Essential skills in life: Self-discipline
“Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.” ― Abraham Joshua Heschel
We live in a comfortable world. If you are reading this, you probably have a nice life. You have a roof over your head, you eat regular meals, you have a nice set of clothes. You could say that your life is good.
Because we live a good life, we are exposed to excessive behaviours. We eat too much, we spend too much time on social media, we sleep too much. We get comfortable with what we have and give all the work to a future self that, guess what?, will do the same.
Most of us don’t have the discipline to get things done. Or the self discipline to say no. We know that sometimes that the extra burger that we are about to eat, will hurts us, we know that we should get out of bed, but we lie to ourselves that we will get ready in time. We know all these things, but we don’t do it. Because we lack the discipline to do it.
Discipline and self-discipline are two different things. While discipline means the ability of one to follow the rules, self discipline is about control of oneself. Self discipline is about creating good habits, creating behaviours that brings us closer to our goals.
Why is self discipline important?
One might think that self discipline, is about being harsh on yourself. To be strict to you and be like a little robot, doing the same things all the time. I hear all the time “I’m a free spirit, I do the things that I want to do, when I want to do them”. And this is great, but the question is, are all those things that you do on instinct helpful?
Because there is freedom in discipline, too. The discipline you’ll help you live your life by your own rules. Doing the things that you want to do. It’s about going deep into your values and follow your own road.
We live in a world full of temptations and information. Each day we see commercials after commercial and we think we need to buy this and that to feel special. But, in reality, we don’t need all those things. Because we have our own story to tell.
And this is why self discipline is important. Because without discipline we will just wander around, like a ship without a helm or sails.
How to train your self discipline?
It might be hard to start this. If you aren’t disciplined person, you should start small.
Make your bed in the morning. It’s a mundane task, but it will do wonders for you. While researching for this post, I found a speech of a US Marine Admiral, regarding making the bed.
Make small commitments. Let’s say that you want to change the way you eat. Start by buying more vegetables than meat, for example. Make a commitment to yourself that you will eat an apple a day.
Build a chain. Self discipline is about making habits. To create a habit you have to that thing each day. So start doing the things you want to improve each day. You want to exercise? Start by doing a push-up each day. Move to two push-up when you feel ready.
Just do it. Don’t hesitate. I always believe that we humans have all the tools to achieve everything in life that we need. But we need discipline to do it. Because if we let our mind wander around, if we let the world around us dictate what to feel or what to do, we will never be happy.
I think self-discipline is something, it's like a muscle. The more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. Daniel Goldstein
This is Day 15 of the 30 days writing challenge during January 2017 launched by @dragosroua. If you want to join the challenge, here's the introductory article.
Essential skills in life is a series of articles regarding skills that I consider everyone should try to develop them. Some of them I have, some of them I'm working on. Please follow me @sstefan if you want to check the next post of the series.
Good post. Bless