Take 5: 24th July 2017 by Mr Tan Yong Gang

Good morning Mdm Tan, Mr Lee, Mr Chung, Colleagues and all Gessians. For today’s take 5, I would like to share with all of you a story about a fat boy and his journey on how he turned away from temptations, stuck to a discipline he found and how it benefited him – he became healthy.

When he first entered secondary school, he was just like majority of his secondary school boys, very active in sports, very lean and healthy. When he was in secondary 2, he started to eat student meals from mcdonalds or KFC (just like many of you here would after school at Tiong Bahru Plaza) almost every other day after school with his classmates. The fast food cravings did not cease and continued for the next few years. He weighed a whopping 80kg at the age of 16.

After secondary school, he went on to his tertiary education and was part of a sports cca that managed to help him lose the excess weight. However, when examination period came round, he became inactive again and that made him gain back all the weight he had lost – once again. His efforts to keep himself healthy had been for nothing.

After his tertiary education, he served his nation. During that time, he decided that he did not want to be unhealthy anymore. He started jogging whenever he had free time and he tried to make it a point to run at least 30mins non-stop every single day. He also changed his diet, curbing his craving for deep fried food and avoided carbohydrates like rice or noodles for dinner. He eventually added another swimming session in the morning before his work in national service started. Time went by and he started to observe that his weight was going down and his body shape was changing. There were moments when he felt like he did not want to run or swim, but he remembered what it was like when he was at an unhealthy weight; how he felt about himself and how it hindered him from doing the things he wanted to do.

Eventually, he managed to slim down. From then on, he watched his diet and retained his healthy lifestyle by running regularly. He even runs with his students to keep himself fit and hopefully through it all, motivate them to belief in the power of discipline. Whenever he thought of quitting, he remembered it felt in his younger days.

Yes, this boy is Mr Tan. I was that lean boy that ballooned when I was younger. I think many of you face similar issues in trying to be disciplined; whether it is to exercise, study, or read, or to do anything. You face the same inertia I faced when I was young. And I still face it today. But it is really all up to us; whether we want to push through and come out stronger or succumb to the temptation of being in the moment. I believe all of you can be disciplined in an area of your life. You can start with one area in your life first. Then slowly but surely, it will spread and it will be much easier to be disciplined in other areas of your life.

The reason why I am sharing this story is because I want all of you to know that if you want to get anything done, there are two basic ways to get yourself to do it. The first, the more popular option is to try to motivate yourself. The second, a somewhat unpopular choice is to cultivate motivation. According to Phillippa Lally’s study, it states that on average, it takes more than 2 months before a new behaviour becomes automatic, to be exact, 62 days! That’s why even on days when I did not feel like running, I still drag myself to run because I would feel awkward and strange for not running as it had unknowingly become a habit for me to run almost every single day. Being one of the teacher-in-charge of our school’s athletics team, I am very particular about the discipline of this team. Even to the smallest details like making sure they behave well outside of the CCA and not come late for school. These are all part of discipline. All of us know that running can be quite boring sometimes and the results of the trainings usually take a long time before we can reap its harvest. Motivation might not be a strong enough factor to pull you through when it concerns long term results and regular day to day functioning. I believe that discipline trumps motivation because motivation is having an impetus to do stuff but discipline is doing it even if you do not feel like it. This is even more evident when I see the students from my cca improving tremendously. Running is all about discipline – it’s about pushing yourself to beat your previous timing, trying your best to better yourself and all these things can be applied to your studies or to other areas in your life as well. Be a better person than you were yesterday because your only true competitor is yourself. Recently, two students told me they felt weird for not running for two days. I am happy and heartened to hear that. This proved that the discipline had been set in place to a point where breaking that “habit” made them feel uncomfortable. It takes effort, time and determination to cultivate this habit and be disciplined.

Life, in itself, is like a race. In order to finish this race, you need to keep running and stick to the discipline you know.

To those graduating students who are completing your D&T coursework this week, keep pushing yourself because you are reaching the finishing line. For those undergoing DSA trials, if things do not go as planned, do not be disheartened. Instead use this setback to make you stronger, for a setback is a set up for a comeback. Don’t break your discipline now. Finish the race well.

You do not wait until you’re in Olympic form to start training. You train to get into Olympic form.

Getting good results might be the motivation to work hard, but being discipline is more important because it is about doing what needs to be done, even if you do not want to do it.