Ask any great success story in this life how the individual got to where they are today, and they will all likely have one significant thing in common: discipline. Discipline is key to achieving anything in this life. As they say, nothing worth having is easy.
With discipline, you can accomplish great levels of success wherever you trod. It’s the discipline that will serve as the difference between you and the guy who almost made it. Learning how to hone discipline will help you reach your goals and achieve greatness.
What is Discipline?
If you look up the word discipline, you might find a definition relating to punishment for bad behavior. This, in turn, may give you flashbacks of spankings, raging parents, and long weekends ground with no phone or video games.
However, that’s not the kind of discipline we’re talking about today.
Instead, we are focusing on the positive kind of discipline – the kind that is going to help you better yourself and your overall life.
This kind of discipline is known as a kind of training that drives individuals to their best, mentally, physically, and spiritually. It’s a controlled behavior that develops moral character and overall conditions within an individual.
It’s discipline that decides whether most people will reach their goals or not. Having discipline means being able to say no to yourself, having self-control, and pushing yourself to accomplish task after task until you’ve reached where you want to be.
Discipline plays a role throughout all of our lives, even if we are not actively trying to pursue it. Our parents instill it early on in our lives, and we naturally learn to adopt it in certain areas. Beyond that, the amount of discipline we practice is up to us.
The Development of Discipline
Discipline isn’t just some out-there concept that we learn about as adults and magically put into practice when we really want something. The importance of discipline starts when we are very young with good parenting. It then evolves into something bigger and more meaningful the more we grow and develop.
Early Stages of Discipline
When we are young children – as young as toddlers – our parents implement routines and methods that drive the development of discipline in our lives. Again, we are not talking about punishment here, although there was probably a little bit of that as well.
At a young age, there are certain ways that a parent can set the stepping stones to raising a child with good self-discipline. While these stepping stones may seem pretty basic, they are what we learn and develop out of and can still be useful in our lives as adults.
Structure
One of the best ways to maintain good discipline is to establish structure. Our parents likey tried to do this for us when we were very young. There was probably some sort of routine that you followed at some point, whether your entire day was structured or it was just a nighttime or morning schedule.
Think about your childhood routines as early as you can remember. In the morning, your parents woke you up to get ready for school. The rest of your morning may have looked something like this:
- Eat breakfast
- Brush your teeth
- Get dressed
- Make your bed
- Gather your school supplies
- Put on your shoes
- Go to the bus stop
That may seem pretty generic, and you may be thinking, well, of course, that’s what we did; it’s what everybody did!
But now, think about your morning routine as an adult. It may not look exactly the same – for instance, you’re not going gather school supplies and hop on a school bus – but you probably get up at a certain time every day, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, get dressed, and leave at a certain time for work.
Because you already had the discipline of getting up and getting yourself ready for the day inscribed in your routine at an early age, it makes sense to do that regularly now as an adult.
In the same way, things like consistent bedtimes, regular meals, and personal hygiene are all probably things that you practice in your everyday life. The structure makes it easier for us to have discipline – the discipline to keep ourselves clean, to get enough sleep, and to wake up on time to look presentable and ready for the day.
Reasons Behind the Structure
Your parents also may or may not have taken the time to explain why there are certain rules to follow and specific routines to keep in balance. If they did, consider yourself lucky, because explaining these reasons helped you understand why discipline is important.
Rather than following arbitrary rules just because someone said so, you grew up with the information backing up why they were good choices to make. When you have that understanding, you can develop a further understanding of other disciplines that may enter your life at a later point.
One simple example of this is a parent enforcing the discipline of getting your homework done as soon as you get home from school, rather than later. Of course, in their authoritative position, they could always pull the “because I said so” card. However, explaining the reasoning will be better for you later in life.
Your parents might have told you that if you get your homework done right away, then you will have extra time to do something fun after dinner, like watching a movie or playing a half-hour of video games. When you get it done, it’s out of the way, and you don’t have to rush yourself later on.
With that understanding in place, you may have grown up as someone who doesn’t like to procrastinate. Maybe understanding this reasoning made you more efficient in the workplace, freeing up time to spend with your family on the weekends rather than finishing up work projects that you put off.
With good reasoning behind structure and routine, it’s easier to replace procrastination with discipline, making you a more productive and accomplished individual.
Understanding the Consequences
Although the kind of discipline we are talking about here is not about punishment, there is an understanding that when you do not have discipline in your life, there are consequences.
Especially at a young age, children tend to respond to consequences. These are not necessarily intentional punishments, but rather reactions caused by their own actions – or lack thereof.
Natural consequences can sometimes be just as effective, if not more effective, than punishments issued at the discretion of a parent. They also teach a child that once you’re an adult and out of your parents’ house, there are still ramifications for the things that you do or choose not to do.
As a young child, you may have learned that remaining undisciplined in your schoolwork leads to poor grades, which can result in harder, additional work to catch up or even something as drastic as repeating a grade and watching friends move on without you.
Forgetfulness is also a discipline that can impact your life on great levels. If you grew up with working parents, you quickly learned that if you forgot something you needed for school, you were stuck out of luck. Discovering the discipline of prepping your things the night before or double-checking in the morning can be a real life-saver.
Logical consequences are essential to the lessons that life throws at us, and maintaining discipline can quickly become a tool for avoiding these consequences. If we can understand this as an adult, it will keep us out of some complicated situations.
Discipline as Adults
As we grow up and struggle through the rough teenage years, it becomes clear that our priorities shift. With this continual shift comes the need for discipline in different areas of our life. While our initial discipline had much to do with the basics and necessities – getting up on time, brushing our teeth, eating regular meals – our teenage and adulthood disciplines might look different.
The Basics
The importance of discipline really shines through as we get older, because this is where we start to have to do more and more things on our own without relying on the help of our parents or those around us. While at an early age, our parents may have gotten us out of bed on time, being a teenager or an adult means having to use our own discipline to do it for ourselves.
At the same time, basic hygiene becomes something that’s expected of us. We may be able to laugh at a little kid who doesn’t want to brush his teeth, but it’s not so funny if you do it as an adult.
Basic discipline as an adult means being able to take care of your own stuff. Your parents won’t make sure that your house stays clean, your laundry gets washed, or your big project for work gets completed. Discipline is a vital skill to have now, and it shows its necessity across the various highlights of your life.
Discipline in Your Job
Being disciplined in your job is crucial to success. It could mean the difference between getting that promotion and well-deserved pay raise or letting everyone down and losing your position altogether.
There are many details in your job that require you to be disciplined. First of all, you have to show up on time. You need to be on time in the morning, come back at the right time after work, and make it to all of your meetings. People expect you to be a certain place at a certain time, and they rely on you to contribute in a positive way.
You also have to get your work done and get it done well. No one hired you because they were looking for a so-so work ethic. Your boss and team members expect you to do your best. Everyone has a bad day once in a while, but if you’re consistently underperforming, it’s a sign of poor discipline.
Individuals also look to you to keep your word and maintain integrity in all that you do. So, it’s not always enough to just get the job done properly. A good attitude, diligence, and even passion in your position can go a long way – all things that require discipline.
Finally, if you want to advance in your career, you need to have the discipline to grow, learn, and get better. Improvement doesn’t just happen overnight; you have to hone your skills and really focus on bettering yourself. It takes time, effort, and patience to master your craft, and discipline is what will drive all of that.
Within work, individuals can implement five key strategies to become more disciplined. Now that we have addressed how important it is to be disciplined, you can try using these ideas to improve yourself.
Start by creating yourself a schedule. Begin with the large and finish with the small details. This step is even more helpful if you get yourself some kind of planner. You can start with each month and list the important events across those 30 days, highlighting the essentials.
Then, each week, start your day by creating a detailed schedule for the upcoming days. Plan out the tasks you need to get done first, followed by the next important ones, and so on. Schedule out allotted time for lunch as well as a break here and there, but keep it reasonable and stick to the schedule. If you don’t have break time planned, don’t pick up your phone and start scrolling through social media.
From there, take your tasks one at a time. It can seem overwhelming to look at a to-do list for the day and realize just how much work you need to complete. Focus on task number one and only task number one. It’s much easier to get through one thing than ten things.
If you can, you can also try to break tasks down. Large and complex projects can also boost our stress levels, but if you can break it down into steps, then it won’t seem so difficult.
Try to do the things that you enjoy. In a world where many people work for a paycheck and not for happiness, this isn’t always possible. But if you can, try to enjoy whatever task it is that you’re doing. When you enjoy something, not only will it be easier to maintain self-discipline, but it will make time fly as you’re completing it.
Complete quality work, but don’t always insist upon perfection. None of us is perfect, so striving for perfection with every step you take will only hinder the process and leave you with no time to complete other things on your list. Don’t be afraid to move onto something else and go back to it if you have the time.
Finally, reward yourself. Self-discipline is hard, so when you can anticipate a reward or a positive outcome, it gives you something to look forward to and makes all the hard work and effort worth it. Tell yourself when you complete this task, you’ll go out and get yourself a yummy cup of coffee. It doesn’t have to be big, just something to pat yourself on the back.
Discipline in Your Health
Discipline can have a huge impact on your health as well. Maintaining certain habits not only takes hard work, focus, and the drive for consistency, but they can keep you happy, healthy, and in tip-top shape.
One of the hardest disciplines to have in your health is eating right. In a world where the tastiest foods come out of a drive-thru, it can be so difficult to stick to a healthy, well-rounded diet. Even if you aren’t trying to lose weight, poor eating habits over a long period of time can lead to serious complications like diabetes, heart attacks, poor blood pressure, and even some cancers.
Too often, we as adults don’t realize our lack of discipline in this area until it’s too late. Many adults make changes to their diets, but only after they have gained a significant amount of weight or have suffered a heart attack. Good discipline in this area would have potentially saved them from those things.
The problem here is not lack of knowledge. From a young age, we are all taught about the food pyramid and learn basics about eating fruits and vegetables and that sugar rots your teeth. From there, we not only have all the resources we need at our fingertips, but we are bombarded by healthy diet programs and guides to eating right.
The problem, therefore, is a lack of discipline. It’s the lack of action towards correcting things that are wrong and the ability to say no to ourselves when we crave what’s bad for us. Discipline is key to any diet – whether it’s a bizarre fad diet or simply cutting back on junk food.
The next hardest thing about discipline in the area of health is staying active. You have probably heard a friend tell you how badly she doesn’t want to go to the gym, but she goes anyway. That’s because she has discipline. Even when she doesn’t feel like it, she gets herself there and gets her workout done. Why? Because she knows that consistency is the only way that she will see progress.
Discipline in your physical exercise routine looks different for everyone. For some, it means waking up an hour earlier on weekdays to hit the gym before work. For others, it means walking on the treadmill while you watch your evening shows instead of snacking on the couch. It might look like pushing yourself to walk the extra mile with the dog or doing push-ups before bed.
Whatever your routine looks like, it won’t mean anything if you’re not disciplined to do it consistently and do it with commitment and integrity.
Finally, discipline in your health might look like starting a new vitamin regime or committing to actually going to your regular doctor check-ups. Making these areas of your life a priority requires discipline and the ability to get yourself up, follow a schedule, and leave forgetfulness behind.
The best way to be successful in a health goal is to clearly and specifically define the changes you are going to make and how you’re going to accomplish them. Rather than saying that you’re going to start working out more, sit down and plan out the times you have available to hit the gym. Call a location and sign up for a membership. Go out and buy a new pair of sneakers.
Make a list of potential challenges you might face and ask yourself how you will overcome them. Prepare yourself to face not only difficulties in the actual action but resistance from yourself throughout the process.
Make a clear commitment, decide when to start, and write it down. Don’t waste any time when it comes to discipline in your health – it might just save your life.
Discipline in Your Relationship
In order to have prosperous and healthy relationships, we need to have self-discipline. Self-discipline lets us control our emotions, regulates our communication, and drives our reactions to situations. With more discipline comes more self-awareness, which is essential to a successful relationship.
As humans, we are beings of emotions. While other species run off of their instincts, we use emotions to describe how something makes us feel. It’s okay to have emotions and to feel sad, happy, angry, or hurt, but when we lose control of those emotions and let them take over, they can cause us to say or do things that hurt others.
Our emotions are triggered by a host of things, but they seem to hit us the hardest when they are triggered in a relationship. Whether you’re looking at friendship, a family member, or a romantic partner, there’s a level of trust involved. We trust our relationships to protect our emotions, and so when someone we love does something that triggers anger, hurt, or sadness, it can be difficult to control our response.
Feeling an emotion is one thing, but learning to control our response is another. There’s nothing wrong with being angry, but walking away or talking it out is usually a much better answer than yelling and throwing things. But for many of us, not choosing the latter response takes a good amount of discipline.
Of course, learning and practicing this discipline comes with a certain level of self-awareness. Before we can address the way we respond to our emotions, we need to be able to identify our faults in that area. Someone who is blind to how poorly they react to anger certainly won’t be making any strides to improve upon their self-discipline.
It’s at this point that we need to take a step back and examine how we respond to these things. We can also seek advice and input from loved ones who have witnessed us at our worst. The key is to keep an open mind and remember that we asked for their honesty; it would be unfair to hold their answers against them.
Once we do that, we can work towards developing self-control and a commitment to discipline in that area. Developing discipline in your relationship can also help you fight off temptation and maintain healthy habits and behaviors.
Discipline in Your Spirituality
If you’re a spiritual person in any way, you know that it takes discipline to develop, grow, and strengthen those qualities. Spiritual practices are designed to improve your faith and lead to a kind of growth that can’t be seen physically, but that you can feel inwardly.
Those who practice any kind of spirituality, faith, or religion know that you cannot simply remain stagnant. To practice means to strive for continual improvement.
This improvement and practice can look like reading related texts, study interpretations, and attending various kinds of church services. It can look like service to the community, meditation, or singing certain songs. Some people practice prayers while others get in tune with nature.
Whatever your spiritual practice looks like, it takes consistency and dedication. You have to have discipline to form good habits and sound practices – otherwise, to say you are spiritual really doesn’t mean much at all.
Your spiritual discipline might look very different from someone else’s, so it’s important in this area that we don’t judge one another. In fact, one person might be so private about their spirituality that you have no idea they even believe in anything. You may be outspoken, but just because they are not doesn’t mean you are better than them.
Discipline as a Life Practice
The importance of discipline shines through all around us, whether we have fitness goals, want to move up in our career, and simply want to try to get up earlier in the morning. Without the discipline to stick to our commitments and objectives, we wouldn’t be able to achieve much of anything.
Practice discipline in your life regularly and see what happens. The positive changes will be abundant, and your hard work will surely pay off.