Self-discipline refers to the process of altering your behavior to better align with your long-term goals and desires. It is a powerful tool for forcing yourself to do what you should do despite your feelings at that moment.
Achieving a big goal may seem out of reach, but putting a big goal into small daily tasks will allow you to achieve any goal at last. There are many wise sayings of successful people about how self-discipline is more important than motivation or being smart for doing anything in-depth. In this article, we’ve outlined the most effective strategies for practicing self-discipline.
Advantages of being disciplined
It helps you to reach your long term goals
If you feel that sometimes you are not motivated enough to reach your goals or fulfill your duties, you are not alone. You can push yourself by motivation, but motivation will often be at its highest in the early days after you decide to do something. Motivation will decrease over time and you will become distracted. A person who is disciplined will work towards their goals no matter how motivated they are! Being self-disciplined is taking action regardless of how motivated you feel.
It increases your self-confidence
Having self-discipline helps you get better than your past self every day. By pushing yourself to the limit of what you can do, you will become more confident. Because you’ll have more control over your life and the world. You’ll be able to see yourself do things which were previously impossible for you. Furthermore, achievements, even the smallest ones, make the brain release serotonin, which is directly linked to feeling confident.
Anxiety reduction
As you gain greater self-control by exercising self-discipline, you will feel less anxious. After an experiment done on students of a vocational business school in southern Germany, Scientists concluded that higher self-control capacity leads to lower cognitive-impairment anxiety disorders during Math exams.
Better relationship
Self-discipline can help you to improve your relationship. As you improve self-discipline, your capacity for self-control will improve. Since you have better control over yourself, you will have less impulsive reactions and more constructive behaviors.
How to practice self-discipline
Embrace discomfort
Having self-discipline means enduring short-term discomfort to reap long-term benefits. You need to have self-control to overcome the urge to procrastinate.You can improve your self-control by pushing yourself out of your comfort zone.
Going to the gym, getting a cold shower, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, they all can help you better handle discomfort. Handling more discomfort makes you more confident about your abilities.
Furthermore, doing things that were difficult for you before, makes you ready to tackle difficult situations by building self-discipline muscles.
People are always hesitant to leave their comfort zone. Your ability to resist temptation will improve after you do something that you were not able to do, and after improving your self-control. It will also help you become more disciplined.
Make new habits, start today!
Self-discipline accelerates your effort toward your full development. Whatever your talents are, whatever your job is, you can reach your best version of yourself by practicing self-discipline.
Self-discipline is acting based on your mind and not your emotional mind. Because the emotional mind simply wants to delay and makes excuses for not starting today. But disciplining your mind forces you to do what is best for you.
Always ask what additional disciplines I can get to make a better future. Then build your daily habits based on that. Try to get up earlier in the morning. Start reading books for one hour every day.
Start small
Break down your long-term goals as much as possible. Then make your daily habits based on the goal. For example, if you are aiming to get fit, start with building a habit of walking after work, you don’t need to start with going to the gym. When your new habit becomes automatic after a while, you can take bigger steps, such as taking a gym class, to improve the process.
Fail
Don’t feel bad about failures. Feel no guilt if you don’t succeed in establishing a new habit. Don’t be afraid of messing up. Try it at different times. Do not let neglect stop you in your tracks.
What you can do at the moment is important. Step by step, year by year, you will achieve any goal. Patience is the key. If you failed in establishing a habit of reaching a goal, take smaller steps. Do the best you can do. Take the class you can take. Read the books you can read, take a step you can take. Then step by step you get yourself ready.
Track your progress
You should write down your objectives or the characteristics you wish to achieve. And put it in a place you can see it occasionally to remember why you decided to get disciplined in the first place.
Take notes and stick them in front of your desk to remember that this is why you are building self-discipline, this is the reason for all the efforts that you are putting in. During the early days when it is harder to remember to keep a habit, when it is still not automatic, it will give you motivation to do so.
