Have you ever been to a dueling piano bar?

They’re truly astounding to watch. Their level of skill is uncanny, and they can play a seemingly endless number of requests. To this day, I’ve never seen a dueling piano player stumped by an audience request.

The freedom these performers have on their instruments is enviable. How fun it must be to sit down with such command of the piano! To have the freedom to play whatever they want.

I took piano lessons for several years as a kid, and I never got even close to this level of talent. It’s easy to watch these guys and imagine they must just be better than I am. More musical, more gifted, whatever.

High-capacity, high-performing people often seem as uncanny and accomplished as dueling piano players. We assume they must have special gifting, be essentially better than we are. We envy their freedom, but don’t imagine we could be like them.

But the difference between us and them isn’t genetics. At least not mostly. It’s discipline.

I spent a few years practicing piano when I was forced to. But these dueling piano players have invested years and years, tens of thousands of hours, to perfecting their craft. The practice, the discipline isn’t fun. It isn’t glamorous. No one congratulates you for it or says, Thank You.

Discipline can often seem like a burden, something that hinders our freedom. But discipline is actually the path to our freedom.

The truth is, I’m not free when I sit down at a piano. Though in theory I can play anything I want, I am trapped, caged, stopped, by my lack of discipline, by my inexperience. If I had kept at the piano, I’d have about 20 years of practice under my belt at this point. I’d probably be a lot closer to being a dueling pianist than I am right now.

Of course, as cool as the dueling piano guys are, that’s not my dream. I want to be a communicator. To speak and write. To be a storyteller. So I read. And I write. And I speak. However I can. Whenever I can.

And guess what? It’s not particularly glamorous. Editing and wrestling with a talk I’m going to give isn’t glamorous. Practicing it in front of the mirror isn’t nearly as fun as other stuff I could be doing. Maintaining a blog where I post at least twice per week (in my free time, which means I don’t get paid for it) isn’t always fun. It’s certainly not glamorous.

But I believe that the discipline of continuing to work at what I want to do is worth the sacrifice.

I’m not going to become a better speaker or writer by accident. No one is going to wave a magic wand and make me more eloquent. And book deals and conferences aren’t going to drop in my lap. The dueling piano guys didn’t wake up knowing how to play Elton John and Billy Joel one day. That’s why we work.

We submit to the order of discipline so that we can find the freedom on the other side of discipline.

If you want to become truly great at something, you have to invest yourself in it. For the long haul. Don’t settle for a couple of weeks of effort. Plan to work and work and work. Plan to be let down. Plan to have to get back up and get back to work. Because if you want to achieve anything truly worthwhile, if you want to capture your dreams and live out the calling God has placed on your life, it’ll require your whole self.

And it’s worth it. Every little victory along the way is so much sweeter than the time I could have wasted doing other things.

What is your dream, your calling? What discipline do you need to embrace to achieve your goals?

[ THE ART OF SELF LEADERSHIP HOMEPAGE ]