Self-Discipline: Ingredient to Success

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Let me ask you a few questions today.

I know you have explored them often, but let’s look at them one more time and revise some of the important lessons.

How do you define success?

Or let me put it in different words, what success means to you?

Next, what are all those ingredients which lead to success?

Well, the answer of first question is relative and I would leave that to you to explore, decide and define what does the term mean to you.

For the second question, about the ingredients of success, again, the list could be too long, but for you, here I propose some of the options, rest you could share in the comments section.

And here goes the list:

Passion, sense of purpose, commitment, self-discipline, focus, determination, faith, belief, perseverance, patience, gratitude, courage, motivation and the list continues …

Here the list is not in any order of preference or alphabetic sequence, I have just presented them randomly as they have come to me.

What I am going to do now is this, close my eyes and put my finger on one of the words in the list. And the word that comes to me is : Self-discipline.

Now let us brood and think over this term and see how does it contribute to success. But before we see how does it contribute, let us see what it means and then try to understand ways to cultivate this habit.

People, whom we consider successful are those who have spent years in mastering their subject field. They are pro and they have spent years after years in hard work and dedication to reach to this stage where they are today and everyone looks up to them.

You can think about some of the names of successful people whom you admire and consider as your role model and then see the amount of hard work and consistent work done by them in their field of passion and interest.

Once you know such people, take one more closer step and look into their lives. How do they work and what motivates them to complete their projects and assignments one after the other.

The answer that might come to you are: they are self-disciplined people, they are passionate about their work  and they love what they do.

So here, self disciple comes as a key ingredient. Despite having multiple distractions and other things in life, they spend their time and energy on doing the task which they must do whether they feel like doing it or not. These people have ability to control their feelings and emotions and know where to focus and complete the undertaken task or project. These people enjoy their smallest of victories and over a period of time grow in confidence to take any mega project because they know and understand that they have all that is required to take them to greater heights and fulfil their meaningful goals.

It happens so when we enjoy what we do, we hardly know how the time passes and goes, but there is some part of the job and work that we have to do, somehow we do not enjoy that part and relish that to the fullest, but people with self-discipline, understand that whether they like something or not, if it is important for their project and their growth, they move with the fast foot forward and relish the hardest of tasks with the same vigour and zeal.

Here it might happen that when you love what you do, which might appear difficult and hard to others, you tend to become more self disciplined because you enjoy every minute of your time spent on doing what you love and then, somehow self discipline comes naturally to you.

Definitely there are ways in which we can improve our self-discipline and that we can do by starting slow and then moving in the direction of our goals. Here are some of the ways which we can follow:

1. Know your goals and targets and what you want to achieve.
2. Know your ‘why’. Why you want to achieve a specific goal. If there is a deeper sense of purpose and meaning to the task associated, you will put in your best efforts and energy into it to get the things done.
3. Start taking very small steps every day. Remember Anne’s suggestion, move bird by bird and move inch by inch.
4. Celebrate your smallest of victories. Enjoy them, relish them and savour their taste in your memory to motivate you for further victories.
5. Remove your distractions. Know how to focus and concentrate on your task at hand.
6. Increase your time gradually and then decide to take breaks in between to be more productive in what you do.
7. When facing failure, embrace it with grace. Review the process. See your lacunae. Plan a new strategy and then implement it to see if it works best for you.
8. Practice these steps regularly over a period of time. Monitor your own progress.

With self-discipline as your friend, nothing is impossible for you to achieve and success is guaranteed to come.