Why Self Discipline is Critical for Your Success & How to Get There

Self-discipline is one of the most critical factors that can accelerate your growth and success. It is the ability to take charge of your thoughts and feelings and channel them toward accomplishing your goals. Whether it is personal or professional progress, self-discipline is essential across all walks of life. Without this progress can be slow and seem like a tedious task.   

Let’s look at some of the factors why self-discipline is essential for success.

Inspires action – Self-discipline helps us take the desired action, despite the hardships that come our way. It acts as a motivator and increases the determination and will to stay focused on the task especially when we are low on energy and experience a dip in motivation.   

 

Positive impact on decision-making – Self-discipline aids mindful decision-making; it ensures that we chose the route that aligns with our overall objective.  For instance, if saving up a certain amount every month is a discipline, it could stop us from splurging into something that is not necessary at the moment or even in the long run.    

 

Achieve long-term goals - Self-discipline helps us to focus on the long-term picture. The grit and determination to stay focused on the end goal help drive us through the journey with sustained and focused efforts that comes with maintaining self-discipline.    

  

Reduces anxiety – Research suggests that having a certain discipline set to ensure goal accomplishment can help in reducing anxiety to a great extent. When there is a routine set it directs our behavior and helps to channel it in the right direction. 

Improved physical health - People with self-discipline have greater resistance toward the usage of health-damaging substances such as alcohol and tobacco.  Self-discipline is linked to lower obesity and addiction rates.

Enriched relationships - Yes, self-discipline can also help in enhancing relationships, and enhance the quality of your relationships. As self-discipline is also about the ability to look beyond your perspective, it helps in adapting a more constructive behavior that contributes towards happier and healthier relationships.   

More resilience –Imagine that favorite bowl of dessert right in front of you and no one’s watching. You can devour it all you want, but you’ve set a goal, and you want to make sure you stick to the goal you’ve set. The more resilience you have the greater your self-control over impulses and gratification.

Feel happier – Control of self-behavior leads to a better sense of well-being and happiness. The more productive we are it enhances the more feelings of happiness and accomplishment.  

 

 

Boosts self-worth - Maintaining self-discipline is no easy feat, even in the most difficult situations it helps to stick to the routine and more so when no one is monitoring you. This provides a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.  It is consistent behavior that helps in boosting self-worth and fosters a positive mindset essential for growth.

While the self-discipline journey for some might be smooth and seamless, for the rest an uphill task. Let’s look at some of the ways which can help us get there.

Understand your strengths and limitations: It is extremely critical to understand your strengths and weaknesses before you get started on setting a routine. There’s no point in feeling demotivated in the journey ahead by ignoring your weaknesses and setting a routine you know is not going to work out in the long run. Being self-aware is a powerful tool and it requires one to be open and accepting of shortcomings no matter what they are.  

 

 

Set clear goals: The more precise and well-defined your goal is, the more doable and realistic it becomes. This makes the task easier to achieve while staying motivated to do so.  Understand where you struggling, try different steps that can help you succeed, visualize the likely outcomes, get a mentor if need be, and continue the journey.  

Break it down: Break down the large goals into smaller tasks so that you can focus on one thing at a time. The smaller the task the more doable and less time-consuming it feels. This is a great way to stay organized, and it also keeps you on track with your objectives.

Create a schedule: Creating a schedule for yourself with a specific timeline to accomplish tasks helps in meeting your goals. The idea is to create a schedule, check if it is working for you, and keep making tweaks until you arrive at one that works best for you. The idea is to stick to your schedule as much as possible in order to stay productive and accountable for your actions.

Eliminate distractions: It’s easy for us to get distracted, and mobile is a common one for most of us. Keep all sources of distractions away, turn off social media notifications, or turn off the internet if that’s feasible for you and stay focused on the task at hand.

Practice daily diligence: Noticed how difficult a workout schedule seems after a gap? Self-discipline is not an innate behavior but it’s learned over the years. Just like a skill that you wish to master requires daily practice and repetition so does self-discipline, though it may seem draining. The more habitual it is, the more powerful it becomes.  

Have a backup plan: A backup plan is essential while setting a routine as this is something new, and you haven’t tried this before. Even though you understand what your limitations are, it is necessary to have a backup plan to ensure that you don’t have to start all over again but stay close to achieving your end objectives. 

Reward yourself: Remember to reward yourself once you’ve achieved a certain goal or milestone, no matter how small the reward may be, and stay motivated and encouraged throughout the journey. This could be anything from taking a break to treating yourself to something special.

Create new habits and rituals: Can’t emphasize the importance of this enough. While most of us think that while you are in one routine you can’t create another routine that can get you closer to goal accomplishment. This is just an inhibition. It is very essential to develop new rituals and habits that can help to break down your tasks into smaller, simpler steps that are much easier to accomplish.

Accept failures: Even with the best intentions, we stumble and make mistakes knowingly or unknowingly. Be accepting of failures, and don’t beat yourself up for not making it. Keep at it and stay focused on the big picture and most importantly understand the reason for the failure and work on getting better.  Even the biggest names in the industry, like Bill Gates, Elon Musk & Oprah Winfrey, have a discipline that they stick to and constantly keep learning new skills in order to increase their knowledge base to stay competitive in the marketplace.

Self-discipline is essential for every person who wants to achieve success in any area of life. It requires immense passion, focus, determination, willpower, and consistency in order to experience results no matter what the obstacles are. By practicing some of the tips mentioned in this blog we can incorporate self-discipline into our lives and enjoy the benefits it brings! 

To sum it all as Warren Buffett rightly said, “We don’t have to be smarter than the rest; we have to be more disciplined than the rest.”