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Gossip according to Webster means “rumor or report of an intimate nature.” According to the Oxford dictionary gossip is “casual conversation or unsubstantiated reports about other people.”

Gossip has often been as a tool used by women. Now I do not know to what degree that may be true but in my life I have met men who are more passionate about gossiping than any woman I have ever met. They can easily put women to shame in gossiping. These are the people who would be sitting quietly and not participating much in any conversation until there is certain gossip, certain malice involved, whether it is talking about other people or negative talk in general. That is when they get really passionate and light up and you can see their whole posture actually change. They are the life of the party until subject switches to some boring topic.

Why am I writing about gossip? What does this have to do with personal growth and self development?

I find gossiping to be a very strong negative habit which I would like to eliminate. Yes there are some advantages but the disadvantages of gossiping outweigh the advantages. I have seen people get hurt and friendships broken because of gossiping. Personally I have also noticed that I feel better when I do not talk about other people behind their back. There seems to be less stress, less to worry about and I do not have to remember so much about what I said and to whom. If I do not gossip, no one can accuse me of spreading rumours, back stabbing, bad-mouthing them and so on.

This is part one of the series on gossiping:

1. Gossip: Can’t live with it and can’t live without it
2. Why do people gossip?
3. Advantages of gossiping
4. Downside of gossiping
5. Are you a tattler, a busybody, a gossiper?

I used to wonder about people who achieved great success. I wanted to know exactly how they thought, what they felt and how they would approach goals differently than average people.

Once I was listening to Mike Ferry, real estate trainer, and he said that there were three things in life that if you could do those, you could do anything. That was a really exciting time for me since now I was going to find out the real secret and yardstick by which I could measure myself. Following were the three things according to him:

1) keep your house clean

2) manage your health

3) manage your finances

I have to say that I was a little disappointed. I expected something out of this world. I was ready with the right emotions and expressions, ready to stand up in awe and applaud but I was a little under whelmed by his statement.

He went onto challenge people to try it out. All I have to say is that I am still trying it out. It just seems easy at first glance but every single one of these is very challenging. Take for instance the discipline required to keep your house clean. There is just so much involved even in keeping the house clean day by day, every single day. If you break down the topic of health and finances you can realize how difficult this really is.

But since time is passing anyways, may as well get started. Slowly but surely we can achieve success in these areas. One small step at a time. With each small step successfully accomplished we will definitely be better off than we are now.

If we do not choose our goals, life will choose them for us. And it is a very exciting journey.

Like Earl Nightingale used to say “Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.”

Have you thought how much money we spend each year on shaving blades alone? It can easily be hundreds of dollars. When trying to live on basically no income I was faced with a dilemma. Should I just stop shaving or extend the life of my shaving blades? I chose to go with the latter. Now how I was to do that was another question.

Eventually I found out that if I shaved in the shower, my blades lasted much much longer. They seemed to be in a decent shape even after a month or two. I was not only getting a better shave, it seemed much easier and my skin felt nicer afterwards. So, here is how I did it.

In a warm shower, instead of shaving cream, I used soap for shaving as well and I bought a small mirror from a dollar store to see what I was doing. That’s it!

Apparently shaving in the warm shower, right after your warm shower, or just splashing your face with warm water before, during and after the shave is really good for you.

The hot water actually relaxes your facial muscles by opening the pores of your skin and thus making your shave more effective.

I never researched shaving before and just learned this out of necessity.

My blades were lasting longer, I was saving money, I was saving time, and it was better for my skin. So, why not!

Following are some of the ways I have used to build my self-discipline up to a respectable level. I am still no where close to where I would like to be but I am still ahead of where I was a few years ago.

• washing my dishes right after I had used them – since I was quite weak, I could not imagine doing this for 30 days straight, so I started off with a goal to follow this for the next 100 times and stop after that. That got me started and I continued this non-stop for the whole year
• no sugar in coffee or tea – again the goal was to follow this for the next 100 cups of coffee or tea, without a break but I ended up doing this for over two months and it’s been around two years and I still drink tea without sugar
• sit-ups every single day for 30 days
• no reading self-help books for 30 days – I was reading too many of the books and not taking enough action. One day I decided that I knew enough so it was time to stop reading anymore and start taking action
• making my bed every single day for 30 days
• not watching any t.v. for 30 days – continued this for over two months
• working out every single day for 30 days – continued this for over two months without a single break, even though a lot of the times I would go to the gym around 1-2 a.m. while having to wake up around 6 a.m. the next morning to go to work
• going to the gym and doing cardio every single morning before going to work for 30 days I continued this for over two months
• going to work at 7:30 every day instead of 8:30-9 a.m. for 30 days- continued this for over two months as well
• studying for 15 minutes a day, learning new ways of improving my job, for 30 days – continued this for over two months, moving to studying for 30 minutes daily after the first 30 days
• folding my clothes right after they have dried, for 30 days – still doing it
• unloading the dish washer right after the dishes have been washed and dried – another 30 day goal and I am still doing it
• ironing my clothes every night for the next day – 30 day goal and I am still doing it
• shower/shave/bathe every single day for 30 days – I used to shower but not shave every single day so this was a challenge as well but I continued for over a year
• learning about real estate market for 30 days by spending 30 minutes daily – continued this for over two months as well
• talk to every single person who serves me for the next 30 days – this was one of the toughest since sometimes I would be in a line up at a cafeteria and I would have to yell to talk to the servers on the other side but still managed for 30 days
• read 50 pages of a book every single night – this is quite tough especially if you’re working full time and you are not a speed reader
• cold calling – speak to 10 people every single day for 30 days regarding real estate – continued this and then increased to 15 people and eventually 20 people every day
• door knocking – again talk to minimum of 10 people every single day for 30 days regarding real estate – continued this and at the end was speaking to around 20 people every day
• throw garbage out as soon as the bag is full and replace a new bag in the garbage bin – initially 30 day goal but served me so well that I decided to stick to it
• do 5 sets of chin ups in my backyard every single day for 30 days – this was a few years ago and was quite challenging as well since there was not a proper chin up bar. I was doing chin ups in the garage which was at the back end of our property. Sometimes I would go there in the middle of the night and little animals running around there and got kind of scary. But continued for over two months
• do push ups every single day for 30 days – still doing them
• do chin ups every day except weekends for 30 days – I am still doing them. Actually there isn’t a proper chin up bar so I am doing them in the washroom stall at my work. The bar that the stall doors are attached to. Hopefully it doesn’t break any time soon
• keep all my receipts in separate envelopes for each month – this is amazing when it comes to organization so still doing it
• keep track of all my expenses by writing them down every single day – still doing them, quite an eye opener

These are the only ones I can remember right now. Some of these I kept on doing because they felt so good and were quite helpful, while others I stopped after my initial goal was reached. It’s also a good way to see if a certain habit is worth keeping.

Just doing stuff like this has built a solid foundation of self-discipline in me. Right now if I wish to do something, I just go ahead and do it instead of trying to motivate myself or finding reasons not to. I usually test theories out myself instead of wasting time deciding whether they’re good or not. I think that is the best way to really find out for sure. Something that might have worked for someone else will not necessarily work for you, so just fold your sleeves and get to work and before you know it you will be done. If it works then great, if not then still you have learned that much more about yourself.

If you want to get good at something, do it often, and do it a lot. Basically if you do something over and over again, you are bound to get better at it! Such a simple formula and yet so neglected. This is what I decided to apply in order to build self-discipline.

Starting point – what’s your discipline level right now?

Before you can embark on a journey to building your discipline, you have to know where you stand right now. It may be painful and hurt your ego but you have to accept where you are in every area of your life if you wish to get better. If you wish to go to the United States, the best laid out plans, best tour guide, best maps are not going to help you if you do not know where you are starting from. Once you have a starting point, you can eventually get to your destination even without the best maps, as long as you keep on moving forward.

So, I had to figure out where my discipline level was in each area of my life. Just like working out. You have to train each body part in order to develop the whole body proportionally. There are exercises, such as squats, that have an indirect effect on the development of the rest of the body. Similarly, if you achieve a big enough goal using self-discipline, it’ll help you in other areas of your life as well.

Another thing to keep in mind is to take it easy and take it slow but never give up. When you have never trained, do not go to the gym the first day and try to lift the heaviest weights that are there. You are going to injure yourself and set yourself back a few weeks easily. More than that, you are going to lose your enthusiasm for working out and eventually give up. Realize that this is something new and start with the weights that you can easily handle and even do not do those to failure. The important thing is that you work out often. It’s the consistency that brings results.

Same thing applies to building self-discipline. Just pick any activity and do it every single day at the same time for the next 7-10 days. This alone will build your confidence. It’s harder than it seems. It’s important not to shoot for 30 days at the beginning unless your level of discipline is developed a bit.

I have personally found that the more boring an activity is, stronger your self-discipline gets. It does not take much concentration to do something that we really enjoy but it’s quite a challenge to concentrate upon something that is boring.

Here are some exercises that I have personally found to be of tremendous help

1. Stare at the same door knob every single day at exactly the same time for up to 5 minutes for the next 7-10 days – this just seems simple but is quite challenging especially after the second day but is one of the most useful exercises
2. Sit in one place for 60 seconds without any movement and work up to 5 minutes - this is very challenging as we have the tendency to itch, move around, some facial twitches and so on – do this for 7-10 days
3. Take a deck of cards – at the same time every day start laying the cards on top of each other as slowly as you can. Each card should be completely covering the card below. Do this for 7-10 days
4. Whenever you’re getting emotional and want to say something, pause until that emotion goes away and then say it – this is very challenging. Often in the middle of some conversation I would get really charged up, either negatively or positively and would want to just say something but that’s where I had to control myself until I calmed down. I would then say it if I still felt like saying it once the associated emotion was gone. This is quite helpful actually as it can prevent you from making a fool of yourself or saying something that you might regret later on
5. Before saying anything, pause (even for a fraction of a second) – sometimes this is enough to make you think before you speak – also quite challenging but very helpful
6. Clench your fists while keeping the back of your hands on a table. Now extend your thumb while focusing on it to the exclusion of everything else. Then slowly extend your first finger, then second and so on until the whole fist is open. Now reverse the process, closing one finger and then another and so on. Now do this exercise with the other hand. Work up to doing this for 5-10 times with each hand
7. Every morning as soon as you wake up, sit up and meditate for a few minutes. It can be 2 minutes to begin with. Do nothing but focus on your breathing to the exclusion of everything else. This greatly helps in putting our mind to ease since most of the time we wake up and are in a hurry to get to work. A lot of the times we wake up feeling negatively so this helps you start your day positively
8. If you can get a hold of an analogue watch or clock, you know the one with hands for second, minute and hour. Concentrate on the second hand for 1 minute. If your concentration goes elsewhere, bring it back and continue with the exercise. Do this exercise for 7-10 days at the same time everyday preferrably
9. Control/resist your urges/cravings – if you want to get a coffee, just resist it until that urge goes away. Same can be applied to any other craving or urge that you have. Initially try this for just 1 day and increase afterwards
10. Reading – read one paragraph and then try to summarize what you have just read in that paragraph. Do this until you can summarize the entire page easily. This helps your concentration while strengthening your self-discipline and also as a side benefit you will get better at studying and retaining the material
11. Try writing with the left hand for every single day for 7-10 days if you are right handed and the other way around if you’re left handed
12. At the same time every single day practice being silent for 5 minutes

As you can see, a lot of these exercises are quite boring and may seem meaningless to you but the value you will receive from them in terms of building your self-discipline can not be expressed in words. You will just have to experience it for yourself. Even if you do a few exercises, after even a few days you will start to notice an improvement.

You are just training your mind to obey you no matter what! Once you can do anything at will without procrastinating or self-doubt, you’ve mastered self-discipline.