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Having a strong sense of self-discipline is a game-changer in life. No matter what your goals are, who you are, or what you do—one can always benefit from having a firmly rooted self-discipline to draw upon.
It can move you in times where it becomes difficult to move at all and help to drive you forward, away from stagnancy. Cultivating a set of self-discipline practices and skills? Well, it takes a balance of a little extra intention, a consciousness of what you’re doing, and a hefty serving of will power. Read, digest, and implement these steps to make self-discipline one less worry on the agenda.
1. Be Honest with Yourself
At the heart of having a drive for self-discipline must be one’s ability to cut through the layers of fog that life can bring. Try your best to work through and challenge perceptions, observing your life through a series of facts.
Remind yourself what constitutes a “fact,” and pull away from the emotion. Emotion has a time and a place, and it should never be buried. Though building up self-discipline can work quite nicely if you develop the skill of viewing your reality in a “matter of fact” manner that allows you to recognize and accept what truly “is true.”
2. Know Your Weaknesses
In an extension of stepping back and being honest, knowing your weaknesses is critical for having self-discipline. Knowing your weaknesses helps to lessen, and possibly even eliminate them. When you bring consciousness to the thing you struggle with, you’ll have an easier time grappling with them when they come around, versus, if you go about life waiting to be triggered by a weakness, perhaps act on it out of habit, only to feel bad about it later. Know your weaknesses to avoid them.
3. Forget the Goal System
Don’t get confused. This is not to say that goals are unimportant. Goals are fundamental, but the system in which they are achieved can use some revisiting. Setting long and short term goals is a generally positive act that can surely yield results.
It does bring awareness to things you’d like to achieve and helps to set timelines, but in this, self-discipline has somewhat of a wavering role. Focusing on self-discipline moment to moment regardless of whether or not a goal has technically been “met” will help to make it a habit. It will promote the tendency to lean toward discipline even when there isn’t a goal glaring past the finish line.
4. View Change as Opportunity
Something that tends to stop many of us when it comes to sticking to disciplinary mindsets is a sudden or unexpected change. Changes happen so rapidly in life, sometimes right under the nose and other times while we’re looking away. Learn to avoid becoming rattled by change. Instead, “laugh in the face of danger,” as said in the Lion King. Never allow fear to stop you.
Invite change as a cue to do something differently. It may just lead you down the path you want to go down. Have faith and stick to your foundation when it comes. This will create a defense against having your sense of self-discipline demolished each time something offbeat occurs.
Establishing self-discipline, like many things worthwhile, may take time. It’s improbable to happen over-night, and likely that you will have failures in trying to become connected to it. This is a sign of growth. Dream, persevere, achieve. That is all! (It is).
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