How To Use Self-Discipline For Success!
Introduction
Do you really struggle with firing up your motivation to get started on big projects or tasks? Are you plagued by a bad habit that you just can’t shake? Have you picked up a positive habit only to drop it shortly after? It happens. In fact, it happens to most of the population.
We often put things off telling ourselves we’ll get to it tomorrow or someday. Yet, it never happens. Do you struggle to sustain your focus and funnel your passion into your life’s biggest goals?
You are not alone, sadly, there are many others just like you. There’s good news for you, though, so don’t let it get you down.
You really only need one thing, whether your want is to lose weight, get a promotion, start a business, or finish writing that book you started ten years ago. That one thing is self-discipline.
Think of it as though it’s the engine that drives you. You know that any vehicle would be useless without an engine, just an empty shell. That’s a bit like what we are if we lack self-discipline – full of great ideas, amazing hopes, and dreams, but no will to chase them. Self-discipline will help you drive your success, whether it’s financial, spiritual, personal or in relationships with others.
Right now, there is just one thing standing between you and the mastery of self-discipline and that is habit. We are creatures of habit and sadly, that can be our greatest downfall. You are only ever one positive habit away from winning. It’s natural that we gravitate to building habits rather than building discipline.
Falling into old habits is easier and discipline requires dedication, determination, and self-control. John C. Maxwell said, “Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.” He’s right, and one of the biggest ways we fail in mastering self-discipline is getting sucked into believing that it’s another way we punish ourselves. If you want to build positive habits, you must use your discipline to do so. Once you do this, you will soon see just how unstoppable you truly are.
You can learn self-discipline and mastering this skill will make you entirely unstoppable!
Get Ready To Be Unstoppable
Health & Wealth
If you are ready to live your healthiest life then you will find yourself unstoppable with self-discipline. You will soon see that you are naturally making the right decisions when it comes to dietary choices, whether you should exercise or watch television instead, and you will be more likely to make the right choice about bedtime.
It makes sense that your ability to master self-discipline will help you grow your personal wealth. Now, that may not be monetary wealth. If your priorities revolve around furthering your career then it may, but it could be the wealth of being surrounded by family if your priorities lie elsewhere. Either way, your self-discipline can take you just about anywhere.
Happiness
Believe it or not, you will be happier with self-discipline. It may be difficult to understand that when you’re saying no to ordering pizza, but it’s true. With happiness and self-discipline comes the ability to make informed decisions and those are the decisions that you want to make as opposed to the decisions your bad habits are driving.
Patience
Are you familiar with the term patience of a saint? You ever wish you had that? You can and part of that is mastering self-discipline. Imagine what you could achieve with your newfound patience of a saint? It lies in your ability to control your reactions and take stock of the big picture. Patience does not mean that you suffer fools, though, so don’t be afraid to be assertive. In fact, it kind of comes with the self-discipline territory.
Persistence
Persistence and self-discipline go hand in hand and you can’t have one without the other. Persistence is one of those hallmark traits of every successful person on the planet, and once you have mastered self-discipline you will find an unlimited resource of persistence that will drive your success.
Self-Confidence
Your confidence will grow as you master self-discipline and when you ride that wave of confidence you can conquer the world or your job, whichever comes first. Either way, it shows and it tends to rub off on others, too.
Self-Image
There’s a difference between self-confidence and self-image, and while they do influence each other, nothing influences this like self-discipline. How you see yourself has more to do with how others see you than you think. When you are confident and strong others pick up on that and paired with your self-discipline… everyone is going to want to follow you, whether it’s on a project or to the end of the earth.
Self-Esteem
At some point, you start to believe those inner thoughts that cycle around in your brain and when you are able to practice self-discipline those thoughts start to change. When your thoughts are driven by positivity not only does your self-discipline increase, but so does your self-esteem.
Commitment
When you have mastered the art of self-discipline, you will find it easier to commit to new goals and dedicate yourself fully. Get ready to be more productive than you ever have, and that goes for your working life as well as your home life. Part of being self-disciplined is remaining focused and that focus makes you unstoppable.
Priorities
It becomes easier to understand what your priorities are and build your schedule when you are self-disciplined. One of the biggest factors in achieving your goals is understanding that you have to prioritize the activities that will get you where you want to go. Self-discipline makes it far easier to work out what those priorities are and how your day should look to get you there.
Bite Sized Pieces
One of the biggest aspects of self-discipline is in understanding how nothing can be achieved without making a single step at any one time. A lot of people struggle with seeing the big picture and they get bogged down in detail, easily overwhelmed. When you live your life in that state, it can be difficult to get anything done. Self-discipline allows you to hone in on a big task and break it down into manageable bite-sized pieces.
The Follow Through
Have you always had a nasty habit of making plans and never carrying them out? It’s something that everyone struggles with at some point that is until they master the art of self-discipline. Once you achieve that you will have no difficulty making plans and carrying them out. That follow through makes you unstoppable.
Rewards
Something that people with self-discipline understand is that celebrating success is key to maintaining motivation and driving your accomplishments. You can celebrate the major victories and the smallest ones. With every celebration of your success, you will push yourself to build your willpower even more.
The Execution
Self-discipline makes achieving your vision far easier, probably because you are able to execute every plan that you need to, to launch your success. Before self-discipline, you found yourself sidetracked and distracted by everything. Now? You have the ability to create a clear plan, which outlines every step necessary to achieve your goals.
Resisting Temptation
It’s easy to be influenced by temptation, whether it’s a hot fudge sundae, a pepperoni pizza, or a higher salary to do a job you’re not really interested in. Self-discipline allows you to push temptations from your mind by keeping them out of sight. You don’t have a problem keeping junk food out the way if that’s your biggest temptation. A job offer that directs you off your chosen path won’t even make you bat an eyelid, no matter how much money is on the table. It’s the difference between giving into instant pleasure and delaying the gratification.
Know Your Weaknesses
Everyone has weaknesses and guess what? There’s nothing wrong with that because we are all human. However, self-discipline flips weakness on its head. You are completely aware of those weaknesses, yet you no longer see them as shortcomings. Instead, you view them as opportunities to grow and you learn how to harness your strengths to plug the gaps. People who don’t have self-discipline try to cover up their weaknesses or ignore their existence. You don’t need to do that, you can own your flaws and overcome them with ease.
The Ability To Forgive
There’s a good chance you grew up being told to forgive and forget people when they hurt you. While that’s easier said than done, something that is more important is forgiving yourself and moving forward. People who master the art of self-discipline are able to do this because they understand that failure is just a part of life and it’s an integral part of success. You will hit bumps, you will fall down, and most importantly, you will get back up again.
Building Healthy Habits
Above, we discussed how intertwined self-discipline and habits are. We are creatures of habit, but often self-discipline requires the ability to break those bad habits and build new ones. It can be daunting when you start this process fresh, but anyone with self-discipline knows that to do this you need to break it down into small steps. You can’t change everything at once, but trying to is the quickest way to fail at building healthy habits and to break your self-discipline.
People with self-discipline understand that the start is small and changes are steady. Everything is easier when it gets broken down into small, measurable steps.
Healthy Eating
Before self-discipline, you find yourself caught up in hanger. When it comes calling you give in to the irrational temptations it throws in your face because at that moment all you are concerned with is feeding it to satiate your stomach and your irritability. Here’s the thing, self-discipline helps you make the right diet decisions and tells you to eat regularly to avoid hanger. Not only does that fuel a healthy lifestyle, but it also prevents you from breaking concentration and losing focus. Successful people are focused and your self-discipline will bolster that with the right decisions.
Your Perception
A study from Stanford University found that your belief could predetermine just how much willpower you have. If your perception is that willpower is limited then it will be. However, if you think it’s unlimited… so it will be. We don’t know why this works, but if you don’t limit your self-control then you will be able to achieve your goals without running out of steam. You can think of those limits as obstacles that your subconscious is throwing in your way and mastering self-discipline helps you remove those limits and knock obstacles out of the way.
An Expert In Problem Solving
With self-discipline comes the ability to solve problems quickly and efficiently. There is a multitude of reasons for this. One of those reasons is the ability to remain cool, calm and collected which is exactly what is necessary for any stressful situation. This isn’t just something that is important in business; it comes in handy in every facet of your life.
Being True To Yourself
To thine own, self be true. Shakespeare knew what he was talking about, right? Part of achieving happiness is learning how to be true to yourself. Self-discipline is the thing that keeps you on the right path and no matter how difficult your journey becomes it steers you back to the straight and narrow. We are all happier when we are living the life we feel we should be living.
Adaptable
People who are truly successful aren’t happy with doing the bare minimum. They aren’t happy with doing what has always been done. They look for new ways to do things, to improve policies and processes, to go above and beyond. That type of behavior is difficult to achieve without a modicum of self-discipline.
Self-discipline allows you to be adaptable in any situation. You’re unsinkable when you learn to roll with the punches.
Fearless
Failure can hold you back, but there is more than one type of failure. You could fail because you made an error, such as missing a key step in a process or you can fail by being too afraid to chase your dreams. The former is a far better way to fail than the latter.
There is no shame in losing when you choose to take part, the shame is in hiding in the background because you are afraid to fail. Self-discipline encourages fearlessness. You may choose to play by the rules lives everyone else, but you will do so in the most ferocious and aggressive way possible. Fearlessness does not mean recklessness.
When you fail, and you will, pick yourself up and go back at it harder than before. That is the fearlessness that comes from self-discipline.
No Deadline Stress
Stress doesn’t just take a toll on your focus; it can impact your mental and physical health. People with self-discipline don’t get stressed out the same way as the rest of the planet.
Why? They know how to exercise appropriate control over their surroundings and understand that looking at the big picture and breaking things into manageable steps will ensure no deadline is ever missed or accompanied with severe stress. They are also experts in time management, which brings us to our last point. Last, but by no means least.
Time Management
Self-discipline and time management are birds of a feather and exercising
time management is one of the biggest ways in which you can achieve and show off your self-discipline. It isn’t just about avoiding deadline stresses either, it’s the blueprint to living a richer, more fulfilled life and improving your work performance.
Awareness. When you understand just how important time is, it unlocks the concept of it, and changes how you value your time (and that of others). What that does is shows you how much control you really have over your time and gives you an opportunity to schedule things appropriately with achieving your goals in mind. You will soon see just how much of your time you waste.
Decision. Without deliberate decisions, there can be no achievements (of course, there are exceptions, but this is the rule). Aside from those freak accidents that result in a stroke of good luck you can only truly achieve your goals by making deliberate decisions that will guide you to them. For example, you can’t lose weight unless you make deliberate decisions to eat the right foods and exercise regularly. Part of self-discipline is believing that your time is important and exercising that knowledge is a deliberate decision.
Action. There is more than one different type of action, in fact, there are three: implementation leads to follow-through and that leads to completion. Once you reach a decision, you have to take action! This can be the most difficult step for a lot of people, getting started is the easy part, it’s the follow-through where things get complicated. Yes, it’s easy to sit down and plan your diet and get things started – it’s an entirely different thing to sustain those changes. Self-discipline is everything.
Final Thoughts
“Self-Discipline is self-Love”-Will Smith
Mastering self-discipline allows you to play to your strengths, embrace your weaknesses, and go for gold. While not everyone uses their ability to further their success, you can and there will be nothing holding you back when you do. With self-discipline, you no longer see obstacles; instead, you see challenges that you have the skills to overcome.
One of the most effective ways to boost your self-discipline is through a tool that psychologists refer to as implementation intention
This involves creating a plan on how you will handle difficult situations that you are most likely to face. For example, if your goal is to eat healthy but you are going to an event where you know food is going to be served then you need a plan to avoid giving in to temptation.
Your plan could be to eat some healthy snacks before you go and to remain focused on socializing while you are at the event. You can nurse a glass of water and take mindful sips when faced with a tempting plate of hors d’oeuvres. Having a plan for any situation and every eventuality will prepare you to exercise your self-discipline when it is called upon.
The truth is, life would be much easier if we were born with this skill, but self-discipline is learned. You can master it, but like any skill, it requires your dedication, as to be successful in it you need to practice it daily until it becomes a habit like any other. Temptations and decisions can be easy, but there are those that offer major challenges and if you have put the work in daily, your self-discipline should be built to a level that will make it easy for you to make the right choices.
Part of self-discipline and pursuing your dreams is the ability to take responsibility for the mistakes you do make. The biggest part of moving forward is learning where you went wrong and taking the necessary steps to ensure you never repeat that mistake again. You can’t do that without firsts accepting accountability. You can’t succeed in business unless you have the respect of the people around you and part of that is responsibility.
It doesn’t matter whether you are chasing a new career, looking to build your business or hoping to improve your family life – self-discipline will help you get there.
Every successful person started out with an idea, a wish, or a thought and it took drive, passion, and self-discipline for him or her to achieve their goals. Whatever you are pursuing, ensure you are passionate about it and it’s in line with your life’s priorities. Whatever you do, never stop growing.
“Without Self-Discipline, Success is impossible”-Lou Holtz