It is Tuesday morning in Brugge.
Rain is tapping gently against our apartment window. My son is still asleep, his small body curled under a blanket covered with cartoon dinosaurs. My wife is reading something on her phone, enjoying one of those rare quiet moments before the day begins.
I am sitting at our small dining table with a cold cup of tea beside me, thinking about discipline.
Not the kind of discipline people often talk about in expensive courses or motivational videos.
I mean something quieter.
The kind you barely notice while it is happening. Then, years later, you look back and realize that those small daily choices quietly changed the direction of your life.
Lately, I have been thinking about my grandfather.
He taught me more about discipline without ever using the word than I have learned from books, videos, or motivational speeches.
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| A quiet Tuesday morning in Brugge. Finding clarity in the rain before the day begins. |
What My Grandfather Understood Without Ever Naming It
I grew up in a village where discipline was not something we discussed.
It was simply part of life.
My grandfather woke up at 4 AM every morning. We did not have electricity for most of my childhood, so there was no alarm clock beside his bed. He woke because that was his routine.
While the village was still dark and quiet, he would sit on the veranda, cross-legged, and say his prayers.
By the time I stumbled out of bed, rubbing my eyes, he had already finished his morning rituals, fed the buffalo, and was drinking his first cup of milk tea.
I never heard him complain about getting up early.
I never heard him say, "I don't feel motivated today."
He simply did what needed to be done.
Today, I live in a modern apartment in Belgium. We have central heating, blackout curtains, electricity, and a phone that can offer me a hundred different alarm sounds.
And still, some mornings, I hit snooze three times before getting out of bed.
That contrast makes me smile.
My grandfather had almost none of the conveniences I have today, yet he was often more consistent than I am.
I am still learning from that.
Twenty Quiet Minutes
Last month, I decided to wake up just twenty minutes earlier than usual.
Nothing dramatic.
I did not create a complicated morning routine or set a huge goal.
I simply wanted twenty quiet minutes before the day became busy.
I wanted to sit with my tea, write a few lines in my notebook, and have a little time to myself before parenting, work, responsibilities, and everything else began.
Just twenty minutes.
Surprisingly, those twenty minutes have given me something that many bigger decisions have not.
A little space.
During those quiet moments, I am not thinking about being a father, a husband, an employee, or an immigrant trying to build a life in another country.
I am simply sitting there, breathing, watching the rain, and sometimes remembering my grandfather sitting on that veranda.
That is when I began to understand something.
Discipline does not always mean forcing yourself to do difficult things. Sometimes it means creating small rituals that help you remember what matters.
My grandfather never called it "discipline over motivation."
He did not need to name it.
He simply lived it.
Simple Living Creates Mental Clarity
When I first moved to Singapore, I was overwhelmed by how much everything had changed.
The malls.
The lights.
The buildings.
The choices.
I remember standing in a supermarket and looking at rows of bottled water.
There were so many different kinds.
I remember thinking:
Thirty kinds of water?
In my village, we had one main source of water.
The well.
Sometimes it was clean. Sometimes it was not.
We did not have dozens of choices. We had water.
Living in different countries has taught me something about modern life: having more choices does not always make life easier.
Sometimes, too many choices simply create more things to think about.
I see the same thing with my son.
He has more toys than I had during my entire childhood. Sometimes his room looks like a small toy shop exploded.
Yet what does he often enjoy the most?
An old cardboard box.
A stick he found in the park.
A wooden spoon from the kitchen.
Children seem to understand simplicity naturally.
Adults often spend years trying to rediscover it.
Learning to Need Less
Even cooking can remind me of this.
When I make dal, I try not to rush through it.
I watch the lentils soften. I listen to the pressure cooker. Sometimes I remember my grandmother's hands moving around the kitchen with a kind of quiet precision.
She seemed to know when the dal was ready without needing a timer.
She listened.
I remember her saying something like:
"The sound tells me everything, beta. You just have to listen."
I think about that sentence more often now.
There is so much noise around us.
Notifications.
Messages.
News.
Social media.
Emails.
Endless advice about what we should buy, achieve, improve, or become.
Sometimes the better choice is simply to listen.
To need a little less.
To slow down.
To notice the people sitting beside us.
For me, simple living is not about owning an empty house.
It is about making enough space in my life to notice what is already there.
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Presence Is Also a Discipline
Last night, my son climbed onto my lap while I was scrolling through my phone.
"Papa," he said.
Then he looked at me and said:
"Kijk naar mij."
Look at me.
I did not look up immediately.
He waited for a moment.
Then he gently pushed my phone down.
That small moment stayed with me.
There was no argument.
No dramatic conversation.
Just a child asking his father to look at him.
It reminded me that discipline is not only about waking up early, exercising, writing, or building habits.
Sometimes discipline means putting something down.
The phone.
The work.
The distraction.
The thing you think is urgent.
And looking at the person standing in front of you.
My grandfather's 4 AM mornings were discipline.
So was my son's simple request for my attention.
Both involve the same basic choice:
Deciding what deserves your attention, and then giving it that attention.
Those small choices rarely receive applause.
But they add up.
Small Steps Lead to Big Results
When I first started writing these blogs, I doubted myself almost every time I opened my laptop.
Who am I to write?
I am not a famous writer.
I am simply a man who grew up in a village, moved through different countries, and is now trying to make sense of life in Belgium.
But I kept writing.
Ten minutes here.
Twenty minutes there.
Sometimes I had an idea.
Sometimes I had nothing.
I stopped waiting for the perfect mood.
I just tried to write something.
Over time, those small pieces began adding up.
A sentence became a paragraph.
A paragraph became a story.
A story became an article.
And eventually, those articles started connecting me with readers I had never met.
Sometimes someone writes to tell me that a particular story reminded them of their own life.
Those messages mean more to me than I can easily explain.
My Son Is Learning the Same Lesson
I see the same principle in my son's life.
He is learning to write his name.
Each day, he holds his pencil in his small hand and carefully traces the letters.
Some days the letters are crooked.
Some days he gets frustrated.
Sometimes he throws the pencil aside.
But the next day, he tries again.
Slowly, the letters become straighter.
His handwriting changes.
His name begins to look more and more like his own.
He cannot see the progress from one day to the next.
Neither can I always see my own progress.
But when I look at what he wrote three months ago and compare it with what he can write today, the difference is obvious.
That is often how life works.
Progress can be almost invisible while we are living it.
Then one day, we look back and realize how far those small steps have taken us.
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| Small, clumsy hands today become the steady strength of tomorrow. The compound effect in its purest form. |
Why Discipline Matters More Than Motivation
I have lived in several countries and experienced very different ways of life.
Singapore.
South Korea.
London.
Portugal.
Denmark.
And now Belgium.
Every place has taught me something.
But one lesson keeps returning:
You cannot build your life around how you feel every morning.
There are days when I want to write.
There are days when I do not.
There are mornings when meditation feels easy.
Other mornings, I would rather stay under the blanket.
There are evenings when I have plenty of patience.
And there are evenings when I am simply tired.
That is normal.
Motivation comes and goes.
Discipline gives you something to rely on when motivation is missing.
For me, discipline does not mean being perfect.
It means making the next small choice even when I do not particularly feel like making it.
If I do not feel like writing, I might write one sentence.
Just one.
Sometimes that sentence is enough to get started.
Then one sentence becomes another.
Eventually, I may have a paragraph or a page.
The important part was not feeling inspired.
It was beginning.
Start Smaller Than You Think
We often make habits unnecessarily difficult.
We decide we will exercise for an hour every morning.
Read fifty pages every night.
Write for three hours every day.
Wake up at 5 AM.
Meditate for thirty minutes.
Then life happens.
We miss one day.
Then another.
Eventually, the whole plan disappears.
A smaller commitment can be easier to protect.
Read one page.
Write one sentence.
Walk for ten minutes.
Put the phone away during one meal.
Wake up ten minutes earlier.
Spend five quiet minutes without a screen.
Small does not mean meaningless.
A small action repeated consistently can become part of who you are.
What My Grandfather Left Behind
My grandfather never wrote a book about discipline.
He never stood on a stage and gave a speech about productivity.
He probably never thought of his morning routine as a "habit system."
He simply lived his life.
He woke up.
He prayed.
He worked.
He cared for the animals.
He drank his tea.
He did the things that needed to be done.
At the time, I did not understand the lesson.
I was just a child watching an old man begin his morning before everyone else.
Now, sitting in my apartment in Brugge, I understand it differently.
His consistency became part of the family.
His habits became memories.
His way of living became something I could carry with me, even after crossing borders and building a completely different life.
I think about that when I watch my own children growing up.
My older son is learning three languages.
He is learning Dutch.
He is learning how to write his name.
He is growing up in a world very different from the village where I grew up.
Yet I hope he will carry some of those simple lessons with him.
Show up.
Pay attention.
Take care of people.
Do what needs to be done.
Keep going when the excitement disappears.
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| The discipline we practice in the dark creates the peace we feel when the sun rises. |
Final Thoughts
Last night, after putting my son to bed, I stood quietly in the doorway of his room and watched him sleep.
His chest was rising and falling gently.
His small hand was holding his favorite stuffed animal.
His lips were slightly parted, as if he were whispering something in a mixture of Nepali and Dutch that only he could understand.
I stood there thinking about my grandfather.
I thought about how far life can travel from one generation to another.
From a village without electricity to a warm apartment in Belgium.
From a boy who had never seen a mobile phone to a father watching his son grow up with technology all around him.
From a grandfather who woke at 4 AM in the darkness to me sitting at a dining table in Brugge, trying to understand what his life taught me.
The distance between those two lives is enormous.
But some things have remained the same.
Small actions matter.
Consistency matters.
Presence matters.
The things we repeat quietly can eventually shape an entire life.
You do not need to change everything tomorrow.
Choose one small habit.
Wake up ten minutes earlier.
Drink your tea without looking at your phone.
Write one sentence.
Read one page.
Take a short walk.
Give someone your full attention.
Then do it again tomorrow.
And the day after that.
My grandfather understood something I did not understand as a child.
You do not have to feel ready every morning.
Sometimes you simply have to begin.
And perhaps that is the real difference between motivation and discipline.
Motivation asks, "Do I feel like doing this?"
Discipline asks, "What is the next small thing I can do?"
I am still learning the answer.
But every time I sit down to write when I would rather do something else, every time I put my phone down to listen to my son, and every time I keep a small promise to myself, I think of that dark veranda in my village.
My grandfather sitting there.
The world still asleep.
And him quietly doing what mattered.
That may be the kind of success I understand more clearly now.
Not simply what we achieve.
But what we pass on.
What About You?
What has helped you more in your own life: motivation or discipline?
Maybe it was a parent, grandparent, teacher, or someone else who taught you the value of showing up every day.
I would genuinely love to hear your story in the comments. I read every one.
If you enjoyed this personal story, you may also enjoy my article Two Languages, One Child: Growing Up Between Nepali and Dutch.