Self-discipline is one of the most important life skills a person possess. It’s one of those traits that impacts just about every area of our lives. When we have it under control, it positively compounds for us; impacting our sleep, nutrition, habits, and our efforts. But, the opposite is also true, when it’s neglected, the negative effects will cascade to downward to every area of our lives. As such, it is imperative to learn how to build self-discipline.
“Without Self-Discipline, Success is Impossible, Period.”
– Lou Holtz –
Now, developing self-discipline takes thoughtful and intentional work. It requires a high level of focus that is essential for success in nearly every phase of life. That said, we’ve pulled together some of the best daily habits you can adopt today to make building self-discipline a breeze. So, if you’re ready to learn about these key habits, then let’s get right to it.
How to Build Self-Discipline
1. Set Small Goals Daily
Goals are different for everyone, some people have small goals and some have large goals. However, committing to and working towards goals can level up your self-discipline faster than almost any other method.
However, since small goals are more easily accomplished and get used to that feeling of accomplishment sooner. Things like sending an email to a client or changing your bed linen may be small or things you’ve put off. Making them a goal and accomplishing them will give you the feeling of success.
The small goals that you create daily should be in the form of a “to-do” list. When you have completed a goal, you are building discipline.
2. Keep Your Goals In Front of You
There are so many distractions in our everyday life. From smartphones and social media to television and radio, shiny objects are dangling in front of us at every turn. Having our goals in our face where we can see them daily helps keep us focused.
So don’t hesitate to write those goals on post-it notes, have them on your mirror, create an elaborate vision board, use your screensaver, or paste them to your headboard.
Whatever works for you, what you see daily is what you work to manifest. Keeping your goals in front of you helps you visualize and eventually manifest.
Related: Why You Must Write Down Your Goals
3. Learn How To Prioritize
What you have to do daily or even monthly all have a certain priority level in your life. Understanding what is essential and what is less relevant is essential to your success. When everything seems important, the number one tip is that you cannot do everything. Aside from that, some tips to prioritizing are:
- Deciding what’s urgent, what important and what you want to do but can wait.
- Get your job list out of your head and down on paper – create a “to-do” list.
- Group similar tasks together.
- Figure out how you will deal with distractions.
- Get to work.
4. Understand Adversity
Adversity is when we face hardship, difficulty, misfortune, or an overall tough time during specific periods in life. Sometimes trouble can get us off track or distract us from achieving goals. Everyone faces adversity at some point in their lives.
Understanding how adversity will impact us, can help us foresee what we must do, how we should plan for it when it comes. By thinking forward about our potential adversities and understanding how we’ll react when they come, will keep us on track when the disruptions inevitably come.
Related: Link Between Self-Control and Success
5. Remove Distractions
Distractions can be anything from your cell phones, your neighbor’s lawnmower to social media notifications. Understanding how distractions affect you and can keep you from performing your job are essential.
However, more important than recognizing distractions is removing them. If necessary, put your phone in another room while you work. If you are working from home, you can set a kitchen clock for the amount of time you want to work without distraction.
The trick is to remove the distraction or temptation long before it happens. Removing distractions is a habit that puts you in control of uninterrupted time to work towards your goals.
6. Know Your Weaknesses
We all have weaknesses. Sometimes they are self-imposed, temptations, and other times they are triggers. However, when we are honest about our weaknesses and the things we struggle with, we understand how to keep ourselves out of certain situations and create habits of self-discipline.
Learning how to build self-discipline helps those confronted with situations that may work against their goals. They are honest with themselves and continuously work towards success.
Related: Best Books on Building Discipline
7. Use An Accountability Partner
Accountability is taking responsibility for your life and your goals. Having an accountability friend is about more than someone to cosign all your thoughts and actions. They don’t just pat you on the back when you reach goals. An accountability friend brings positivity into your life with positive reactions. Other benefits of an accountability friend are:
Give a different perspective on your goals.
An accountable friend can serve as an independent eyewitness of your goals and how being self-disciplined guides your decisions.
Helps you stay motivated.
An accountability friend is like having your cheerleader. They encourage you to keep going.
Helps you strategize and plan.
Accountability friends are uniquely suited to help you strategize and plan out your goals. They allow you to understand how your plan to get from point A to point B is attainable.
Serves as a reminder.
An accountable friend is more powerful than a vision board. They are vocal advocates for your goals and will remind you why you are on a particular path.
Other Benefits of Self-Discipline
Self-discipline gives you the strength to persevere, helps you stay motivated, and keeps you from giving in to negative thoughts and feelings. It is that ability you have to make yourself do what needs to be done, even when you don’t want to do them.
There are numerous other benefits of developing and using self-discipline. Benefits like the following:
- You are more likely to achieve long-term goals.
- It promotes academic success.
- It helps you maintain focus.
- It makes you mentally healthier.
- You feel more resilient.
- You feel happier.
- It helps you make better decisions.
Bonus Resource for Discipline
Alright, here’s one last resource to help you build your discipline. It’s a short video that gives a handful of extremely helpful tips that will undoubtedly help you on your journey to master self-discipline. Enjoy!
Video Credit: Thomas Frank (Subscribe Here)
Final Thoughts on Building Self-Discipline
As mentioned earlier, choosing to build self-discipline takes thoughtful and intentional work that is essential for success in nearly every phase of life and has several benefits, among them promoting academic success, making you mentally healthy, and helping you feel healthier.
Related: Inspiring Discipline Quotes
While developing self-discipline is about more than just cutting bad habits, it is an attainable trait. There are many ways to develop self-discipline, but these seven daily habits are probably the best place to start.
These habits are setting small goals daily, keeping your goals in your face where you can see them, learning how to prioritize goals, understanding adversity and ways to deal with it, knowing your weaknesses, and getting yourself an accountability partner. Once you make these daily habits a part of your life, you will have achieved the discipline to knock just about all of your goals out of the park.
Till you reach your aims,
STRIVE
PS – If you enjoyed this article on how to build self-discipline, then there’s a good chance you’ll love this article on the link between self-discipline and happiness.
