Do you know the importance of self-discipline? In today’s world where so much importance is given to being successful, self-discipline plays a very important role in achieving success. Because you know that the most successful and happy people follow high self-discipline in their lives.
Self-discipline is an important skill that can completely change your life. Being self-disciplined does not mean that you have to be naturally tough or develop superhuman willpower, but you have to understand your priorities and act accordingly.
This article will show you practical ways to strengthen your self-discipline muscle and make your life more productive
Self-Discipline vs Willpower: Which is More Important
self-discipline is beyond willpower but both are important. Self-discipline is a system that helps you achieve your daily routine or commitment, even if you lack motivation. Or we can say that it is a structured approach that is solely based on dedication and consistency.
On the other hand, willpower is a short-term force that helps you immediately fight any temptation or challenge. It can also be seen in this way that self-discipline is like running a marathon and willpower is like a sprint.
Our brain creates a neural pathways of repeated actions such that our habits become easy. And in today’s time when there is so much distraction like endless scrolling, instant notifications.
How do you understand that you are lacking in self-discipline?
Signs that help you to understand that you are lacking in self-discipline include: you tend to delay your work, thinking of doing it tomorrow, procrastinating, putting off things until the last minutes. Similarly, starting a task with a lot of enthusiasm or leaving it for a few days, your self-discipline probably needs work.
Another red flag is inconsistency in daily habits, for example you started reading a book and stopped it after 2 to 3 days it shows that you are lacking self-discipline, or when you open a book you get a notification and you start scrolling again.
Strategies to build self-discipline in life
1. Set Clear Goals: Strengthen Self-Discipline with Purposeful Direction
You should know about your goals, what you want from yourself, from your life. It is very important to have a clear goal to achieve self-discipline. If you do not have a clear goal, you do not understand yourself, you do not know what you want in life, then you can never learn self-discipline. All the successful people till now knew what they expected from themselves, they had a vision of their own which they had to fulfill.
I am telling you 2 techniques which will help you in this:
Set SMART Goals – Make Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound goals.
Write Daily Goals – Decide a small target each day which will take you to your big goal.
2. Start with Tiny Steps: Build Self-Discipline with Micro Commitment
Starting with tiny steps “micro commitment method”. If you want to learn a skill of self-discipline then you can break your big task that you want to achieve, into tiny steps. For example you want to read a book start with reading one page in a day or you can give 5 to 10 minutes. This small commitment will help you to build momentum without harming your rigid mind.
3. Overcome Procrastination
If you want self-discipline, then remove procrastination. Because this habit reduces productivity and we can say that it is the biggest enemy of productivity. Most of the people are not able to maintain discipline because they keep procrastinating.
To remove this, you can use the 5 second rule. Researchers say that if you do not feel like doing any work, then you just count from 1 to 5 and start working.
The Pomodoro technique, you must have heard about it, as common it is, it is also more productive. The standard time mentioned in this technique is 25 minutes focused work and 5 minutes break. If you wish, you can change it as well, I also use it, but I used to follow 45 minutes off focused work or 10 minutes of break. It hit me many times and I got a chance to trial it. If you wish, you can try it or you can prepare a time frame for yourself.
4. Strengthen Your Willpower: Build Self-Discipline with Mental Resilience
As we now know about willpower, you can achieve self-discipline by strengthening your willpower because a person who has a strong willpower can end instant gratification and do the work that is important for him and can prevent his cycle of activities from breaking.
Willpower is the core element of self-discipline. If you learn to control your urges, then you can master self-discipline. For this you can do meditation which will help you in controlling your willpower.
To strengthen your willpower you can start talking positively to yourself whenever any negative thought comes to your mind. And according to me you should follow a healthy diet because junk food and unhealthy lifestyle weakens the willpower.
5. Step Out of Your Comfort Zone
Getting out of your comfort-zone can be a good strategy. Whenever you find a task very difficult you should do it only. Instead of thinking this is hard, I can’t do it, try. This discomfort means I am growing stronger, this is a mental game and this game turn your obstacles into opportunities.
You can start by controlling phone usage, for this you can turn off social media notifications. Or also you can create a workspace, a place where you only do work nothing else.
6. Build Self-Control: Master Discipline
Self control is also a good option when you want to learn self-discipline, self control in simple words resisting the urgent temptation of somthing for long term benefits.
Many things can be done in this, like correcting your buying habits or stopping impulsive buying. Or adopting healthy habits like exercising for 5 days a week or meditation can help to improve self control.
7. Maintain Consistency and Perseverancee
Maintain Consistency and Perseverance, self-discipline is a life long habit not a one time effort, so you have to be consistent with every habit that you want to keep in your life, which will make you better and will help you to learn skill.
Learn from your failures, if ever discipline breaks you do not have to stop, you just have to see it as a lesson and move forward.
To maintain consistency and perseverance you can prepare a reward system for yourself, research shows that reward system pushes individual to do a work repitatively. Which will help you to become disciplined in long run.
conclusion:
Self-discipline is a skill that will help you achieve everything you want in life. But to learn this skill you need to keep yourself calm because it is a gradual process that will take time. Adopt small habits, avoid distractions and focus on your goals. If you follow all the above strategies then it will automatically become a part of your life.
Take a step from today itself and start your journey towards a disciplined life!