How To Build Discipline By Garrett DavisDiscipline is a virtue of prime importance. Highly developed levels of discipline allow us to achieve abundant prosperity. The word discipline, however, may bring about unpleasant thoughts. Our mind’s eye may envision a drill sargent yelling at a cadet while making him do push-ups on a dirt floor. Or, we may picture an old-fashioned school teacher with a ruler and a scowl showing a scared child just who’s boss. The virtue of discipline has gotten a bad rap. In one sense of the word, discipline is something that can be enforced. "I’ll teach that kid some discipline!", says the frustrated parent. This is the type of discipline that one person or a group of persons projects on to another. It is discipline that we have done to us, as children mostly by our parents and teachers, and as adults mostly by our bosses and law enforcement. This type of discipline, however, is not the type that I’m interested in. I am interested in a much, much more powerful and useful form of discipline, which is the type that we manifest for ourselves. It is the type of discipline that fosters our accomplishments, increases our abilities, and enriches our lives. We can use it to obtain better physical fitness, financial success, or to learn a new language. It’s the discipline that allows us to achieve greatness. If we could somehow master the discipline of discipline, then we could live up to our highest potentials and beyond. A life rich with this type of discipline is not a forbidding and stringent one. Rather, it is a life in which you are able to do what you ought to do, when you ought to do it. The following offers some insight into how you can create this type of discipline for yourself. • Focus on the goal. This is the first step because in the absence of a goal, there is no need for disciplined behavior. Discipline is just a tool that allows us to go about getting what we want in a systematic manner. Acting in a accordance with discipline will come much more naturally to you when you are focused on your goal. When your focus is on the end result of whatever it is that you want for yourself, your actions will align more congruently with your desires. You will be better able to decide upon the steps that you need to take in order to achieve your goal, and, you will be more inclined to follow through on those steps. You must work to optimize your focus on a daily basis. The idea is to give your desire so much power and momentum that any possible reasons not to act accordingly will be overwhelmed. To do this, you must make a habit of thinking about your goal or goals with increasing frequency. Practice envisioning yourself as already having accomplished your goals. Imagine the feelings that will come with the impending accomplishment of your goal. Forecast your success. Your subconscious will eventually understand. The parts of your mind that have been blocking you from doing the things that you need to be doing will subside. Your overwhelming desire to reach your goal will have overcome any discipline defeating thoughts, such as those of procrastination, apathy, or fear of failure. • Set the goal higher. A more ambitious goal is much more motivating than a lesser goal. People often lose motivation simply because their goals are insignificant. You may not, for example, find the motivation and discipline within yourself to take to the necessary step towards developing a slightly higher income, but what if you turn your income goal into an eventual 5 times what you are earning now? Wow! Now that’s much more inspiring, right? It’s exciting. It’s exhilarating! While an individual may not have cultivated the motivation within themselves to exercise routinely enough to drop the extra weight, what if that same person’s goal was that of a total body transformation into a lean and strong physique? One goal is boring, while the other is invigorating. Move away from boring goals and towards invigorating goals. Drop the extra weight vs. be the best that I can be. Both will require discipline, but discipline for the bigger goal will come more naturally because you will be more inspired and motivated. When you set a large enough goal for yourself, it becomes obvious to your subconscious that a highly developed level of discipline will be necessary if you are to see the fruition of its accomplishment. The goal will be both the source of and the sustainer of the motivation and discipline that will be required. • Make the goal broad. Often times we may victoriously reach a certain goal, but not in the exact manner that we had intended. Flexibility is required in many facets of life. Take as examples common situations in business and finance: An investor’s stock pick may not always rally as hoped for. A start-up company’s business model may not always turn out to be realistic. This does not mean that the stock investor has to pull all of his money out of the market and start storing it under his mattress, or that the entrepreneur will have to dig out her old resume. In most cases when something goes wrong, the individual or group of individuals simply need to modify their approach. Oftentimes only very small tweaks in the plan of action are necessary. The idea of elasticity does not negate the concept of goal setting, but rather it is in congruency with it. What that means to you is that you can help yourself to stay on course by widening the parameters of the goals that you set. Your goals should be specific enough that you have a macro understanding of how you will accomplish them, but broad enough that you will not be constrained by micro arrangements. • Learn to negate excuse-centric thinking. Excuses are the natural enemy of discipline. They have the ability to stop good ol’ discipline dead in its tracks. Excuses, though, are simply a manifestation of your thoughts, and, for any negative thought that you have the power to create in your own mind, you also have the power to manifest an opposing thought of positivity and affirmation and therefore infinitely greater power. Positive thoughts are always more powerful than negative thoughts. That is true by virtue of pure logic but it has also been proven scientifically that the human brain operates at a higher frequency when it is thinking positively. What you must first do is become aware of your own excuse-centric thinking. Take notice every time you have an activity planned that relates to your goal, but find yourself mentally shuffling through possible justifications for not getting started. In those situations, you need to stop, recognize that you are indulging in excuse-centric thinking, and instead assert an overwhelming demand to yourself that you take the approach of Do It Now! The more you practice this interceptive thinking, the better you will become at it. It’s not uncommon for people to let the time spent procrastinating actually exceed the time spent carrying out the activity once they finally decide to do it. The end result is that such people spend a lot of time doing very little. Don’t be one of them. Become a disciplined person and you will accomplish more in less time. • Empower yourself by writing daily goals. You absolutely must write your goals down on paper. This will help you avoid procrastination. Procrastination is the enemy of discipline. It is a component of discipline’s opposite. Within a single regard, one can either exercise discipline, or procrastinate, but never both at the same time. A person, for example, can’t be a disciplined writer and procrastinate upon writing at the same time. It’s either or, and I suggest that you do everything you can to foster discipline and shun it’s nasty enemy, The Evil Procrastinator. We will go about negating procrastination in much the same manner that we do in creating discipline: By utilizing a specific plan, and most importantly, by practicing the execution of that plan. I find that most procrastination can be avoided through careful scheduling. When you write a goal down for a given day, you make it your intention to work towards that goal on that day, not the following day, or the day after, or when the weather improves or when you can finally get all of the escaped monkeys back in their cages. There is something very powerful about writing out what it is that you intend on doing. Writing your intentions down on paper, in your own handwriting, infuses those intentions with extra vigor. Having your goals written out creates for an accountability that you otherwise may not have a sense of, if your goals were just allowed to stay within the confines of your thoughts. You will have to look back at your planner on a daily basis, at which time you will be forced to make some sort of acknowledgment of your shortcomings if you did not do the work that you intended to do. Put a minus sign next to that which you did not start, and a check sign next to that which you did. If you worked at a given goal, but did not accomplish it in its entirety because it turned out to be a bigger task than you thought, then still mark it with a check, but roll it over for the next day. Not accomplishing a goal is not necessarily failing, but not even trying to do so is. Also, list your daily goals in the order of their urgency and importance. That way, if you conquer one goal, but are forced to procrastinate on another due to time constraints, you will know that you worked on that which was most important at the time. Start by writing down your macro goals, such as those that concern your career, your relationships, or whatever it is that you want to accomplish, acquire, or improve upon. Then brainstorm a list of steps that you may need to take in order to achieve such goals. Write down anything that comes to mind. Then, consolidate this list and order the steps that you will need to take. This will mark the start of what will be a habitual writing down of your micro goals for each up coming day before you go to bed at night. What do you intend to accomplish tomorrow in relation to your goal? Write down, in the order of importance, the steps that you plan on taking. If you work on the first step for that day, then you will have worked on your goal’s most important objective for that day. You may be tempted to think that you will simply keep a mental tab of your goals and that you don’t really have to write them down, but absolutely, positively, do not skip this step! It is so, so important. When you put your goals down on paper in the form of the written word, you infuse your desires with a plan of action. You will find that the required discipline will come more naturally to you because you will have been disciplined enough to write your plan out on paper in the first place. • Work when you work. When you are working you should be doing just that and nothing more. Whether you are working on writing a book, or simply spending quality time with your family, your focus should remain as exclusive as possible. If you decide that you are going to work towards your goal for an hour, but in that hour your mind shifts in and out of focus, you may end up actually only accomplishing a half hours worth of work. If you are working and your mind is on play, or if you are playing and your mind is on work, then you are neither truly working or playing. This is why you must focus your concentration as much as possible. The objective must be to get as much work done as possible while you are working. This takes practice, but it absolutely is a discipline that you can improve at. Begin with a proactive approach by eliminating any obvious distractions before you get start your work. Eat before you start, use the restroom if you have too, turn your cell phone off if you can, have a glass of water available incase you get thirsty...etc. Some people consider music to be a distraction, and in many cases it is, but it ultimately depends on how the style of music interacts with the work that needs to be done. The key here is to experiment with different types of music and use only those that are beneficial to you within the context of the work that you are doing. For example, when I write I like to listen to classical music. The same goes for when I am studying or researching a subject. I find classical music to be beneficial to my concentration. On the other hand, when I am exercising I prefer music that has a fast and pounding tempo. While that may sound unpleasant to some, I find that it facilitates a faster paced and more intense workout. This will take experimentation on your part. What works best for some in this regard will not necessarily suit others. Some simply work best in silence, and if you are one of those people but can’t seem to find a quiet working space, then I highly recommend that you invest in a pair of noise cancelling headphones. These can go for over $300, but you can get a decent pair for $100 or less. Obviously you may not be able to use these at your job but I’m referring here more to work that’s done outside of the confines of the time clock, such as researching investments or studying a new language. Just be willing to modify your approach so that you can maximize your results. This may mean that you will tactfully notify your family members, roommates, or co-workers that you will be very focused and busy for a specified duration of time. Most of the time, if others see that you are serious about your focus, they will leave you alone as you work. When you have finished working, reflect upon your session and enumerate your efficiency by attributing a percentage to the focus that you maintained. For example, "I remained focused on my work for 80% of that hour". Factor in anytime whatsoever that you were not concentrated on your work. This includes the time that it took you to get up and get a cup of coffee, or go to the restroom, or when your mind wandered off topic. Your goal should be to get as close to 100% efficiency as possible. • Practice. The best way to build discipline is to repeatedly and increasingly act as a disciplined person. This is what is referred to as practice. It will start with a personal goal that will have the characteristics I described earlier. Once you have your goal in place, you may devise your plan of action and get to executing, immediately. You can get off to a good start by simply starting right away. You must think to yourself on a daily basis, "what would a highly disciplined person with the same goal as me be doing in order to reach that goal?" With each success that you gain as a result of disciplined diligence, you will be that much more empowered with a greater capacity to accomplishing more. Accomplishment and discipline breads more discipline and accomplishment. We are all already disciplined to some degree. There may be a television show that you never miss, or a friend whose birthday you always acknowledge. The point here though is to get you to become more disciplined in the ways which will enrich your quality of life. I often think back on a decision that I made about ten years ago to start lifting weights in a gym. For me, it was the best possible decision that I could of made at the time. Success in weight lifting would require lofty goals and a detailed plan that would be written out on a daily basis. I kept a log of every set and rep that I did and consistently raised my goals on a weekly basis. Also, I knew that I would have to keep careful track of what I ate everyday. This all provided me not only with the numerous benefits of consistent exercise, it also helped me to build a level of discipline that I can use for any other form of goal accomplishment. Developing discipline is like building a master key that unlocks goal accomplishment. Discipline facilitates more discipline. In other words, the more we act in accordance with it, the better we will become at it. Act upon the advice I’ve given you and I can promise that you will be well on your way to greater accomplishments in less time! Sign up for the free Guidance for the Motivated newsletter. 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Related Articles: - How To Build Excellent Self-Control - How To Be A Positive Thinker
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