Discipline can give you freedom, freedom from being a slave to your moods, desires and appetites. It is the ability to take action irrespective of your emotional condition. It also implies that you take action according to what you think and not depending upon what you feel.
It involves giving up pleasure and thrill which is found in the ‘now’, for the help and contentment of the ‘later’. It is vital for leadership, better health and lifestyle and for everything.
In today’s age of social media distractions and the pace of life being constantly increasing, it has become very significant factor setting apart those who lead and those who are swept away by the gush of the ordinary. For people who are struggling with self discipline, it can be developed and below are the ways how.
How to Build Self-Discipline?
1. Benefits of self discipline:
With self discipline, you will realize your true dreams and understand self potential. Self discipline will help you get things done by eradicating anything that is wasting your time in a day. Another benefit from self discipline is that you will learn to focus more and pay attention to what is a priority to you without getting distracted.
2. Four elements to success:
To succeed in having self discipline, you must have these four key elements to let self discipline develop and flourish. The four elements are self control, motivation, persistence and goals.
3. Roles of key elements:
Self control will help you to control your desires, mood, actions and emotions, words and personal focus. Motivation will be needed to never stop and keep on achieving success. Persistence is required to overcome failure and still continue on the path to success. Goals are tangible success that motivates and is defined as achievements.
4. Respect your body:
Self discipline involves self respect. Thus pay attention to the messages your body sends you. A human body is created with great mastery and you will know when something is off balance. Understand your body messages and treat it well. Exercise or do yoga to get the balance of mind and body.
5. Fill your mind with positive information:
You must nurture your mind by soaking it with positive and engaging information. Read books, engage in meaningful discussions, avoid negative conversations and people, and listen to soothing, joyful and boosting music rather than watching television and filling your mind with all the negativity and commercialism.
6. Be courageous:
Your emotional state, desires and appetites will be very powerful energies to go up against. You cannot just pretend that things will be easy for you, when you are actually going to struggle and find difficulties. Instead build up courage to face the reality and face the challenges. As you start accomplishing your goals, you will be more self assured and courage would naturally come in you.
7. Respect the spirituality in you:
It is essential to feel connected to something greater than you. By meditation, praying or spending time with nature you can connect with the Creator. It helps in making decisions for greater good and not just for something that feels good in that moment.
8. Take care of your physical health:
You become disciplined from the time you start taking care for yourself. When you treat your body well, it helps you in reaching and accomplishing amazing goals. Eating a healthy diet, getting adequate rest and exercising, maintaining body weight and avoid indulging in smoking, drinking or consuming high caffeine.
9. Value your time:
You must value your time with your work, family and self. Make generous space in your life for each of the zones. Schedule your family time and personal time similar to how you schedule your work time and other responsibilities.
10. Prepare written agendas:
When you prepare a written agenda and add everything to it, you generate priorities and sticking to your priorities will help you develop self discipline. Writing down helps for you to remember your priority and not miss out anything.
11. Make small changes:
Many people want to develop self discipline by bringing drastic changes in their lives. However one must know that this can lead to failure and can have damaging consequences. You must make small changes in your life with things and not completely change everything at once. Simple and small is the key to mastering the art of self discipline.
12. Take small steps:
If you are struggling and don’t understand how to make small and simple goals, take one thing at a time and work on it. For instance if you are suffering from low productivity, pick a single factor that leads to decreased productivity for you and eliminate that for a week. Perhaps you decide on avoiding personal text messages while you are at work, then you may focus on it for a week. Take up another factor the next week after you have mastered that change.
13. Set realistic and achievable goals:
People make the biggest blunder by setting goals that are next to impossible to achieve for them, just for the sake of developing self discipline. You need to learn to set realistic goals and set milestones for the long term goals to improve self discipline. It will help you to easily monitor your progress and boosts you up for further goals.
14. Make a daily checklist:
It is helpful to create a daily to do list, to help you exercise self discipline. You never miss a thing in your routine and it helps you to make sure you are doing everything without your mood coming in the way. Ensure each day that you complete each of the mentioned tasks.
15. Avoid talking about your goals to others:
You may be sharing your thoughts with friends and family about your efforts to learn and develop self discipline, so that you receive some encouragement and support. However most of the time people end up talking about negatives and how things cannot work leaving you discouraged altogether. When you feel even slight discouragement you are bound to fail and believe you were meant to.
16. Reward yourself on success:
You must reward yourself when you master self discipline in a thing and accomplished that goal. Watch a movie in the weekend or treat yourself with a delightful meal. To encourage yourself more, think of a reward that is very stimulating for you and which you would do anything for.
17. Understand your priorities:
You should be able to understand the biggest priority in your life in that moment to help you motivate properly. Contemplate what is important to you in your life and rectify your priorities list.
18. Get a partner with similar goals:
To gain self discipline it is always good to surround yourself with an environment that will be encouraging you at each milestone. Having a partner with similar goals of learning and mastering self discipline can be beneficial as you both can be accountable to each other. You both can work together to motivate one another and encourage when one is in difficult times or struggling.
19. Read inspiring stories:
Many times when you read success stories or the inspirational account of success, you receive motivation and drive to go on. Engross in other’s success stories and you are more likely to follow your own goals with courage and determination.
20. Find a role model:
There are many people who exercise self discipline successfully. You need to choose someone whose strategies and patterns suits you well and follow that person. Perhaps you may have to modify some of your decisions, but it is always good to have someone to look up to.
21. Don’t hurt yourself when you fail:
Never curse yourself or let yourself be swamped with hurtful feelings when you fail in your quest to develop self discipline. There are always bad times and mistakes can happen by any person, no one is perfect. You are only going to learn self discipline when you gather your senses and learn from your mistakes.
22. Pay attention on vulnerable triggers:
All have those vulnerability triggers that make them weak and lead to failure. Perhaps it could be some distraction, hunger or sleepiness. Recognize and get rid of the triggers.
23. Alter your lifestyle:
At times it is the lifestyle you follow that comes in your way to self discipline. You will have to make few modifications in your lifestyle like getting more sleep, getting up early in the morning, exercising, eating healthy and doing away with distractions like social networking sites or games.
24. Go to a motivational workshop:
It is very beneficial to attend a motivational workshop or seminar to learn self discipline techniques. You must provide yourself with many opportunities and go on searching more to learn as many techniques as possible during a year.
25. Get rid of destructive habits:
If you stay up late, spend lot of time surfing or consume a lot of alcohol then it is time for you to get rid of these habits or your self-discipline strive is going to suffer. With slow methods you can eliminate these habits.
26. Reassess your goals:
If you are stuck with the same situation then perhaps your goal is not motivating or exciting enough for you. May be you need to make changes in your goals or change a goal completely. Reassess each goal and settle for what works for you.
27. Speak to yourself:
When you self communicate just to criticize yourself, it can be self destroying. But when you use the technique to boost up your energy, motivate and encourage going on with something, you will find many advantages of this technique. It is only you who knows well what language or words will be the best motivators for you.
28. Understand yourself:
You must understand your own self from the inside and out. Unless you do so you will never understand how to overcome obstacles in achieving your goals to self discipline and have rational goals. Self discovery will pave the way for self discipline.
29. Visualize your ideal future:
You must always and constantly focus on your vision about your future. Keep the visual you have clear and distinct in your brain. This will prove to be the best motivator and will improve self discipline in you gradually.
30. Persist moving forward:
You must always persist looking forward and moving in a forward direction. Never look back or take any step backwards. Make all your steps effective in reaching a step forward to your ultimate goal.
31. Get into sports:
Sports are a brilliant method to channel discipline. Sports are a whole package activity that will train you in setting goals, directing your mental and emotional force, becoming physically fit, and to coping well with others. When you participate in sports activity, it grants you a situation where you learn to function firmly and endeavor to give your best. This in turn teaches you to incorporate constant thought process in your daily routine life.
32. Learn to play an instrument:
When you want to practice self discipline, learning to play an instrument can be the best method to do so. The concentration that is needed, repetition and application which is required to play an instrument can be precious lessons in the process of learning self discipline. Strive hard to learn something that is not easy but right for you.
Final Words:
Self discipline is a necessity if you plan on optimizing your life and achieving your goals in life. It is the best thing to know how to control and direct impulses and make robust decisions for you. You can get the life you wished for with the help of self discipline. The above tips can be very useful and effective with proper implementation and you will ultimately begin seeing changes in your life that are leading you to self discipline.
