Do you want to know how to develop self-discipline?
If your answer is yes, then come along with us.
Life comes at us with different challenges and difficult situations.
Some of these challenges and situations come to test us and see if we can rise above them.
When we cannot overcome them we might not achieve success.
However, when we can, success is easier for us to achieve.
Sometimes, what can help us overcome these challenges are persistence, perseverance, and most importantly discipline.
Discipline is most important because it provides people with the ability to persevere among other factors and qualities.
Yet, several people lack self-discipline.
This does not help.
Hence, we are here to help you correct that by sharing essential information on how to develop self-discipline.
We will begin by understanding what self-discipline is…
What is Self-Discipline? – How to Develop Self-Discipline
Self-discipline is the ability to exert control over your actions, and feelings while avoiding indulging in things that can cause issues for yourself.
It is an inner strength that allows a person to do the right things for themselves.
When a person possesses self-discipline, they would not need anyone to motivate or push them to pursue their goals.
They would keep persevering even in the face of temptation or difficulties.
Self-discipline helps people not be swayed by instant gratification but to be focused on getting what they are after.
In other words, self-discipline is all about willpower, self-control, resolve, self-regulation, drive, and determination.
People who possess self-discipline move forward and achieve success in their life.
Benefits of Self-Discipline – How to Develop Self-Discipline
Several benefits come with self-discipline.
You might feel that some of these benefits are irrelevant.
However, they all add up to making you a better and stronger person in this tough world.
We will share some of these benefits to encourage you to be more dedicated to developing self-discipline.
Eliminates Rash Actions/ Behaviors
Have you ever done something impulsively or rashly and then regretted it later?
If you have, then you know how hurtful that can be.
It is even more hurtful when you are someone who beats up on yourself over things.
Your mind will keep reminding you of it.
This can negatively affect you.
If you possess self-discipline you would be able to avoid speaking or acting impulsively or rashly.
You would be in control of your actions and behaviors.
This would help you to avoid feeling regrets and beating up on yourself.
Fulfillment of Promises – How to Develop Self-Discipline
We all make promises to ourselves and other people.
Making those promises without fulfilling them is wrong.
Yet, several people do this a lot.
One reason for unfulfilled promises is a lack of self-discipline.
Let’s assume you promised yourself that you would stop eating junk foods because it’s making you fat.
Two days into making that promise, you find yourself constantly eating them.
Why you could not keep to that promise is because of your lack of discipline to do without eating junk foods.
If you were self-disciplined, you would have stayed away from junk, no matter the appealing and tempting it is.
Making Healthy and Wise Choices
Making healthy and wise decisions and choices is not so easy.
This is especially true when you are having so many options that are not healthy or wise but will provide instant gratification.
However, self-discipline helps you to see through all those bad and unhealthy choices and the harm they can cause you.
As a result, you will make the right choice for yourself at all times.
Overcomes Procrastination and Laziness – How to Develop Self-Discipline
Laziness can get to anybody and make them procrastinate.
However, when you can overcome procrastination and laziness you will achieve more of your goals than when you do not.
Self-discipline is what would help you do this.
This is because when you are self-disciplined you would preserve and push on regardless of your feelings.
Improves Your Focus and Concentration
Several people are not able to achieve what they are after because they are easily distracted.
Self-discipline can help solve that.
This is because self-discipline fights against temptations such as distractions that might come a person’s way.
As a result, it improves one’s ability to stay focused and concentrate on what they are doing.
Achieve Goals and Success – How to Develop Self-Discipline
Self-discipline is one essential ingredient for success.
This is because the path to success is not easy.
Staying strong, driven, determined, and persevering is what would get you through that path and get your success or goals.
Self-discipline ensures that all these are possible.
So, when you are self-disciplined, they can achieve your goals and success.
Makes You Proud/ Pleased With Yourself
There is a sense of accomplishment and pride that comes from doing things for yourself; especially the right things.
That kind of feeling can occur to you when you possess self-discipline.
When you stay disciplined and accomplish your goal or success, it will make you happier with yourself.
You would feel happy with yourself and believe that there is nothing you cannot attain provided you put your mind to it.
Gains People’s Respect – How to Develop Self-Discipline
Self-disciplined people attract the respect of other people.
This is because self-disciplined people can achieve what they put their minds to.
Who does not respect or admire successful people?
Apart from being able to achieve success, people respect self-disciplined people because they keep to their promises.
Self-disciplined people also gain the respect of others because their self-disciplines build character in them and make them worthy of emulation.
As a result, these people make for good leaders.
Tips on How to Develop Self-Discipline
Self-discipline is very important in life.
It helps you get things done for yourself.
If you lack self-discipline, you lack an essential ingredient to success.
However, that should not put you down because you can develop self-discipline.
Yes, you can!
We will share with you some amazing tips on how to do that.
So, we advise you to practice them and become a self-disciplined person.
1. Understand the Importance of Self-Discipline
When you do not fully understand why you need something, you might not be prepared or willing to do what will help you get that thing.
In other words, if you do not understand why self-discipline is important in your life, you might not be motivated to develop it.
Therefore, you need to understand why you need self-discipline.
Self-discipline ensures that you keep working, staying focused, and giving up things that would stop you from achieving what you are chasing.
It is important in life because it gets you to do the needful without external encouragement or motivation.
As we earlier said, if you lack self-discipline, you lack an essential ingredient for success.
So, understand that you need to be self-disciplined to achieve your goals and success.
Also, self-discipline comes with benefits that make you a better person.
When you fully understand this, then you are a step closer to developing self-discipline.
2. Be Aware Of Undisciplined Behaviors – How to Develop Self-Discipline
Another thing you need to do before you can develop self-discipline is to be aware of your undisciplined behaviors and their consequences.
Do not be blind to your undisciplined behaviors.
Identify what they are and the consequences they are bringing.
You can have them written down for clarity.
When you do this, you would realize that they are not helping you, but only bringing you down.
As a result, it would make you would be more motivated and convinced to change things in your life.
3. Get Motivated
Have you ever noticed the way you act when you are excited or eager for something?
If you have, you would remember how you were pumped up to prepare for that thing.
At that moment you do not need to be disciplined to get things done because you were excited.
Let’s assume you are attending your first social event as a business owner and you are thrilled about it.
You might want to look your best, appear knowledgeable, and speak fluently with the people at that event.
So, you would search for the best outfit, read more, and practice your speech.
You do all of these just to ensure that you appear good and confident and also gain the respect of other business owners.
When you do these things, you might not have self-discipline but you are driven by your motivation.
Motivation is a term gotten from the word ‘motive’.
Motive means the reason for doing something.
It is your reason for doing something that drives you to do it.
Knowing why you want or do something pushes you and helps you stay focused.
So, you can use your motive to develop self-discipline.
All you need to do is find out your reason, purpose, or motivation to be and stay disciplined.
Every time you want to do something, use your reason for doing that thing to fuel your self-discipline.
The more you do this, the more your self-discipline will develop and grow.
4. Remove Temptations – How to Develop Self-Discipline
Temptations come to everybody.
It is how you deal with it that determines if you are self-disciplined.
For example, a person trying to lose weight has to stop eating fatty food and excessive junk, and also exercise.
While working to lose weight, such a person will be tempted with those unhealthy foods.
Now, if the person should put away that type of food from where they are, they would be able to avoid that temptation better.
This way, achieving their goal will be easier
Self-discipline cannot be built overnight.
You have to take baby steps first.
Removing temptation is a baby step that would help you develop your self-discipline.
If you need to be disciplined and finish your work on time, remove distractions such as your phone.
Understand that your willpower might not be as strong as your environment and other factors.
So, once you know something is a distraction or a temptation, take it away or walk away.
Never allow yourself to be in distracting or tempting situations.
Check here to discover 5 must avoid temptations at workplace.
5. Create Goals, Challenges, and Deadlines
You cannot develop self-discipline if you do not create goals and challenges for yourself.
In other words, there would be nothing for you to exhibit self-discipline.
A person who lives without a plan or goals will do anything that comes their way.
There will be no direction, and nothing to work towards.
Hence, if you want to develop self-discipline you need to create goals and challenges.
Each of your goals and challenges should come with a deadline to ensure that you do not dally while pursuing your goals.
You can set goals for your business, your relationships, your family, your career, your health, and so on.
When you set these goals, you would have something to focus and work on.
You can set challenges for your goals.
They will help you build character as you pursue your goals.
So, what we are saying is that set realistic goals, make them challenging, and have fixed deadlines for all of them.
Ensure that you work to meet them every day.
The more you do this, the more self-disciplined you will become.
6. Take Baby Steps – How to Develop Self-Discipline
As we earlier said, you cannot become self-disciplined overnight.
It would take a while for you to develop self-discipline.
You would have to take baby steps before you can develop and grow your self-discipline to where you want it to be.
We know that developing self-discipline is a positive change.
However, it can be quite difficult.
You would need to take it slowly until you get comfortable with the change.
Taking it slowly will help you build momentum that would ensure that you do not get overwhelmed by the change.
So, if you do not need to take big actions or steps.
Just make sure that you get started.
However, ensure that you are doing the right things for yourself, staying focused, and keep pushing on.
Remember that your actions will inspire more actions, and momentum build up more momentum.
Keep pushing even when you have developed self-discipline.
7. Discover What Works Best For You (Reward or Risk)
It is quite challenging to develop self-discipline.
However, having an underlying motivation can make things easier and faster.
So, when building self-discipline, you have to discover what will compel you to build it.
Understand that people are compelled to be disciplined by two things.
The reward they get or the punishment/risk they will incur.
Let us explain better:
Reward – How to Develop Self-Discipline
Is it the reward you would get that can drive or compel you to be disciplined?
Let us assume that you have a task to finish at a certain time.
However, you find yourself, getting distracted, frustrated, and undisciplined.
You know the consequences that would come from not finishing that task.
Yet, you are still distracted, frustrated, and undisciplined.
Then, someone comes up to you and promises you a reward for completing that task.
If you discover that your attitude and ability to be disciplined changes for the better, then that means you can be disciplined because of rewards.
Risk/Punishment – How to Develop Self-Discipline
Are you scared of the consequences that would come if you are not disciplined?
If you are, then you are the type of person whose’ motivation towards discipline is the risk or punishment of your indiscipline.
We would use the same example as before.
You have a task to finish at a certain time.
In this case, you are promised a reward for completing that task on time.
However, you do not feel compelled to be disciplined and get the task done.
Then, you find out that there is a consequence for not getting the task done in time.
If you discover that your attitude and ability to be disciplined changes for the better, then that means you can be disciplined because of the fear of punishment or consequences.
Find out which of these compelling methods works best for you.
Then, frequently use it on yourself to develop your self-discipline.
8. Understand Yourself – How to Develop Self-Discipline
Doing things for yourself is great.
However, you need to understand that you cannot do everything by yourself.
You need to understand yourself and how you are wired.
If not, you would keep beating yourself up for not being disciplined when doing something you know you cannot.
Let us assume you are someone who struggles with running the operational aspect of your business.
You have tried all your best, stayed focused, and disciplined.
Yet, you still do poorly at it.
As a result, you end up beating up yourself for not being disciplined.
This is not productive and neither is it helpful.
However, when you understand that you are not wired to handle that aspect of your business, and get someone to do it, it would take the pressure off.
This way, you would be more focused and disciplined to handle the other aspect of your business and grow it.
When you are finding it difficult to be disciplined, stop what you are doing and check if it is something you have to do yourself.
If it is not, you can get someone else to do it for you.
Do not waste your willpower on the unimportant things, or things you don’t have to do.
This will help you to utilize your willpower and build discipline for the things that you need.
9. Be Kind to Yourself
As we said earlier, you cannot develop self-discipline overnight.
It will take a while before you can be that self-discipline person you want to be.
So, during that process, you have to be kind to yourself.
Do not hate or beat yourself up for making a mistake or going back to that bad habit you are trying to change.
Rather, forgive yourself and get back on track.
When you are faced with obstacles and challenges, ensure that you keep pushing on.
Do not allow the frustration of not meeting your goals the first time to discourage you.
Rather, try and try again.
Self-discipline also entails perseverance.
So, learn lessons from your mistakes and keep going.
10. Have a Friend – How to Develop Self-Discipline
Developing self-discipline is not easy.
Being human, there would be times when it gets difficult that you would want to give up.
Those times are when you need someone’s support.
If you do not have someone who can support and encourage you, it might discourage you from going on.
So, get yourself a trusted friend or partner or a group of people, who you can be accountable to.
However, ensure that they are people who are willing to provide support and push you to build your self-discipline.
This will help you stay on track.
Conclusion on How to Develop Self-Discipline
Self-discipline is a key ingredient to achieving success.
Hence, if you lack self-discipline, you would need to develop it.
In this article, we have shared valuable information on how to do so.
So, we hope you find it helpful.
