Feb

How to build Self-Discipline

Filed Under Goals, Motivation, Procrastination, Self-Discipline

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

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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.

Table of contents for Self-Discipline

Self-Discipline - the missing link
Why is there a lack of Self-Discipline?
How to build Self-Discipline
Examples of how to build Self-Discipline

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Comments

4 Responses to “How to build Self-Discipline”

Soham on May 19th, 2008 5:07 am

I have come to your site through Court’s,and I am not disappointed. Thank you for these helpful articles.
Ricky on May 22nd, 2008 9:18 pm

Great. Thank you for visiting.
I’m glad that you enjoyed the articles.
Ricky
Alex on June 21st, 2008 11:33 am

Yes, it was quite interesting. You are right about self-discipline. For example, I guess I am loosing it more and more. I am a Ukrainian, so I am not a native speaking of English. I remember how easy it was for me when I was learning English just to sit and work on it and work on it really hard. Now, when I am learning Spanish, I find it more and more difficult just to keep going if you know what I mean. so, I start learning and I keep learning it for one month or two, and then I just stop. And I have this problem. If I stop learning the language at least for a day, then I have a problem to come back and keep learning it. For me it is quite important to keep going every single day. In other words, if I don’t practice my thing for at least a day, I loose my self-discipline, or at least this is how I see it.
Ricky on June 22nd, 2008 9:08 am

That’s a good example. If we want to establish a habit, we have to keep at it until it sets in. Any break in between puts us a few steps back. It’s like a car or a rocket. Most of the energy is used at initial take off but once at a cruising speed, we don’t need to keep pushing as much.
So, if our car is at a dead stop and our goal is to get up to 100km/h, logical thing to do is to accelerate. Faster we accelerate, faster we reach our goal but more energy (gas) is used up. But as long as we keep on accelerating, we are going to reach our desired speed.
What if we accelerated to 50km/h and then stopped completely? Now we need even more energy to get back up to 100km/h, not to mention the time involved.
If you can not maintain your rate of acceleration, it’s better to slow down but keep moving instead of totally stopping.
So, if you are studying Spanish, for example in our case, and you’re putting in 1 hour daily towards it, on the days that you do not feel like studying at all or are unable to due to other commitments, it’s much better to still study for a fraction of your daily time, i.e. even 5, 10 minutes, rather than totally stopping.
This keeps the momentum going and lets your subconscious know that you really do intend to reach your goal

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