Self-Discipline - I resist
Self-discipline is about using personal tools such as restraint, consistency and focus in order to work towards a goal. It can feel like self-denial or that you are missing out on good stuff, but it is actually a very useful tool when looking at goals that require a small amount of effort over a period of time. Examples of this are saving for a house, a wedding, a new car, providing for children or booking a holiday; keeping to a budget; losing weight or implementing a health training program.
One main challenge against self-discipline can be the need for a constant feed of joy, positivity and happiness to keep your emotions up. Self-discipline can be draining for joy, happiness and energy levels. Having discipline often means removing fun things from your life, eating less, spending less, less treats or less going out. Discipline can cause tiredness, frustration and depression, but some people find satisfaction and a sense of achievement in being disciplined. The best skill is finding ways of including joy within self-discipline to keep things fun and interesting. You can do this with mindset work.
The benefits of self-discipline
You can accomplish long-term big goals that involve small steps across a long span of time
A big goal can seem unachievable and overwhelming to think about achieving. Spreading it out means it’s more manageable.
Achieve success with less perceived effort, strain and energy
Making the steps towards success as part of your everyday routine, can make the energy required to meet the goal seem less draining. If you don’t notice the effort then you won’t want to procrastinate or feel drained.
Achieving success is more likely as you have a plan/schedule that you are on course for
Taking action along a planned journey in your life, towards a goal, can make it achievable rather than aimlessly dreaming about it.
Self-discipline is always helping you to achieve and maintain what is best for you
Discipline helps you focus on your success, growth and building energy, and helps remove things that waste your time, money and energy. If you are healthier, sleep better, eat better and look after yourself, you are more successful in other areas of your life.
Discipline helps you avoid drainage and wastage is your life and helps you find more efficient, cheaper alternatives
Having discipline might mean you avoid over spending or over eating. Last minute buying, unplanned spending or shopping in places where there are temptations or buy other things all mean that you may spend more than you need. You may save money by doing the same things a different, cheaper way. Maybe look at what you already have and can use rather than buying new. Discipline may mean that you monitor where you can save money. Are there cheaper alternatives or places where you can get the same thing for less. Look at what you need, rather than what you want.
Ways to be more disciplined
Planning and Tracking
Planning is a key tool for making progress through self-discipline. Many goals need planning to design and track a journey, to see how the small steps will lead to future progress. Planning is about making sure that you do the steps towards your goal without ending up doing steps which contradict your goal. Tracking is a key skill to keep you on the plan that you have created, checking your progress is as you expect and making adjustments if needs be.
You may need planning and tracking to support discipline in these examples:-
Planning and budgeting a food shop and meal planning (for health or finance), so that you only buy a limited list of healthy food and don’t have to fill meal gaps with fattening takeaways, expensive meals out, calorie-laden supermarket sandwiches or snacks. Gaps in your food plan may mean you move towards places where there are other temptations, supermarkets where you buy other ‘extras’ or places where you are tempted to swap your sandwich for a pizza or add on extra food.
Extra food = cost and calories.
Budgeting your income and tracking your spending so that you have regular savings towards a goal and can identify where major un-necessary drains may be.
Habits
Creating steps towards your goal, as part of your daily routine, rather than a super effort means that you don’t feel drained by making a conscious effort and don’t feel that you have to remember to include your steps in your daily life. Progress will happen effortlessly as you encompass the steps of your journey as part of your life, un-noticed. Habits are one way to make progress feel easy and require less mental concentration.
Avoiding temptation or opposite influences
When you are trying to create change, sometimes you are on track, you are disciplined but that when challenges arise. Challenges can come in many ways. Temptation, saboteurs, jealousy or competition.
Temptations
Do you embrace situations or friends that still love to behave in the same way that you are trying to resist or cut out?
Are there still areas in your life where you place yourself near the very things you are trying to avoid? eg. You cannot give up alcohol if you are still spending time with your partying mates or work in a bar.
Saboteurs
People don’t like change and ironically its when you seem to be succeeding that others may get jealous or your success, or worried about your change, and try to tempt you back to your old ways.
They may seem to be nice by tempting you with nice things, a night out, a meal out, new things to buy, anything that is opposite of what you are trying to achieve.
They may also passively fail to support you in your goal of being more disciplined or make you feel left out if you don’t join them and forget about your discipline.
Jealousy
Others can become jealous of your success with self-discipline and can find all sorts of ways to pressure you back to dropping your discipline. People use manipulation techniques like fear, obligation, guilt, unworthiness, shame and hopelessness to get you back to where you were or to give up your journey to success.
Fear
They may threaten you with consequences if you continue with self-discipline, they may highlight other consequences that you may worry about eg. Your partner will leave you if you lose weight
Obligation
They may point out that your self-discipline means that you are not owing others back for what they have given you or neglecting responsibilities eg. Your kids aren’t being looked after properly because you are at the gym so much.
Guilt
They may make out that you are not giving to others what they need or that others are receiving negative consequences from your discipline. They may make you feel bad by refusing the thing they want to give you that breaks your discipline rules.
Unworthiness
They may say that you ‘know’ that you don’t have what it takes to finally succeed. They may bring up examples of your historic failures or how you don’t deserve or should expect the success that you are working towards.
Shame
They may make out that you are being selfish, mean or unkind by being more disciplined. That you haven’t thought about the effects on others.
Hopelessness
They may try to make you focus on negatives such as… your success won’t last long, that you won’t achieve your main goal despite your recent success or you are kidding yourself by imagining that you will eventually succeed such a big task. They may highlight the things you are missing out on.
Competition
Some people see your success as a challenge to their own worth. Are you trying to steal their spot as the stylish one, the thin one, the fit one or the financially well off one?
Your success makes them feel bad and worried about their own worth, self-image and achievements. They may try any of the techniques above to get you to back down from pursuing success or they may be more passive and simply ghost you out of their lives as someone who inadvertently makes them feel bad about themselves.
Find ways to get that ‘fun’ feeling
Look for ways not to miss out, but to change the way you do things, so that you get the same feeling but in a different way. Ways to do this can be:
Save money going out for meals, takeaways or nights out: have friends over and cook a meal instead, do home-made cocktails or dinner parties. It’s cheaper but just as much fun to host.
Look at the treats you buy yourself. Is there ways you can make these yourself, or swap for something healthier or cheaper? Morning lattes, shop bought sandwiches, could these be healthy home-made alternatives instead?
Do you need treats or is it just habit to buy an extra nail varnish treat when at the shops or to eat crisps when watching a film. Do you need new clothes or could you swap or buy second hand?
Is there another reason why you do certain things? Say you go for nights out, not for the fun of going out but to meet new friends. Could you meet friends and socialise another way?
Make exercise fun. You may be exercising more as part of a fitness or weight loss routine. Try to find ways to make it more enjoyable, rather than a chore.
Can you join a group and make more friends.
Can you time yourself and make it into a competition with yourself. Get a fitness watch and see if you can get that steps goal.
Listen to music to make things more interesting. Music is great for activating feelings.
Find a sport that you enjoy.
Find ways to incorporate more exercise into your day, can you walk or cycle more?
Is there a treat that you can get after you have your workout?
Avoiding drainage and wastage
Look at where your biggest spends are? Are they valid or could they be cheaper? Could you cut things out or swap to another supplier.
Do you over-spend on food? Do you buy more than you need and end up throwing food away.
Do you have a spending budget? Do you track what you spend and if you can afford your current spending habits.
Ways to avoid drainage or wastage:-
Use up, rework, swap or sell what you already have, rather than always buying new. Claw back some of what you have already spent by selling what you don’t use anymore.
Make a meal plan so that you only buy what you need. Make shopping lists and only buy what you have on the list.
Create an income budget tracker. See what you actually spend versus what you should spend if you want to spend within your limits or leave some spare for savings. Set up automatic payments so that you don’t waste mental energy or forget to action payments.
Make a time planner so that you know how much of your time gets used up and for what. Look at what drains your time? Is it valid? Do you have relationships or situations that drain your time un-necessarily?
Summary of challenges to being disciplined
If you are struggling to be more disciplined then you may be dealing with any of these:-
Dealing with active saboteurs, jealous rivals or those fearful of your change. Resisting manipulation from others.
Look at who supports you and who tries to tempt you out of being disciplined. Embrace more time with supporters and not challengers. Be aware of who tries to undermine you and how.
Dealing with painful feelings from those who may reject or abandon you for being more successful.
Sometimes we have to let people go when we change, it’s a natural part of life and moving on. If someone rejects us for being a better version of ourselves, do we want them in our lives?
Your own reluctance to avoid tempting environments, or make changes to your behaviour or friendship groups.
How dedicated are you to results? Is it really what you want? If yes, remind yourself of the benefits of success or consequences of failure.
The need for joy – failing to incorporate fun into your discipline, failing to make discipline into an un-noticed habit.
Look through some of the ways to keep joy in your life and create habits to be naturally disciplined.
Boredom with routine
You need to make it interesting, make games, competitions, think of the final goals you want to achieve and form social support bonds in line with where you want to be. Keep it interesting with change, games and fun.
Stress or other challenges such as illness, busyness, extra responsibility, change in circumstances, grief and loss.
There will always be unexpected challenges in life. Be kind to yourself, sometimes you will fall off the path or be forced to refocus for a while. Sometimes life’s new routines and responsibilities mean you cannot be as disciplined as you want to be and that’s okay.