Self-Discipline can be defined as the exterior manifestation of your inner strength. It is the process of cultivating a mindset whereby you are controlled and ruled by your own deliberate choices rather than by your bad habits, emotions, circumstances or sway of others. It instills within you the ability to focus your mind and energies on your goals and help you develop a sense of continuity and perseverance.
Self-Discipline: The Most Important Ingredient of Success
Self-discipline provides you the power to stick to your decisions without changing your mind. It gives you the strength to make resolutions, take actions and execute your game plan regardless of difficulties, discomfort, or obstacles that may come your way. Thus, if you want to live your life on your terms and to achieve the goals and objectives you are aiming for, self-discipline is required.
Now, training and acquiring the skill of self-control will help you improve many areas of your life, for example you will be able to:
- Overcome procrastination
- Wake up early in the morning
- Fulfill your promises to yourself and to others
- Avoid behaving rashly and on impulse
- Resisting temptations of eating non-healthy foods
- Continue working on your diet in order to achieve your desired fitness goals
- Continue working on a project even after the fading of the initial enthusiasm
- Remove temptations whenever necessary
- Recover and learn from mistakes effectively
Methods to Develop Self Discipline
It is known that most of the people are aware of the benefits and the importance of self-discipline. However, very few of us take the initiatives to develop and strengthen it. In fact, you can develop and strengthen this ability like any other skill through training and exercise. Awareness of undisciplined behavior and its consequences will help you in understanding the power of thoughtful choices in your life. You will also make efforts to act and behave according to your decisions regardless of laziness, desire to give up, and tendency to procrastinate. Now, if you decide to act upon improving your self-discipline, you can strengthen it by doing these simple exercises:
1. Start with Baby Steps
You cannot achieve self-discipline overnight. Just like building muscles, it takes time to develop this skill. If you train more, you will become stronger. So, just make the decision to go forward and decide to learn what it takes to get there, and remember that moving forward slowly is better than going nowhere quickly.
2. Increase Your Energy = Increase your Willpower
Your willpower has the ability to go down and up according to your energy levels. You have to be aware of the things that inspire you to do more. For example, you can have a vision board that you could use as a tool in order to motivate yourself to stick to your decisions.
3. Make Some Behaviors as Routine
Once you decide what your goals are, you can establish a daily routine that will help you in achieving them. As a consequence, implementing a specific set of actions into your routine will help you in progressing towards the achievement of your desired goals.
4. Practice Awareness
You must learn to say no to some urges, impulses, and feelings, you can also get rid of some of your self-defeating bad habits, whatever they may be: they have the power to put you in a negative frame of mind. This is also one of the major hindrances of your self-discipline. So, practice awareness and being more conscious in your decisions will help you in keeping things under your control.
5. Engage in Physical Activities or Sports
Sports are an excellent way to enhance your self-discipline. As well as becoming physically fit, physical activities help a lot in increasing your mental well-being. Participating in physical activities and sports such as martial arts provides you with opportunities to learn how to strive to do your best. As a result, you will integrate the same thought process and discipline into your daily life.
6. Exercise Daily
One of the best things to do when you want to increase your self-discipline is to implement the daily habit of exercising, training yourself to exercise daily is the best starting point if you want to increase your self-discipline.
The Important Take Away
Summing up everything, for most of us, life puts lots of problems and challenges on our journey. In order to overcome all these obstacles, we must act with perseverance and persistence. Subsequently, self-discipline is essential. Once you acquire this skill, Instead of short term discomfort, you can encourage yourself by focusing on long term benefits and accomplishments. In the end, being self-disciplined will help you reach any types of goals, you will have more self-esteem, self-confidence, satisfaction and in the overall: happiness.
