Building Self-Discipline
Self discipline is a trait everyone should have in their life. Whether it’s related to health, business, diet or fitness self control is what will get consistent results.
No one is born disciplined. It is a behavior we can learn, develop and use for success in any area of our lives. And as any other skill or behavior we can develop it but we can also lose it if we don’t practice it. I tell you this from personal experience.
Why is it good to be self disciplined:
1. Makes it easier to create and follow a plan. If you want to take up running 5 days a week, at 6 am it will be a lot easier to follow through if you have already practiced self discipline.
2. When you are disciplined you are in control of your world and life and you can make more rational decisions without feeling stressed or upset.
3. Self disciplined people get the results they are looking for. As my mentor Amanda Watts would say, consistency is key. When you are self disciplined you are consistent with your work, your training and your goals every day, week and month. You get where you want to get and let nothing get in your way.
4. Self discipline is training or control of oneself and one’s conduct for personal growth. It’s one of the 20% skills that contribute to 80% of results when applied to the right habits or areas of our lives.
5. Daily chores will be less stressful and frustrating. Everything will become easier.
Here are some easy ways you can start to discipline yourself before you go for bigger, more relevant goals in your life:
1. Make a schedule for the first hour after you wake up. For example mine is 20 min practicing Qigong or another type of exercise, 20 min working on my to do list and 20 min reading, listening to TED talks or inspirational videos to get my mind ready for the day.
2. Wake up at the same time every morning. Not 5 min earlier or later and no snooze button. Put your alarm clock, or phone, far away from your bed or in a another room to make you get out of bed to turn it off. Just make sure wherever you leave it you can hear it.
3. Plan a to do list, decide how much time you will spend on each task and do them. Turn off any phones, laptops, email, facebook etc if you don’t need them to avoid getting distracted. You don’t have to start with 1hour per task if that’s difficult to keep up with. Instead start small, 15 min for example, and slowly build up.
4. To build discipline I ask my clients to do food diaries. Besides the fact that we look at their nutritional habits we also build self discipline which helps us later in the program and helps them later to keep going without me
5. And the cherry on top…..sign out of your facebook, email, twitter, linkedin accounts etc and only check them 3 times a day for 1hour maximum. That is if your work does not involve working on social media, even so you can sign off for a few hours a day.
As usual if you have any questions write me and I will answer.
And if you want to learn more please download my free ebook The Merisoiu Technique or book a free consultation to talk to me.
Brilliant. If you get stuck please let me know so I can give you a hand. Similarly if you want to talk with me let me know and we can skype.
Great article and thanks so much for sharing, I look forward to putting some ot it into action.