brown, you're one of the kids that we have identified as EMR."

I said, "EMR? What's that, ma'am?"

She said, It means you're "educable mentally retarded."

Can you imagine? Educable. Mentally. Retarded.

She told me they were putting me back from the fifth grade into the fourth grade. I had to go back and sit with the younger kids. The shame. the humiliation. it was a heavy weight for a little boy to carry.

And the other kids, they can be cruel. They started calling me "DT." You know what that stood for?

The Dumb Twin.

Wesley was the smart one. I was DT.

That label followed me everywhere. It whispered to me during tests. It laughed at me when I tried to speak up in class. It sat on my shoulder and told me, "You can't do this. You're not smart enough. You're not good enough. You're DT."

And for a long time, ladies and gentlemen, I believed it.

Someone's opinion of me was becoming my reality.

But there was a force in my life more powerful than that label. There was a force in my life more powerful than the opinion of any teacher or any classmate.

That force was my mother, Mrs. Mamie Brown. Mamaaaa!

She adopted me and my brother. She didn't have much education. She worked as a domestic, cleaning houses and cooking meals for other people.

But my mama had wisdom that you can't get from a university. She had a belief in me that I didn't even have in myself.

I would come home, my head hung low, feeling the sting of that label. And she would look at me with those loving eyes and she would say, "Leslie, don't you ever let nobody tell you what you can't do. Someone's opinion of you does not have to become your reality."

And I would look at her, this strong, beautiful woman who worked her fingers to the bone for us, and a fire would start to burn inside of me.

A hunger.

I started talking to myself. I started making a declaration.

I would look at my mama working so hard and I would say to her, "One day, Mama, I'm going to buy you a home." One day, I'm going to take care of you. One day, I'm going to make you proud."

That promise became my why. That promise became the fuel for my fire.

That label, "EMR," that name, "DT," it became the wood on my fire. I decided I was going to use their negativity as my motivation. I was going to prove them all wrong.

I didn't know how I was going to do it. I had no idea what the path would be. But I knew why I had to do it.

And let me tell you, that's where destiny begins. It begins with your why. It begins with a promise you make to yourself, to a loved one, to God.

Many of you reading this right now, you've been given a label. Maybe it wasn't "EMR."

Maybe it was a low score on a college entrance exam that made you doubt if you were "college material," like my friend Trenna Richardson is going to share with you.

Maybe someone you loved and trusted looked you in the eye and told you that you were "worthless," a story my courageous friend Michele Foster will tell you.

Maybe life just dealt you a bad hand right from the beginning, a story of hustling at five years old that Lorenzo Ray Phillips will unpack for you.

Those labels, those words, those circumstances. they can become a prison.

But discipline is the chisel that can break you out of that prison. And the first discipline is the discipline of your mind.

You have to stand guard at the door of your mind and decide what you let in. You have to take that label, that negative opinion, and say, "No. That is not me. That is not my story. That is not my destiny."

You have to become, as my friend Cita Ramos will show you, the kind of person who sees possibilities where others only see problems.

For me, that meant I had to start investing in myself. I started reading voraciously. I started listening to motivational speakers. I started dreaming of a life beyond the one that was handed to me.

I had a dream of being on the radio. A disc jockey.

I could see it. I could feel it. I could hear myself on the airwaves, talking to people, inspiring people.

But I was working for the city sanitation department....