The complete guide for self-discipline
By: Roger Staubli
Tags: Self Improvement, Discipline, Personal Development, Personal Growth, Motivation

Photo by Rohann Agalawatte from Burst

As we look at the most successful individuals of our time, like Elon Musk, Jack Ma, or Jeff Bezos, we might question the reasons behind their tremendous success. Unquestionably, they possess a combination of unique skills and abilities which were inevitable for their accomplishments. Also, special circumstances and a slice of luck might have contributed to it.

Thinking about success, humans often try to find the silver bullet or the easy way to achieve their dreams and get successful in their professional or personal life. For example, books that claim an easy way to get rich over the internet, not having any skills and knowledge, and claiming not much effort is needed, appear to be tempting. If such offers make someone rich, it is normally the authors of the books.

Honestly, we all secretly know that successful people all have in common that they work hard to reach a high level of success. As hard work is not a guarantee for success, it is almost always necessary for it. So the big question we should ask ourselves is how to build persistence to work hard over a longer period of time. As motivation usually lasts for a couple of weeks, self-discipline can help us to stick to a goal even when times get tough.

What is self-discipline

To understand self-discipline in more detail, let's start with a definition from Collins dictionary:

Self-discipline is the ability to control yourself and to make yourself work hard or behave in a particular way without needing anyone else to tell you what to do.

The first thing we can notice from the definition is that self-discipline is an ability. As knowledge and skills can be trained in a theoretical and practical manner, abilities are natural and inbuilt and hence much harder to obtain. It takes effort, persistence, and patience to acquire a new ability. Nonetheless, when we have developed a new ability, it remains naturally over a long period of time.

Next, self-discipline has much to do with self-control. As self-control holds us back from doing certain harmful activities like smoking, self-discipline keeps us doing activities even when we don’t feel good doing them at the moment. They both have in common, however, that they sacrifice immediate satisfaction to get long-term gratifications, which is a cornerstone for professional and personal success.

Finally, a person with a substantial amount of self-discipline does not need an external force to work hard. She believes that it will be worth the price and that she will get generous payback in the future.

Why self-discipline is important

Imagine you have launched a new start-up building beautiful websites for your customers. Since you love coding and designing websites, you are highly motivated to start working on the products. However, you will soon realize that having your own company does include work from many other areas. Not only coding is important, but also your customer relationship, your marketing, accounting, taxes, and so on. It’s nearly impossible that you will like all of these tasks and for that reason, your motivation to build the start-up will drop dramatically.

This is where self-discipline comes in. As you learned the ability to control yourself in times when you do not get immediate satisfaction, you will do the inevitable uncomfortable tasks anyhow. You will accept to sacrifice your time to grow a healthy business in the long run.

Self-discipline is not only necessary for your professional goals but also your personal ones. The ones among us having a long-term relationship will agree that the initial attraction to our partner changes over the years. By being self-disciplined the partners have an intrinsic willingness to work hard and grow a happier, healthier, and more valuable relationship.

How to improve your self-discipline

So what are the techniques to gain the ability of self-discipline? It is worth noting that it takes willpower, patience, and time to become a self-disciplined person. If you follow the list below, you are on the right way to boost your self-discipline and move a big step closer to success.

Do daily workout

Working out is perhaps one of the best things to practice self-discipline. The reason for that is that your future gratification is almost always for sure, and you will get it after a short period. By doing a workout for only 15 min a day using your own body weight, you start to feel stronger and healthier after a few weeks already. You immediately realize that the sacrifice of working out was worth it. It leads you to a routine and your brain realizes that self-discipline is a good thing. Consequently, it will also improve your self-discipline in other areas of life.

Get up early

Getting up is the first thing you do in the morning. You should try to get up early, constantly at the same time, and avoid hitting the snooze button on your phone. This routine shows a tremendous amount of self-discipline as it was much easier to just stay in the cozy bed. It will show your brain that you start your day being self-disciplined and it is more likely that you will continue with it throughout the day.

Forgive yourself

Remember one thing: You are not perfect, nobody is. You missed a workout, or you got up too late? Don’t worry about that. Try to focus on not doing this mistake the next time again but don’t get frustrated. Being always self-disciplined is impossible, so it is extremely important to forgive yourself and try to make it better the next time.

Make a daily plan

Daily plans are great to help you be more self-disciplined. The daily plan gives you a concrete overview of your task which needs to be completed to be a self-disciplined person. By creating your plan try to set achievable goals and include enough breaks. Otherwise, it will be too frustrating after a while when it is impossible to achieve these goals.

Do meditation

Meditation will help you to control your mind. Try to do mindfulness meditation which will relax your mind and at the same time helps you focus on the important things in life. While being focused, it will be much easier for you to be self-disciplined as you don’t get distracted easily anymore.

Conclusion

Becoming a truly self-disciplined person is a long way. However, we all know that it is a necessary ability for a successful and happy life. Rejecting immediate joy to receive true fulfillment in life must have a high priority. Start doing the suggestions from the list above, stick to them, and you will realize how your self-discipline will grow day by day.