Everyone at one point has probably been through a stage in life where finding self-discipline is a tough thing to do. So many distractions can come up along the way that we continue to find ways to make excuses not to do things that need to be done. Task and items that should always be at the top of our priority list. Sometimes this is us making excuses not to get something done and sometimes it is just not knowing the best methods for having some self-discipline.
Self-discipline is not something you are born with but something that you develop over time. It can take months to build great habits and routines and sometimes it can take much longer. Regardless of how long it takes, it’s essential that you begin finding ways to become more disciplined. Doing so not only gets things accomplished but allows you to build confidence in your abilities.
You see, self-discipline forces you to do things that are not necessarily in our comfort zone. It can even hurt or cause physical and emotional pain to do these things. The beautiful part of this entire idea and the point we want to emphasize is that if you learn to do these things, you can build a large amount of confidence and start moving on the right path toward accomplishing your goals.
Let’s start by breaking down the importance of learning self-discipline and then give you some ways to begin implementing exercises to build your self-discipline starting today.
How Do You Practice Self Discipline?
Self-discipline is nothing more than your ability to control your mind long enough to perform actions that are in your best interest. This can mean that you are performing a task that may result in you feeling pain or discomfort. Self-discipline is not mastered overnight. It takes the mindset of finding weaknesses and exploiting them until you slowly you learn the difference between good habits and bad habits.
Here’s a quick way you begin learning and practicing self-discipline.
1.) Be Clear About What Your Goal Is and what you are trying to accomplish
2.) Make it easy. Don’t create extremely challenging habits in the beginning
3.) Reward Yourself and Use Positive Reinforcement to Boost Your Confidence
4.) Always Track Progress even if it’s backward progress and failed goals toward self-discipline.
5.) Have Personal Standards. Live Up to Something Bigger and Better and Know Your Limits
Is Self-Discipline a Skill Learned or a Natural Character Trait?
Self-discipline is undoubtedly not a natural trait. If you had a family and was brought up in an environment where self-discipline was taught correctly and implemented, that surely helps. However, at the end of the day, self-discipline takes work and a clear mindset to conquer. Especially early in the process. It’s a skill that you learn to master over time.
You must be willing to adjust on the fly and find habits that can benefit you in the most significant ways with self-discipline (don’t worry, we will cover some of these exercises as promised)
Is Will Power Involved, Do I Need Will Power for This to Work?
Will power plays a huge roll in mastering self discipline. Your often-removing destructive behaviors and habits that you may have loved and enjoyed for years but you understand that these habits are not in your best interest. This could be a video game addiction that eating too much of your time, or this could mean eating healthier or quitting smoking.
This is where will power comes in. It’s not comfortable to give up these things that we have known and become accustomed to over the years. It will suck, to say the least. Without will power and the ability to understand that these habits can only lead to a better life is when you have a chance at success.
Without strong will power and the ability to overcome the other thoughts racing through your head, you may be in some trouble the first time a cigarette is offered to you or when the newest Madden NFL 2020 is released.
Long story short. Will power be 100% involved in improving self-discipline.
Three Other Factors to Consider with Self Discipline
I know, I know. You probably want to know more about the exercises you can perform to boost self-discipline. The problem with that is understanding the fundamentals before diving in.
That brings us to a few other considerations that are critical for you to understand. Let’s start with how the brain works.
Routine, Structure, and Conscientiousness
These three keywords listed above are crucial with developing self-discipline. You need to be structured and establish a routine. Endlessly allowing your brain to wander and not having a clear set of tasks to complete is the devil when it comes to mastering self-discipline.
Building a routine and being more robotic early on helps you to increase efficiency and reliability in boosting your self-discipline. Doing these will slowly begin building your confidence. Create some order and balance in your life, and things will start feeling much simpler.
The key is building a routine that only encompasses good habits and habits that can help your life.
Confidence is A Driving Factor
Confidence is something that’s necessary to keep pushing forward. Feeling down on yourself or believing you can’t do something usually will force you back into old habits or a downward spiral of failed goals, habits impacting your life in a negative way and the feeling of having zero will power. You need to gain some momentum when building self-discipline.
The point is to train yourself and allow your brain to understand that you are capable of being in the driver’s seat and re-writing the book on your life. Let’s assume you already believe that the business you want to start will fail.
Well, in that mindset your self-discipline no longer is even relevant. It will fail. The goal should be to set yourself up for small wins that can make you feel like a champion. Enough of these small wins can really get a train steaming in the right direction and get you on the correct path.
Many say that self-discipline is usually doing something excruciating such as waking up very early or taking cold showers. I believe this as well, but I also think that it’s essential that you to have some of the painful exercises achievable and with little resistance.
The Waking Up to Early Example, don’t do it like this
An example of this could be waking up early but not waking up so early that you can’t physically perform your task for the day. Some individuals will shoot for the stars with this exercise and shave hours off their sleep instead of starting small by dropping back 15-20 minutes at a time.
In this scenario, you are still achieving and showing self-discipline, but you introduce the opportunity to build self-confidence along the way. A massive component of developing self-discipline.
Mental Discipline Is Key, Learn to Pick What’s in Your Best Interest
Your mind is programmed to do what it knows and what feels comfortable. Fearful events or the unknown tend to allow your brain to create streams of thoughts that attempt to convince you to do otherwise. This is due to the amount of time you have been doing something differently.
When you change a routine completely or try the unknown, it’s scary for you, and it’s scary for your brain. Your brain wants you to retreat but to conquer this and gain self-discipline completely, you must take control of your mind and convince your brain that what you are doing is in your best interest.
This is by far the hardest part of the process. It’s not waking up early or going to the gym. It’s learning to turn off the racing thoughts in your mind and commanding control of the situation. It’s tough to ignore the ideas coming in tell you to run the opposite direction that you intend on moving towards. Very hard.
Noticing the Excuses Taking Place and Ending Them
You see, sometimes you don’t even notice the excuses coming in when they do. Your brain is hardwired to tell you to run away as fast as possible, and the excuses can seem so legitimate that it’s challenging to overcome them when they happen. Reasons like, I have plenty of time later, or I can do this instead to help my business are easy examples.
These are messages your brain is sending you because whatever task you are trying to complete is scaring the hell out of you and your mind. Pick up on the settle clues and be sure not to fall victim to your brain.
Push through. The magic happens when your brain becomes re-wired permanently to do these uncomfortable actions and to get moving in the right direction.
I Fell Off Track, How Do I Regain Control?
If you feel that you have been knocked off the path and continue to lack self-discipline and can’t seem to find any confidence, you need to take a step back. You need to analyze the situation. What excuses are taking place? What’s going wrong or interrupting your chances at building self-discipline.
Are you creating loopholes that allow you to escape quickly from the challenging task or is the task just too challenging even to get started? Instead of throwing in the towel, take a step back and try and see the entire picture.
Why are you even attempting to build self-discipline and confidence in the first place? If you can’t re-piece the puzzle together maybe you can find a way to get back on track. This time around let yourself have some small wins early in the process so that you can get your confidence built up and begin gaining some momentum.
You would be surprised at how much a small win can help you build self-confidence.
Does Self Discipline Play A Key Part in Success?
Absolutely. Self-discipline alone could be one of the biggest keys to success. Without it, it’s tough to beat the competition or achieve high goals. There is a reason that Navy Seals start every day with a task completed. It’s simple in nature. Make the bed. It’s the action alone building a habit in your mind to start the day with a task completed.
One task completed turns into another, and another. Before you know it, you have accomplished many functions throughout the day and built self-confidence along the way. Learning these key fundamentals can be a huge boost for you toward achieving greatness.
All the greatness we are surrounded with is are all examples of extremely self-disciplined individuals. Professional athletes, top CEO’s and some of the wealthiest individuals on the earth have a great deal of self-discipline.
Now it’s time to get to the meat and potatoes and break down some exercises that you can implement today to start building your self-discipline. Prepare to be uncomfortable. Let’s dive into it.
Self-Discipline Exercises to Begin Today- 9 Broken Down
Below, we are going to list out some exercises that you can implement starting today or tomorrow that could get you on the path toward defeating your own mind and building self-discipline immediately.
Take A Cold Shower
Taking a cold shower is not only uncomfortable, but it will take your breath away if you haven’t ever done it. The second that cold water hits you it’s going to smash into you like a ton of bricks or feel like you just slipped through the hole you cut while ice fishing.
This is more of defeating your own mind than anything. Don’t turn that handle and force yourself to push through the cold shower. The entire point behind this is that your body will be telling you to run the opposite direction and defeating your mind and hanging tough can build self-confidence and boost your momentum.
Starting your day with this small win can be instrumental toward reaching new heights and feeling like you can take down the world. No need to be a hero with this exercise. The shower doesn’t need to last 30 minutes. Just finish the shower, get out and get on with your day. Remember, start your day with a task completed. Always.
Learn to Meditate
Meditation is much more difficult than people inform you. It’s challenging to concentrate on nothing except your own breath. You aren’t supposed to do anything during this period but focus and count each breath as it occurs. If your brain wonders and a thought comes to mind, your goal is to eliminate and get back to concentrating on breathing.
Way easier said than done. If you haven’t tried this before, start small. Attempting 30 minutes of meditation for a beginning is bound to fail, but you can surely build up these abilities over time. Start with 5 minutes of meditation and once you feel comfortable, increase the duration and length of time you perform this exercise.
Meditation isn’t only known to increase self-discipline and boost confidence but is also proven to have other health benefits such as decreased anxiety, stress, and a clearer focused mind.
Wake Up Early
Waking up early is one of the most natural exercises to fail at. This is strictly due to not having complete control over your brain immediately after waking up. Sleeping feels good, and your brain agrees. Your mind immediately wants to hit that snooze button and put you back under those comfy cozy sheets that you love.
The trick here is putting your alarm clock or mobile device out of reach. Force yourself to stand up so that by the time you want to hit that snooze button your mind can say otherwise, and you slowly begin to overcome this bad habit.
In the beginning, don’t go for the gold medal immediately. Decrease your sleeping time and wake up 10 minutes earlier in the beginning. Over time your confidence will rise, and you can wake up whenever you please but, in the beginning, trying to wake up 4 hours earlier is bound to fail and derail your confidence starting on day 1. Start small and work your way towards better sleeping habits.
Get the Motor Turning and The Body Involved
Exercise is a surefire way to build self-discipline and build confidence. This example is great because you can begin to see the physical results over time which is a massive confidence boost. Remember, confidence is what we are chasing with these exercises. Confidence and small victories.
If you haven’t worked out or performed physical activity in a long time, this may prove to be painful and uncomfortable for you. The goal here is to not overdo it early in the process so that you don’t give up.
Start small by programming your brain to do just 20 minutes each morning of light jogging. As you get into shape and re-program your mind, you can increase the time and impact of your workouts. Right now, however, it’s only about defeating your mind, not losing 20 pounds this month.
Begin Making Your Bed Every Morning
This is the most straightforward task of them all but still reaps substantial hidden rewards. This goes back to our statement about how the military implements this practice. It’s nothing really to do with having a nicely made bed. It’s the simple fact that you begin every day with a task completed.
You start your day off on the right foot and take a small win. Boosting your confidence immediately at 5am is a powerful thing that encourages you to keep completing task all day long. Worst case scenario if you have a terrible day, you still get to come to a bed that’s made and waiting to be turned down yet again for a good night’s rest.
Tomorrow is a new day, and you can try again.
Social Media, TV and Cell Phone Time Eliminated
I would love to know the percentages of people who complete this task and have the self-discipline to refrain from using these devices throughout the day. Imagine how much clearer your day would be without these distractions.
Unfortunately, the level of difficulty in this exercise is high. We love that dopamine rush that our Facebook news feed provides, and we always need to know what’s happening inside our email. It’s just how it goes. Learn to eliminate these distractions, however you can, and you will find yourself with much more free time to complete a more critical task.
Download application on your laptop and desktop designed to block notifications while you are working or learn to flip your cell phone over and silence during certain hours of the day. Better yet, don’t check your phone immediately when you wake up.
If you happen to have one text, bad email or other issues taking place to start the day it can kill momentum almost immediately. You must start the days with a win to build discipline and self-confidence.
Ignore your devices and slowly begin defeating the day and your own mind.
Learn to Take Responsibility and End the Negativity
Another sure-fire way on our list of exercises to build self-discipline and confidence is to begin taking full responsibility and stop playing the victim. You can’t win the day always pointing the fingers at others. It doesn’t teach you to adjust or make improvements. It only shows you how to make excuses.
It takes a lot of discipline to accept fault or error in a situation but learning this trait won’t only make you more disciplined, but it will make you more aware of your actions and attitude. Learning this skill set can put you on a path to winning the day and making decisions that are informed and in your best interest.
Live Now and Worry Later, The Rest Can Wait
Most people begin there day with anxiety about things that may or may not ever even happen. This is not a good practice. You should start your day living in the moment. Breath in some fresh air or step outside for a few minutes.
I think many individuals can admit that in most circumstances, your worries ended up being for nothing and everything ended up turning out okay. You cripple yourself with this mindset. You need to program your brain to just live in the present and forget about the rest.
Everything happens in its own time, and that’s nothing we can control with any ease. All we can manage is our own body, mind, and spirit by living in the present and focusing on the task at hand.
Begin writing down your worries and fears if need be so you can re-visit them later in the evening. Get them on paper and once they are written down, consider that problem solved for the day and come back to it another time. Living in the moment is not only going to lead to higher amounts of happiness and reduced stress, but it will slowly help you build confidence and self-discipline over time.
Living in the moment is not easy, and anything that is not easy usually builds discipline.
Remove All the Temptations and The Outside Noise
As we have said plenty of times, none of these exercises are designed to be a walk in the park. One of the biggest interrupters, however, is simple temptations to head the other direction. You need to remove these. If you can’t see it, you probably won’t think about it.
If you want to live healthier or eat healthier, get the junk of the house. If you’re going to use social media less and study harder, keep your cell phone in a different room. The little things can add up to big victories if you are able to recognize what could help you remain more focused.
The sooner you find clever ways to surround yourself with a winning environment, the sooner you can start seeing results, small victories, and your self-discipline and confidence sky-rocketing.
If, however, knowing what’s happening with all your Facebook connections is more important, you may find yourself struggling with this task.
Wrapping It Up- Regain Control and Enter a Disciplined State of Mind Today!
Learning self-discipline is not easy. It’s uncomfortable and always will be. It’s designed to be like this for a reason. Defeating your own mind and doing things that our brain does not want us too is scary and your natural response is to run for the hills at full speed. The power and self-confidence you can build over time learning these skill sets are enormous.
Once you defeat one area, you feel strong and brave enough to move into the next. And then the next and the next. It’s an upward climb, but once you take the first step, the stairs feel just a little bit better each time. Begin implementing the practices we laid out here today and notice yourself getting on a hot streak toward success and your goals much faster than you believed possible.
Do you have any exercises to add to this list to build self-discipline and confidence? If so, be sure to leave a comment below.