How important is really discipline?

Why do we fall short of our objectives?…Why in spite of all our knowledge and our experiences do we find ourselves aimlessly wandering around and not fulfilling our purpose?

We all have personal experience on loosing track of our direction which may be for many different reasons if you compare with friend´s or colleague´s experiences. Often we get stuck in the middle and loose traction and speed.

Often we settle for a life of existence rather than a life of substance! We are pulled in different directions by wishes and expectations from other people. Why?

These are rather big questions and in the end it connects to our daily routines and activities.

The headline of this text is about discipline, but where does it come from?

There are some building blocks that helps people keep up a good discipline and to anticipate what is coming.

Starting daily with a quick review of your goals and your plan to get there is a good habit. This will make it much easier to avoid being distracted and it will be easier to say ‘No’, with confidence. You can with relative ease say no to all offers and requests that are not in line with your plan. Many times I felt a real relief , when I could say no when offered something that sounded really good, but wasn’t in line with my own goal. In addition when being busy with the wrong activities you may also miss out on attracting the right ones.

We also need to have a firm decided to go in that direction, go for that plan. To say that ‘I will try’, is not good enough and means that you have not to decided yet. If you have decided, and made preparations you will much more easily overcome challenges and obstacles.

Manage your expectations. We may loose traction when we are not prepared mentally or are not expecting mishaps, things that happens that are out of our control.

We must expect thing to happen, because it always does. When doing project planning in company projects there are often something called ‘resource time’, i.e. extra time to handle unplanned and unexpected problems that occur. You can apply the same approach in your private life.

Problems always occur and the trick is how you manage and handle them, because something will always happen. There is a risk that we loose the sense of direction. Don’t let it happen to you. Be prepared!

Continuous measurement and follow up. An analogy with sailing and when you are not precise in keeping the course. If you are not meticouous in keeping the course you most likely end up in a completely different place that what you aimed for, a different island, or even a different country.

You probably heard the statement, ‘the devil is in the details’ and that is absolutely true. Check and follow up every day!

You apply your knowledge and plan, do, check and act (the Deming cycle). The check part means to continuously measure and follow up and then to appropriate small adjustment and changes. And then you can act with more confidence again…

Discipline.

There may be many explanations and things to blame , but the fundamental reason when not reaching the goal is a lack of continuous and consistent self discipline.

Challenges I have seen in colleagues, friends and in myself are that we don’t apply all that we know! At times we trust more what others say than trusting our inner voice and the discipline to go in the planned direction. The result is a weakened discipline.

If we on the other hand consistently apply the knowledge then we can study the result, i.e. the outcome, and change and refine they way we do things. To continuously do small changes and to improve the result will over time result in dramatic changes and valuable results! The trick is to do small fine tuning all the time!

The challenge here is that the gratification when you are disciplined will come much later, but if you go for watching TV or playing a computer game the gratification is immediate. A hint is to first do the important task that requires discipline and then when completing the daily task use leisure, TV and computer games as a reward.

All this is really easy to understand and not so easy to do. For the persons with good discipline the rewards are huge! It also means that you control your life and its direction, instead of letting others use your time to their best knowledge.

When doing this right, there is a positive reinforcement, and we will get more motivation to proceed, be able to further improve the situation and keep distractions away.

Benefits of discipline.

The self discipline creates a habit over time! It also makes it much easier to do the important daily actions and tasks. The eventual internal resistance to do the tasks will be diminished.

Discipline changes you, who you are, and you form a personality around it. The habit makes you an achiever.

It helps you to get a clear focus, helps you prioritize and avoid distractions.

It will also helps you to boost your self esteem, and give you a ‘can do’ attitude.

Is this easy?

Yes, it is easy to start, and then you have to keep going until becomes easier and easier to do the activities mentioned above.

To answer the question in the headline, ‘How important is really discipline?’

The answer is that it is extremely important and it comes with a huge benefit.

You will become the best version of yourself, because you will do what many others don’t do!