8 Ways to Build Self-Discipline: Unlock Your Potential
Do you ever wish you had more willpower? If you build self-discipline, you can conquer that morning workout routine or learn a new skill. Once you have built self-discipline, you can make healthy eating your lifestyle choice or start a new business to free you from an employer’s clock. Practicing self-discipline can help you create a life where you accomplish these goals and dreams.
Research on the achievements of 8th-grade students reveals that “Students with a strong sense of self-discipline significantly outperformed their less-disciplined peers on a range of academic indicators, including grades, achievement test scores, and attendance. Additionally, self-discipline appears to be a better predictor of academic gain than is intelligence (as measured by an IQ test).”
Translating this research into the lives of working adults can help you build the self-discipline these students demonstrated. Discipline is critical to career and life success, so what steps can you take to help you become more self-disciplined?
This article offers eight practical tips to help you build self-discipline and unlock your full potential.
You can create a life in which you accomplish your goals and dreams.
1. Start With Small Steps to Build Positive Self-Discipline Habits
Start where you are. Building self-discipline takes time. Instead of aiming for a spotless house overnight, focus on small wins. Begin with making your bed first thing in the morning. This small accomplishment sets the tone for the day and gives you a sense of progress.
Then, practice self-discipline in your career by answering all your most urgent emails by 10 am. Gradually, you can tackle bigger challenges at home and work as your self-discipline muscles grow. The key is to start and keep starting on something important to you each day.
2. Identify What You Want to Do Differently
Building self-discipline isn’t about forcing yourself to do things you hate. It’s about finding ways to make positive changes that stick.
If you want to focus on your health, choose healthy habits you enjoy. Maybe kale smoothies aren’t your thing. Try a brisk walk in the morning or make a fruit salad with yogurt for a refreshing breakfast.
Start with small, achievable goals. Instead of immediately aiming for a gym membership, begin with a 20-minute walk or a 10-minute yoga routine. Record your daily calorie intake to achieve a number that makes you feel healthy and moves the bathroom scale in a positive direction.
If you want to focus on building self-discipline in your career, identify the habits successful people in your field demonstrate. Do they constantly learn new skills? Perhaps you can dedicate an hour a week to online courses or practices relevant to your career goals.
Maybe they arrive early in the office to tackle important tasks before interruptions begin. Are they accountable and reliable by keeping their commitments to the team? Experiment with your observations and find what works best for you and your goals.
3. Remember You Are an Adult: You Don’t Need Someone to Tell You What to Do
Again, you can start small. If you normally sit at your desk and play on your phone until your manager arrives and gives you a new task, set your phone timer for five minutes. Then, when the alarm goes off, go find your manager and ask for something new to do.
Better? Work with your manager to establish such clarity about your goals and the expectations about your contributions in your job that you never have to ask your manager what to do. You move on to the next task at your discretion. (Perhaps you may never play on your phone at all. It’s conceivable.)
4. Make a List to Prioritize and Plan
Part of self-discipline is knowing what to do and then doing it. When you’re not used to behaving in a disciplined manner, you will sometimes struggle to come up with your next activity. Start your day with a list of tasks that you need to accomplish.
Having a list can make you feel more in control–not less. You may think a list of 20 tasks will be overwhelming, but it’s much better than not knowing how many tasks you have to do. Plus, checking them off on completion can bring you satisfaction.
If you have a longer-term goal, you can also use a list to enumerate the steps you believe will achieve it. These steps may change as you progress, and they will likely fill slots on your daily list.
5. Make Choices in Advance to Minimize Distractions
If you want to pay attention in meetings, leave your phone at your desk—don’t even put it in your pocket. You can’t pay attention to pings and messages if it’s not there to distract you.
If you want to become more self-disciplined about food, ask the waiter to box up half your meal before they put it in front of you or choose always to eat just half of the sandwich.
If your workplace is full of distractions, such as chatty co-workers, find a quiet place to work away from your desk.
If you want to manage your email better, decide how many emails you’ll respond to before doing something else, whether it is five, 10, or all of them. Just decide before the situation presents itself, and you’ll find it easier to remain steadfast in the face of temptation.
Or, set aside a reasonable time on your calendar to respond to emails daily—don’t use it like instant messenger. A system of labels or folders will eliminate the bulk of the nice-to-reads.
Special Note: If you want your children to grow up self-disciplined, you must set boundaries for their acceptable behavior and fiercely enforce them. As self-disciplined adults, they will thank you.
6. Make Use of Technology
Technology makes people flighty—they can spend enormous amounts of time on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, not to mention playing games and texting friends. However, technological tools can also help you build self-discipline. It’s okay to “cheat” and have your phone ban you from playing Wordle after you’ve played for your daily 15 minutes.
If your goal is a fit lifestyle with a healthy weight, regular exercise, serious walking, and restful sleep each night, trackers exist to help you. Fitbit, for example, helps you track all of this. While you need to record some of the data, Fitbit connects with other devices to automatically capture, as one example of its capabilities, your weight from a synchronized scale.
7. Recognize Your Limited Temptation Capabilities
If a self-disciplined life were easy, everyone would practice self-discipline. But it’s not. However, every temptation you avoid improves your ability to avoid the next temptation. So, for example, when you make decisions in advance, you reduce your temptations. This also holds true for decisions in your personal life.
If you want to stay sober and professional at the office holiday party, decide in advance that you will strictly limit your alcohol intake. If you want to eat healthily, go grocery shopping when you’re full, and don’t buy candy bags.
Removing temptations from your life can make a huge difference. If your cupboard always has your favorite snack, you must resist all day. But, if you can resist the urge to buy them during your weekly shopping trip, that temptation lasts the 30 minutes you’re in the store, and then you’re done with it.
If you know you will have difficulty talking with your manager about a particular topic without rolling your eyes and saying something inappropriate back, plan what you’ll say in advance. Then, schedule the discussion for the beginning of the day when you have the most stamina against temptation.
8. Remember That Failure Is Always Part of Succeeding
Many people want to become self-disciplined. Then, on day two, they make a mistake in their hoped-for routine and give up. You will not become perfectly disciplined overnight, so expect some failure to happen along the way. But if you plan for failure and understand that you will fail occasionally, one mistake won’t derail your whole plan and deter your success.
At the same time, when you experience success, you need to celebrate. You accomplished all of the five goals you set for yourself this week. Reward yourself and celebrate in a way that won’t undermine your success. Say that your goal is to gain new clients for your business. A bad reward would be to take three days off from prospecting. A good reward might entail lunch at a fancy restaurant with a friend.
Special Note: Don’t worry about perfection in all areas at once or about failure.
Start small and build momentum. Choose one area to focus on improving this week. Make steady progress, and as you develop self-discipline in that area, you’ll gain the confidence and motivation to tackle bigger challenges. This consistent effort, even in small doses, will lead to lasting change. By mastering this area, you’ll be well on your way to building long-term self-discipline and a more empowered you.
