Achieving your Dreams - Working on Your Self-Discipline
The road to success is full of temptations and distractions. Without self-discipline, you can easily go off-target. Instead of taking action on your goals, you’ll be off somewhere gallivanting.
If you keep up with that behavior, you’re never going to get to where you want to go. Success takes commitment. To stay committed, you need self-discipline.
Learning to say ‘no’
In many cases, saying ‘no’ isn’t really all that hard. It’s just a two-letter word, after all. However, the reality is saying ‘no’ is easier said than done.
This is why having boundaries in place is important. This is the line you’re not supposed to cross. You want to focus on your goals. The boundaries you set will help classify things as (1) useful and helpful, and (2) a complete waste of time.
If someone or something tempts you to cross that line and you know it’s going to do you more harm than good, then you need to say ‘no.’
The first time you say ‘no’ to something, you may feel uncomfortable. But over time, the more you say ‘no’ to temptations, the stronger your resolve becomes, and the easier it gets for you to reject distractions!
You can’t keep on saying ‘yes’ just to make a friend happy. If they don’t know why you’ve set such boundaries or limits for yourself, then tell them about your goals. Tell them how giving in to their requests is going to be bad or counterproductive for you. Real friends will understand. Real friends will wholeheartedly support you.
Good habits are important
Your habits help define who you are. If you’ve got a lot of bad habits, people will most probably have a negative perception of who you are. That’s not what you want. So, what you can do instead is to replace your bad habits with good ones.
The thing is letting go of bad habits is not so easy. Habits are so deeply ingrained in us, we literally do them automatically without putting much thought into what we’re doing.
But how do you know which habits are bad?
Well, for starters, bad habits are those that don’t contribute anything to your growth. They don’t do anything to help you achieve your goals, rather they are pretty much a distraction. Some bad habits like smoking and drinking can even be destructive.
When you’ve identified your bad habits, you need to make a conscious decision to stop doing those. What you can do is you can use it as a ‘hook.’ The moment you catch yourself doing your bad habits, you stop, take a deep breath, and do something positive instead. That’s how you build your positive habits - by replacing your old, bad habits with new, positive ones.
It’s important to mention here that habits don’t form overnight, it takes anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for a new habit to stick. As you focus on building your new habits, you’ll realize you’ve been developing your self-discipline as well!
You need accountability
There are two kinds of accountability: accountability to others and accountability to yourself.
Being accountable to others is actually easier, especially if you choose to be accountable to someone who sincerely wants you to succeed. They won’t mince words if they find out you’ve not been taking action on your goals. They won’t hesitate to tell you off if you’ve been spending too much time playing instead of working.
Being accountable to yourself is much harder. To pull it off successfully, you need lots of self-discipline and self-control. It’s so easy to lie to yourself. It’s so easy to deny responsibility. However, if you live your life with integrity, then self-accountability will be an easy job for you.
Journals are good for self-accountability especially if you’re an old-fashioned soul. However, if you like the convenience of modern technology, there are plenty of computer software and apps that can help you.
To help improve your self-discipline and help you reach your goals faster, practice both self-accountability and accountability to others.
Rewarding self-discipline
Mastering self-discipline is hard work, but you’ll be able to accomplish so much more when you’ve got it down pat. Saying ‘no’ and building new habits aren’t easy, but both are awesome achievements that need to be rewarded.
Having a reward system in place is important. It keeps you motivated. It gives you something to look forward to. It makes you think, “I need to finish this task by tomorrow so I can go treat myself to a massage.”
While rewards are helpful, you need to make sure you aren’t rewarding yourself with something that will be detrimental to your success.
For instance, if you’re trying to lose weight, then you wouldn’t exactly want to reward yourself with an all-you-can-eat buffet, right? You can potentially undo all the hard work you’ve done, all because you chose the wrong kind of reward.
The right rewards will help reinforce your goals and your dreams in life. So, think carefully and make sure you don’t accidentally cause yourself to take a step back instead of inching closer to your goals.
