Self-Discipline has taken the center stage to be the star habit to achieve success. As I write this article, there may be a couple of other inspirations on building self-discipline flooding the virtual space.
No doubt, that Self-discipline is very essential to cruise to success. How do you master self-discipline and build it as a habit is a question to ponder? To start a habit is a child’s play, so to say. Holding on to the habit and mastering the habit is what I am going to be letting out a few quick hacks here.
Table of Contents
1. Slow and Steady
Remember the Hare and Tortoise tales of childhood? Yes. You need to start your habits steady and slow. Begin with simple habits. For example, take the habit of waking up at 530AM. If you attempt to wake up one fine dawn at 530, with all the enthusiasm, you might continue to wake up the first week, at the most. Beyond the first week, waking up will end you nodding off to sleep at your work-place. Eventually, it will become a drudgery and die a slow death.
Start small. Be real and certain about your goal post. Devote time to set the pace for internalizing self-discipline. When it is a smaller task to tackle, it is most unlikely that it will fail. It will save your excitement to master your self-discipline, from plummeting.
2. Just start…give sometimes
The next practice to master self-discipline is to begin. Habits are not a science project to keep observing it with un-batting eyes. For any new habit to manifest, we need to give time for it to seed in us. Give the habit 24 days to germinate and grow into a sapling. Before that, perhaps you can use the behavioral therapist approach. They recommend that you start doing the task and continue doing it for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, either you have stopped the activity or you have continued doing it. The key to mastering a habit is to begin. Corrections and preventions will follow suit.
3. Setting Goals
To be focused and consistent in your endeavor to master being self-disciplined, one thing that must be kept in mind is setting goals. Be aware that enthusiasm will take the better of you. Set goals of various habits in groups of short term and long term. Make it more Quantitative in nature. That way it will not overwhelm you and you will be consistent and motivated to practise the habits.
4. Celebrate small wins
One of the most important parts of mastering to become Self-discipline is to remind yourself that you are a beginner. You are bound to be distracted. Keep away all the gadgets. Switch Off phones to Airplane mode. Allot time for social media or connecting with the outside world. It is natural that you may miss following the better habit. You are human. Nobody is perfect. Give yourself a second chance and go back to performing the habit.
On the same coin, when you remember to be self-disciplined, give yourself a treat. It could be a small change of habit for you. But for your mind it is a leap into a better you. It will make your will power stronger.
5. Community help
I had a friend who made an announcement to everybody about adopting a new lifestyle. It was quitting sugar from tea. What happened next was a whole lot of help and support came from every nook and this friend embarked on this new self-discipline with the least effort. The support of the friends’ community was so strong, that the habit got inculcated in no time. What one person does with a lot of struggles; a group puts the shoulder to the wheel and gets it done.
6. Find the source to the indiscipline you
To master being self-disciplined, we need to replace the bad with the good habits. The source of bad routines causes stress in the lifestyle.
When you find a trail of ants crawling, you follow it to the source and then do away with the source perhaps. It is almost the same way. Follow the trail of bad habits to its source. If you lament that you have no time left to pursue your hobby, find the source, that is, the timewaster. If you find yourself struggling to complete the presentation on time for meetings, trail back to the time you spent chatting at the coffee vending machine. Once you have done finding the source of bad habits, you will transform to mastering being self-disciplined.
7. Clarity of where you want to be
Many successful personalities vouch on maintaining a record of their progress and falters. Journaling your thoughts is one way of staying focused. Few of them put colorful sticky-notes on their kitchen walls or their workstation. These notes and reminders of tasks to do. Few of them had reminders to eat healthy or a goal of body weight to achieve or just notes to cheer them for who they are. The intention is to be clear about your intent to master self-discipline.
Final thoughts
Like everything else in this Universe, being self-disciplined is an asset. It is very valuable to be focused. It helps to stay healthy and fit. The foremost distraction is timewasters. Trace your timewasters. It cannot be developed overnight. It takes 24 days to a year to embed a good routine /habit in ourselves. Until then, you need to be on track, no matter what.
Also Read: Self Discipline Exercises
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From sharing her views on blogs in MoTA to being a blogger in it, Lakshmi Srinath has been writing her thoughts since 2010. Thanks to a persuasive face-reader, she took Content writing on to a next level since August 2021 with a certification in the same, from Henry Harvin Education, India. When she is not among her thoughts and words writing content, you will find her pursuing her hobby in art or gardening or just gossiping the latest on insta, with her daughter. She staunchly believes that mental wellness leads to physical wellness. Lakshmi lives in Pune, India with her daughter and husband.