Self Discipline is without doubt one the most important traits you can develop in your life if you’re to excel in life and live the life you want. When you decide to be disciplined, you’re not just doing it for yourself, you’re also doing it for your children, your family, colleagues and others around you. When you decide to take that route and be disciplined in one area, it becomes a ripple effect to other areas of your life!
“Discipline is choosing between what you want now & what you want most.”
– Abraham Lincoln
Life can be filled with hardship and unexpected challenges, but the reality is that life carries on, whether you grow or not. Luckily, self-discipline is one of the greatest skills you can develop and will help you achieve your goals, live an abundant life, and get through those challenging times.
Fortunately, self-discipline is not something you’re born with, but rather a skill you acquire over time. This is great news because that means self-discipline is something you have control over and can actually build into your daily routine. It’s not just luck and talent that influence your success because even if you’re extremely talented, you won’t succeed if you lack discipline. We are all give the ability to achieve what we want and be successful, it’s all in our hand. Now let’s focus on the part we have control over and learn more on what we can do to become Self-discipline!
What is Self Discipline?
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, self-discipline is “the ability to make yourself do things you know you should do even when you do not want to”. It is also known as willpower or self-control.
Why is Self-Discipline so Important?
We often believe that disciplined-individuals are living dull lives without any excitement or adventure, this idea id actually further from the truth as you’ll find out.
When we create discipline and routine in our life, we generate more freedom. More time to do the things we enjoy and more time to spend with our loved ones. Studies indicate that disciplined individuals also have improved emotional well-being, physical health, social support, financial well-being and generally feel happier. Self Discipline helps bring that surge of energy and excitement in you to work hard towards your successful life. If you ask any successful person what’s their tip to getting things done, one thing they’ll say is that you need to have self discipline and remain consistent in what you do.
As you have probably heard, “success is something you attract into your life and not pursue.” As crazy as it may sound, self discipline is not easy to form BUT once you’ve built it, it’s so easy to live with and it’ll make your life more enjoyable and successful.
Why is it then so difficult to be Disciplined?
You’re probably well aware of the ‘marshmallow test’… But why is it so significant? Well, according to Walter Mischel, the author of “The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control”, children who develop the skill to delay gratification are far more likely to maintain a healthy weight, obtain higher SAT scores and will be more successful later in their lives.
If delayed gratification is often the key to success, it is then a great exercise for improving your focus and concentration. It keeps procrastination at bay and motivates you to do more so you can reward yourself. So why is it then so difficult to master?
Robert Sapolsky, an American neuroscientist, discovered that there are 3 key areas in the brain that control our behaviour. The Reptilian brain, which controls our normal bodily functions and instincts. The Limbic system, which controls our emotions, and our Neocortex/Logical brain, which is responsible for learning and determining long-term consequences. Our reptilian brain and the limbic system reacts much faster than our logical brain and will, therefore, challenge our willpower to keep us from eating the donut or smoking a cigarette.
Our brains are constantly looking for instant gratification and although this had many advantages for our ancestors, it can also have detrimental impacts on our modern lifestyles. Our ‘hunter-gatherer”-brains are searching for instant gratification, to save energy and survive.
Therefore, it comes with no surprise that our emotions and circumstances can often guide us away from what we want to achieve especially our our goals, but by building and improving our discipline and incorporating better habits, we can take control of our minds to work for us and not against us.
Self Discipline can defined as a state of mind which we can control to be able to achieve what we want. The little bit of mindset change can make a huge change in your life and the more you do it and be consistent with it, the better your results will be. One thing you don’t want is forcing yourself to do something, that’s why it’s important to start small and work on becoming consistent with what started.
Now lets us look some of the ways we can incorporate in our live s to help us become more Self Disciplined and focus on achieving our desired needs. These are important habits to help you, your family, colleagues or anyone you might want to share and empower to live a better, healthier, happier and successful life.
Mindset Habits To Help You Become More Self Disciplined
Monitor/ observe yourself
Self-monitoring is the ability to observe and analyse your behaviour, thoughts, triggers, and experiences. It’s a great way to monitor your progress towards a goal, improves sleep quality, provides clarity and gives you feedback to make better decisions in the future.
Reflective diary is one of the best tools to practice. Start with some daily self-reflection to allow you to work on yourself and know what to improve:
- What went well today?
- What can I improve?
- Were there any opportunities or threats?
Remember Why you’re being self Disciplined
Whatever the reason is that lead you to deciding to practice self discipline, remember that when things get a little hard. When you’re about to give, reminding yourself will give you strength to keep going. That is why is is important to write you reasons down on a pad or diary. Just like a vision board, it’s important to actually remind yourself or visualise where you want to be every day.
Know your weaknesses
Most of us prefer not to think about our weaknesses because we don’t want to go down that spiral of negative thoughts. However, by discovering your weaknesses without judgment, you receive great insight into what you need to work on and overcome. After all, acknowledging a problem is the first step!
Remove the temptation
Once you’ve established your triggers in step 1, try to remove these temptations until you have mastered your self-control around those triggers and temptations. For example, if you often get distracted by your phone when working, place it on the other side of the room, or if you want to eat fewer cookies or sweats, replace the cookie-jar with wholesome fruit.
You’ll be less likely to fall for those triggers when they aren’t there.
Find out what drives you
According to Daniel Pink, author of “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, there are 3 things that drive us; autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
- Autonomy is the ability to practice control of one’s own matters and making informed and unforced decisions. In order to be truly motivated, you need to be in control of what you do, when, and how.
- Mastery is the aspiration to improve your skills and the emphasis is on continuous improvement instead of the actual reward.
- And lastly, purpose. This refers to knowing that you’re working towards something bigger and something to be proud of. When you know your WHY, it’s much easier to stay motivated to keep going even when life gets challenging.
Determine which one of these is most important to you and keep your focus upon it.
Start small
Thinking of everything that needs to get done can often be overwhelming, but when you break it down to small manageable chunks, it much easier and more approachable. For example, try to commit to only moving your body for 10 minutes, on the days you don’t feel like doing anything. Once you get started, you’ll probably end up smashing a 30-minute workout.
“Don’t worry about getting it right. Just get it started.” – Marlie Forleo
Small changes may seem meaningless at first because we don’t see results soon enough, but by simply improving 1% every day for a year, you will amazingly improve by up to 37% at the end of the year, which is fantastic!
The main take home message here is no about the results you will get but the ability to build that consistent action that will eventually make you feel good abut yourself.
Write down a to-do list and have a plan
Don’t get lost in the fantasy of reaching your goals without mapping out a strategic plan. Write down your to-do list or strategy and start completing it by ticking off each task, one step at a time.
Take care of yourself
Taking care of yourself is such an important part of self-discipline because all your hard work won’t mean anything if you’re burnt out and miserable. Some self-care strategies I try to include in my routine are; physically activity, eating healthy balanced meals, spending time with loved ones, and practicing mindfulness and having a “Me” time for my selfceare and self love.
You should always remember that you’re the most important person in this whole journey. Learn to appreciate yourself more and give yourself a break. Be grateful for where you’re at, where have come from and everything you have achieved. Never allow negative thoughts in your head and always find the positive thing you have about the same situation or just focus on something positive and new.
Rely on habits and not motivation
Motivation is great for getting started but unfortunately, it doesn’t last. You need to be able to build a long term habit to get you to a stage where what you do becomes part of you.
After the 2nd week, you probably start talking yourself out of certain situations and you convince yourself that it’s not that important. It’s extremely frustrating, but how can you change that? Some researches have found that you need at least minimum of 21 days for your habit to starting building and you might need up to ninety days to master it all!
One of the methods I think its great is the use of Mel Robins’ 5-second rule. The 5-second rule will help you do the things you don’t feel like doing. Follow this rule by counting backward from 5 and as soon as you get to 1, simply just get up and start the activity. This will interrupt the thought process that tries to convince you otherwise and will help you gain control!
When you start creating better habits it becomes much easier to get things done because they become automatic. You don’t even think about it anymore, you just do it.
Learn from failures
Don’t be afraid of making mistakes! You will fail at some point on your journey, and its okay. Some of the most successful people have made countless mistakes before they finally make a breakthrough. Acknowledge your failures, forgive yourself, and determine how you can learn from them. Learn, adapt, and grow!
“Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is delay, not defeat. It’s a temporary detour, not a dead end.”~ Denis Waitley
If you’re too afraid of making mistakes, you will never try new things and learn or grow. No one is perfect and so are you! The biggest thing is to have to ability to recognise you mistakes or failure and turn them into great lesson.
Celebrate your wins
Reward yourself. Try to incorporate small, yet significant rewards throughout the process, and not only once you reach your goals. This will help you to keep going and give up along the way. Rewarding yourself is essential for creating healthy habits because without the reward your mind won’t observe the behaviour as important enough to repeat in the future.
One thing to add is to surround yourself with supportive individuals who will be for you and support you even when you fail. We have leant that you become who you surround yourself with every day!
Final Thought
As crazy as it sounds, Self Discipline is just like that muscle you’re working on at the gym. For you to become lean and build that muscle, you need to lift or work on that on regular basis. Eventual it’ll stretch and strengthen, that’s what you want. Focus on what you can gain instead of what you lose, and remember, it’s okay to take a break now and again but don’t give up completely. Overcoming challenges will take self discipline, coping strategies, support, and resilience, but one day you will thank yourself for it.
We cannot control everything that happens to us but how we react to them is what’s important. So rather than spending your time and energy focussing on the things you have no control over, use that energy to work on yourself and self-discipline its the place to start!
Make self-discipline your top priority and start to see every area of your life falling into place and changing for the better.
