Want to know how to develop self discipline? Then you’re in the right place.
Self-discipline is the key to accomplishing anything you desire throughout your life. Without self-discipline you might as well be a cow grazing around aimlessly. In this life changing guide, we’ll explore 10 of the most important habits you’ll need in order to be highly disciplined and successful. Have trouble being consistent or resisting temptations?
Self-discipline solves those problems. Lack self-control or the ability to stay on track after suffering setbacks or unfortunate circumstances? Self-discipline cures those ailments. Many people tend to think that having self-discipline is boring and time-consuming but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Having self-discipline, is basically having a set of good habits that serves you but also frees up a big amount of your willpower to focus on other things. If you are exercising, eating well, focusing on your goals and setting aside the proper amount of time to accomplish those goals without effort, then you are way ahead of the game. Once these habits are in place, they run on autopilot and you don’t even have to focus on them.
That’s part of the beauty of self-discipline and having automated habits. Another misconception is that building self-discipline habits is extremely hard and nearly impossible to achieve. Any worth achieving is not easy, but if you put in the work to implement these discipline habits in your life then you won’t be sorry. It takes a little time but it is definitely a worthwhile investment of time and effort.
Once you implement some of these discipline habits, you may be wondering what to expect from having these habits. You can expect to be more time-efficient, improved self-esteem, improved health, more success in your chosen career field, more peaceful, better focus, better relationships and being more goal-oriented.
Self-discipline will change your life on every level and give you unlimited confidence in your ability to accomplish anything. Well, that’s enough rigmarole; let’s get to these habits and what they can do for you. Let’s begin!
How To Develop Self Discipline
1). Review Goals Daily
Before we even start, if you don’t have goals, write down some goals you want to accomplish within the next year. Write down when you want to accomplish them and why you want to hit those targets you set. After you write down your goals, their target date and why you must achieve them, you must resolve to review these goals AT LEAST 3 times each day.
Reviewing your goals several times daily is essential to success and being disciplined enough to achieve your goals. The repetition involved in seeing your goals everyday imprints the idea in your brain that you have to accomplish your goal(s).
It’s like listening to a song every day for 2 weeks. Even after you stop listening to the song, you’ll likely remember the song word for word for at least a few months. That’s how powerful repetition is when reviewing your goals. Daily review builds desire for the idea or goal you imprinting on your brain, it literally makes you want what you are reviewing more and more.
Imagine being motivated every day to attack your daily to-do list and make real progress toward your goals. People underestimate the potency of daily goal review because it seems so simple, but remember that the world’s most successful people look at their goals every day to be reminded of what they want to accomplish. Don’t neglect this powerful little discipline habit.
2). Good Nutrition
This discipline habit is self-explanatory and obvious. Look at the obesity epidemic going on in this country and other developed countries around the world. Eating healthy is not hard; it just requires some planning and meal preparation. The benefits of eating well are endless and without good nutrition or your health, you can forget about the other 9 discipline habits.
Healthy eating can not only improves your health immeasurably, but it can protect you from a host of diseases like cancer, heart disease, diabetes and even can reduce the risk of having a stroke or heart attack. My recommendation is to consume a diet of healthy proteins, fats and lots of vegetables. Look into eating habits like the Paleo Diet or the Mediterranean Diet.
It doesn’t matter what eating style or diet you choose as long as it is healthy and serves your health/fat loss/fitness goals. Please heed my advice and make it your mission to consume healthy foods and drink a lot of water daily. It will take a while to adjust and make this discipline habit apart of your life but it is a worthwhile endeavor.
We all know what healthy eating habits entails so just get to making small changes here and there until you have good overall eating habits. Inch by inch, it’s a cinch! Take the long-term approach to eating well and you will enjoy a longer and more fulfilled life.
SEE ALSO: How To Find Inner Peace: 17 Things You Can Start Doing Today
3). Affirmations
Affirmations or auto-suggestion have been around since the beginning of time, but there’s a reason why millions of people still use them. They are extremely effective at changing how you view yourself, your circumstances, or any subject. Saying an affirmation is basically repeating a statement that you’ve created to change your views or how you feel about something. A classic example of an affirmation used by millions of people is “Every day in every way, I’m getting better and better.”
Affirmations are a big part of using the Law of Attraction to attract what you want in your life. Whatever you focus on tends to expand in your day to day life. Have you ever purchased a car or received a car and noticed that you would see the exact model of the car you have, all around town.
That is example of what can happen when you use affirmations. You create what you are speaking into your life. You will be motivated to bring about what you are speaking into your life even more. For instance, if I want to earn $10,000 a month, I will affirm “I easily earn $10,000 a month” daily and throughout my day. You always want to affirm in the positive (what you want instead of what you don’t want) and you want to affirm something that excites you.
It’s important that your affirmations create positive feelings in you when you say them because feeling those positive emotions actually speeds up the process of making your affirmation a reality. I know it sounds hokey pokey but give it a try for 1 month and be prepared to be amazed. So get to work creating your affirmations and try to say them early in the morning and at night if possible or when you’re feeling down.
4). Visualization
Visualization is the act of visualizing a desired outcome. Most people know about the power using visualization but few tend implement this powerful tool. Visualizing what you desire as it comes to pass is a powerful law of attraction tool for becoming wildly successful in anything you wish. Sitting down once a day and seeing yourself achieve your goals imprints on your brain what you want how and how you want it.
This process is extremely powerful and can bring about dramatic results without a big time investment. Can you imagine what results you can bring about if you implement this discipline into your daily life? To really have an impactful visualization session, sit down and get comfortable. After getting comfortable, you want to close your eyes and begin seeing your goals materialize through your eyes.
Seeing things through a first-person view (seeing them through your own eyes) instead of seeing yourself from someone else’s view is very important for creating long-term success. See what you want to have happen when you achieve your, make sure to FEEL the feelings you would feel if you had just reached your goal. Visualizing your goals is a process and once you get comfortable with the process, the results will be tremendous. Take the time out every day to visualize your goals being achieved and you will well on your way to your dream life.
Another little known technique that speeds up the achievement process is to see yourself completing the process of reaching your goals. If you want to lose 25 pounds, then you should visualize yourself not just being 25 pounds lighter but also working out and eating healthy clean foods.
5). Meditation
The benefits of sitting your butt down in silence for at least 5 minutes are innumerable. Meditation practice yields so many benefits that there should be a law that forces everyone to do it. That’s how awesome meditation is, it should be a mandatory part of everyone’s life. If everyone meditated, crime would drop significantly, grades would skyrocket and life in general would much more peaceful and meaningful.
I would highly recommend (or demand) that you take at least 5 minutes out of your daily routine devote it to meditation. I know 5 minutes is a low number, but once you experience the benefits of daily meditation, you’ll be itching to increase the time invested into meditation. Meditation increases focus and mental strength, increases memory retention, improves critical and creative thinking, and even helps manage ADHD. Those are just some mental benefits of using meditation daily.
Physical benefits of meditation include an improved immune system, reduced blood pressure, helps prevent arthritis and HIV, improves asthma, improves inflammatory and even improves breathing. So, now that I’ve convinced you (hopefully LOL) that meditation is a worthwhile investment, let’s get to how to actually meditation. It’s pretty simple actually, just sit down, set an alarm for how long you want your meditation session to be, close your eyes and count your breaths until your alarm goes.
You should have your alarm volume set low so it doesn’t jar you out of your session. The key to meditation is to understand that it takes a while to get comfortable with. Focus on your breathing, and breathe deeply while counting each breath. You’ll never completely quiet your thoughts while meditating, so don’t beat yourself up if you think various thoughts while meditating. Don’t chase perfection, chase progress. So don’t waste another minute and schedule in a time to meditate at least 5 minutes daily.
6). Exercise
I shouldn’t even have to talk about how important exercise is to your life and the quality of your life. Daily exercise or physical activity helps prevent diseases, quells obesity, improves your mood, increases bone density, and can even help you achieve your ideal body. Ain’t that something?!?
You don’t have to go and turn into Mr. Olympia to enjoy the benefits of physical training. Just 10 minutes a day of physical activity can churn out limitless benefits in your life. Walking everyday, playing with the dog, chasing your kids around, doing basic calisthenics, washing the car or going for a short jog will improve your health tremendously. The thing that gets people hung up is what type of exercise they should pursue.
I say just do something, do anything! Get moving and get moving daily. It’s easier if you’re participating in something that you enjoy because you’re more likely to stick to that activity. My mother loves dancing, so I encourage her to dance every day. She’ll put on some old school R&B music and just dance for hours and I love it.
Be sure to find something that interests you and go after it. It could be martial arts, gymnastics, walking, dancing, boxing, skating, tennis, pickle ball or anything that makes you sweat!! So get to it and find something that excites you or just find some simple exercises that you can perform a few times per week.
SEE ALSO: How To Improve Time Management Skills: 17 Practical Strategies
7). Gratitude
Everyone should take out some time every day and just find 3 things that they’re grateful for. Gratitude can be a difference maker in your life if you employ it daily. Practicing gratitude actually makes you healthier from a mental, physical and even spiritual standpoint. My personal gratitude routine is to thank for 3 random things in my life that I wouldn’t normally be thankful or happy for.
Can imagine not having any fingernails or eyelashes? Life would suck pretty bad wouldn’t it? That’s the point of practicing gratitude daily, you begin to count your blessings regardless of what’s going on in your life. The practice of gratitude improves health, boosts self-esteem, improves psychological health, enhances empathy and even reduces unprovoked aggression against others.
Make it a priority to take a second out of your day and just count off 3 things that you’re grateful for. You can write it down or just say it in your head, it doesn’t matter as long as you do it! Trust me, you won’t regret showing gratitude for the things in your life.
8). Adequate Sleep
Getting enough sleep should be a priority for everyone. The key is finding out how much sleep you need to be at your best. Sleep is a diverse subject because there is so much research that contradicts one another. My view on sleep is to find out how much sleep you need to be effective in your everyday life.
If you’re sleeping 8 hours a night but you feel awesome after only getting 6 hours of sleep consistently, then you should only sleep 6 hours a night. Find your sweet spot for sleep and then work on getting quality sleep for that period of time. Cut out the use of electronics at least one hour before bedtime, avoid strenuous exercise right before bedtime and have a night routine that you go through to remind your body and mind that it’s almost time for bed.
Don’t be afraid to invest into a nice bed, we spend over a third of our lives sleeping so you might as well be comfortable while sleeping. Getting adequate sleep provides you with mental clarity, prevents depression, reduces stress, regulates you bodyweight and even reduces inflammation. Make sure to get the right amount of sleep for you and you will enjoy a longer life with better mental focus. You can be super disciplined, but if you’re not getting enough sleep, you can never operate at your full capacity.
9). Time Blocking
Time blocking is a better time-management tool than a to-do list. That’s right, I said it. Time blocking is basically setting aside blocks of time to achieve what’s most important to you in your life. If exercise is very important, set aside a 1 hour block of time to exercise. If there’s an important work project that you have to complete by next week, block off the necessary time during the week to complete that project.
Setting up blocks of time to achieve important goals will almost guarantee your success. Block off the time to accomplish something, show up, and get to work on it during the time allotted for that activity. The process is simple, but not always easy. Like all the habits in this article, discipline is required and anything worth working for is not going to be easy. You will need to set aside a time to figure out what’s important to you and then figure out the times that you will need to work on those important items.
Time blocking provides you with the motivation to complete your blocked activity while creating a healthy imbalance of focus. When you focus intently and intensely on something that you have an hour to complete, you will not tolerate distractions and you will be highly motivated to get as much work done at a high level. Time blocking can make your healthier, smarter and much more effective and efficient.
This is not a to-do list but more of a success list. Find out what you need to do to accomplish your goals and start blocking out the appropriate time to destroy those goals. Now get to work and get after it, over and out.
10). Tracking Progress
The last discipline habit we’re going to cover is tracking your progress. Tracking progress is the most underrated but important discipline habit you can possess. Anything you track, you improve upon. If you track your spending habits, I guarantee you will spend less just tracking what you buy.
If you wanted to run a marathon, you would keep a tracking log of how many miles you ran each day and how you felt after completed your running workout. If you wanted to lose weight, you would track and log how much food you consume and what exercises you perform at the gym. Tracking your progress in anything you wish to accomplish increases the chances of you hitting your goals.
There’s a reason why tracking progress is the last discipline habit. This habit ties all the other habits together and makes it possible for you build multiple discipline habits at once. Get a scratch sheet of paper and write down what discipline habits you want to incorporate in your life. Once you pick the habits you want to use, create a checklist on another sheet of paper and put each habit next to the empty box you’ve drawn.
Now you have a system to track your progress in implementing these discipline habits. Each day, date a piece of paper, write the appropriate discipline habits and work to complete all of them. This system can be used to work towards any goal or achievement that’s important to you. Make sure that you are diligent in keeping up with your tracking system and to keep all of your tracking sheets together.
If you are using the tracking system and you fail to reach your goal, you could go back and see what all you did during the previous days/weeks/months and figure out where you went wrong. This is why performance coaches are so sought after by athletes and business professionals because performance coaches have built-in systems to track progress and see where adjustments need to be made.
Now that you know about tracking your progress and how to implement a tracking system, you don’t a need a coach because you can coach yourself and hold you accountable. Work hard to adhere to your system daily and don’t quit if you have a setback because that is an opportunity to learn and improve yourself.
Closing Remarks
Congratulations!!!! You’ve made it to the end of my post and that alone puts you ahead of 90% of people in the world who don’t even read past the first point. I strongly implore you implement these discipline habits that I’ve presented to you. It won’t be easy, but anything worth pursuing is worth the struggle. Take the long-term approach and try to work each habit into your life at a slow pace.
If you can handle 4 habits at once without burning out, go for it. It is all dependent on you and your desire to improve your life. I’ve given you the tools, but it’s on you to do the work. I believe in you and sincerely thank you for giving me the opportunity to positively impact your life. You’ve got this!! Good Luck!!!
Thank you for reading this article about how to develop self discipline and I really hope that you take action my advice. I wish you good luck and I hope its contents have been a good help to you.
