22 Dec Looking for changes? Discipline is your answer

For many years I have been trying (I will get to the term ‘trying’ later on in this article) to structure my life in such a way that I can live as happy and peaceful as possible. Habits, routine, motivation, energy and structure has been key within my vocabulary – until I learned about the importance of discipline. The earlier mentioned terms are still valid and I do refer to them often but they are all invaluable without the presence of discipline.

We will take a closer look at:

• Differences between motivation and discipline
• Importance of discipline
• Tips on improving your discipline
• How discipline has been valuable to me

And I’ll be sharing a video which I found very useful myself towards the bottom of the page

What are the differences between motivation and discipline

Motivation is about making plans, discipline is sticking to whatever you planned – easy, right? I’m always a great planner, someone full of ambition and motivation to change my life around for the better, adopt new habits, do more sports, get in shape and spend more time with my family. However, I’ve often noticed that these plans can be useless if you don’t stick to them. Showing discipline here is the key factor. Inevitably that’s much easier said than done.

To summarise the difference between motivation and discipline: motivation is a feeling, discipline is an action.

Motivation – a quick run through

There are websites filled with information on motivation, numerous books have been written on the topic and entire theories have been developed. Motivation can have four sources; extrinsic, intrinsic, identified and introjected. Without looking to closely at them, it’s safe to claim that motivation basically comes from yourself internally (intrinsic or introjected) or it’s due to external factors (such as extrinsic and identified motivation).

In my opinion, a lot of times where people will feel motivated it will be triggered by external sources. Someone wants to get fit because thinks others might find them too heavy or you want to be buying new clothes as you feel like you should be matching the local (probably non-existing) fashion requirements.

Motivation can be seen as a set of forces that activate a certain strive. You feel incentivised to get X done or start doing Y. The planning is there, the motivation is there. However, then there’s discipline.

Discipline summed up

Motivation by itself is not going to convince you to do task xyz. You will need drive and take actions in order to get things done. Discipline is the practice of making people obey rules or standards of behaviour, and punishing them when they do not. Or, when reflecting this on yourself, discipline is about having self-control.

Why is discipline so important?

One can have a thousand plans but if you don’t follow your plans, they might as well be worthless. Discipline provides you with rules to live your life efficiently and effectively. When you have discipline in your life you will be able to make small sacrifices in the present, with the option of having a better life in the future. Discipline creates habits, habits make routines, and routines can change your life for the better.

How to improve your self-discipline?

Self-discipline can be seen as a muscle and – as we know – a muscle can be trained. That’s the good news. To be improving your self-discipline takes self-discipline, a great way to be practising the efforts you would like to master.

On the bottom of this page, I’ve attached a video of Jay Shetty on mastering self-discipline. Check it out as his explanations are spot on and right to the point. It has helped me a lot in this process. Train the guard in your mind and master any decision you’ll be taking from now on.

7 ways to be improving your self-discipline

There are several ways of improving your self-discipline in such a way that it can truly help you in reaching your goals.

1. Create a clear plan: in case you want to improve your self-discipline (which is a goal) it would be very recommendable to be creating a plan for yourself, a roadmap. What exactly would you want to achieve? What are the sub-goals (please have a look at #5 as well) and how are you going to reach out?
2. Be realistic: when setting goals for yourself, remain realistic. To go from 1 to 10 in only four days is probably not feasible. Look at what’s realistic and realise that you are likely going to encounter one or more setbacks during your journey.
3. Reminders (key one!): this one helps me a lot. A similar difference exists between motivation and discipline exists as there is between making plans and executing them. When creating reminders (a white board, sticky notes, a short list next to your pillow – you name it), you will at least be aware of whichever your plans and goals are. ”I forgot” won’t be the excuse anymore.
4. Take out temptation: this one might be challenging. Everyone has some temptations that will keep you from achieving your goals. Social Media, mobile phones, TV, an ongoing football game, looking for your next surf trip – anything really can distract you from working on the things you would actually want to be working on. There are several ways of how to prevent yourself from falling for these temptations. Two of them I describe in the paragraph below.
5. Celebrate success: As I mentioned in #1, when you are setting goals, it’s important to also set sub goals. On one hand, this makes it easier to reach ‘a’ goal and it will give you (more often) a reason to celebrate. To celebrate your success is important, it will create a mental peak which is something that likely will boost your motivation and discipline to keep working towards the next sub-goal.
6. Accept failure – learn from it: any road you are taking is full of success as well as setbacks. Accept that you will fail from time to time and embrace this. When you fail at something, you will have the biggest opportunity of learning. Without failure you will never be able to reach as far as those adventures that lay full of setbacks.
7. Change your lifestyle (potentially): to be self-disciplined on (let’s say) your work is much easier if you are also self-disciplined on your diet, your physical health and other aspects of your life. To me lifestyle is vital in anything I do, whether it will be running my businesses, working on my body or maintaining relationships with the people I care about. I try to be disciplined at any as to me discipline is a lifestyle.

Would you be stoked to be improving your self-discipline but haven’t you got a clue on how to go about? Reach out to me and let’s see where we can take your plans together.

How discipline has helped me reaching goals

Following the list above it has helped me enormously in achieving daily/weekly/yearly goals. The word structure is key to me as a fixed structure allows me to stick to my plans, which will lead to more results. And results will always have a positive impact on whatever your goal is, a (small) celebration can make a huge difference and is likely to make you realise that you will even be able to achieve much bigger goals.

One of the tools you can use to be improving your self-discipline is to remove temptation. I’ve done so by keeping my phone off between 22:00 and 11:55 the day after (people can still reach me, through my work phone). I do know this simply isn’t possible to anyone, but I’ve purposely choosen not to be able to check anything on my phone, for the sole reason of keeping my focus on whichever I would want to get done (and which is more important than any Social Media, WhatsApp message or anything else phone-related).

Another great example is how I try to stick to the Pomodoro model. This model makes me work very efficiently and is all about structure (you work in a focus way, are forced to plan your day and doesn’t allow you any distraction). This is a combination of structure and discipline and by sticking to it, I’m training my self-discipline even further.

A video on self discipline

Jay Shetty obviously has a lot of experience in what he’s doing. I personally find his way of bringing the information across very pleasant and he’s sharing some valuable lessons.