No one wants to be seen as no fun, too serious, and regimented. When you think of the term “self-disciplined,” you may think of a hard-nosed military-type person. That thought alone can be a big blocker in your mind to becoming a self-disciplined person. It’s no wonder that people have trouble becoming more self-disciplined. They’re not understanding the positive factors of developing this skill.
Let’s look at some reasons why self-discipline is so hard.
Lack of Understanding of What Self-Discipline Really Is
Self-discipline is a combination of skills that are put into effect consistently to achieve the results you want. It’s a long-term practice of a lot of behaviors designed to help you reach your goals. Avoiding temptation regularly so that results can occur is required. You’ll need to develop all these skills to become self-disciplined.
Not Realizing How Important Organization Is to Self-Discipline
As mentioned above, self-discipline is a way to describe many behaviors that lead to reaching goals at a high level. One of the keys to being able to do this is knowing how to organize your schedule in a realistic way, along with putting together logically everything you need to do in a day.
The Fact That Most People Don’t Know How to Break Tasks Up to Make Them Simpler
A person with self-discipline knows that when they have a goal, they need to break it up into smaller tasks that they schedule in their calendar to do regularly until the whole thing is done. They also know that this requires a lot less discipline than most people think.
Underestimating the Importance of Consistency
One of the real keys to self-discipline is to be consistent in your turning down temptation to achieve the long-term goal. For example, you know eating fewer calories on a regular long-term basis will lead to weight loss. Writing one page of content for your novel will eventually lead to a finished book. Small steps make a big difference, but they also must be consistent.
Knowing That Being Mindful Is a Factor in Self-Discipline
If you don’t know when you’re getting ready to give up or give in, or when you are reaching the end of your comfort zone and you’ve never experienced pushing past those blockers, it’s hard to know whether you can have self-discipline or not. You need to be aware of your own feelings and responsibility for any results you get in life or work.
Once you understand that you can develop all the skills associated with being self-disciplined – such as organization, goal setting, time management, and mindfulness, you can start to set up your life in a way that makes it easy to experience self-discipline and the results.
