In life, all the rewards go to those who actually get things done. – James Skinner

So you have read Parts 1 and 2 of this success model, you knocked out your homework, and you are ready to take it to the next level. This will be the hardest stage of your rise to success – gaining discipline

The Definition of Discipline

Most people associate discipline with something negative (especially since the word discipline is often used in place of the word punishment) but in reality discipline is the only way that you will be able to go from aspiration to actualization. Its time to change the way you think about discipline.

Discipline means doing something over and over again, day in and day out despite pain, adversity, and discomfort. Discipline is getting out of bed at 5am to go to the gym routinely. Discipline means devoting an hour to writing that book routinely. Discipline means practicing your skill set routinely, be it doing hair, martial arts, or DJ-ing. Notice that one word continues to pop up in association with discipline: routine

Discipline is a Practice

Most people look at a military unit marching or conducting combat drills and marvel at their precision and at the ability of a large group of people to move as one. This level of performance is the result of performing these drills over and over again, day after day. In the military the goal of discipline is ultimately to condition behaviors so they occur automatically without external supervision, and this should be your goal as well. The whole point of discipline is to set up routines that support goal accomplishment.

Lets say you are one of those people that sleep until early afternoon and you want to condition yourself to wake up early. To accomplish this you can take two approaches, the easy way or the hard way:

Hard Way: Set your alarm clock for 5am and force yourself to get up

Easy Way: Start by waking up 15 minutes earlier than you usually do. After a week of doing this successfully, try waking up 15 minutes earlier than what you did in the previous week. So now you are waking up a full hour earlier than you used to. Repeat this process until you’re up before the sun. Taking a gradual and repetitive approach to discipline is far less painful and easier to maintain than trying force yourself into it.

After awhile, waking up at a certain time (even on the weekends) becomes a routine for you, and using that extra time to work on some goals will motivate you to continue waking up early. Its a cycle of success that builds on itself.

You will slip up along the way (because you are human, right?), but discipline is a practice, it must be worked at and maintained despite your feelings. There will be mornings you dont want to go to the gym, there will be evenings when you would rather go out with friends than work on a goal that you have had for years but never accomplished. Having the discipline to ignore your internal whining and get it done will mean the difference between writing that book or having it as one of your 2015 New Years Resolutions.

3 Tools to Maintain Discipline

Self-discipline refers to the training that one gives one’s self to accomplish a certain task or to adopt a particular pattern of behavior, even though one would really rather be doing something else. The pinnacle of self-discipline is when you reach the point that when you make a conscious decision, it’s virtually guaranteed you’ll follow through on it. Self-discipline is like a muscle. The more you train it, the stronger you become. The less you train it, the weaker you become. When you discipline yourself to do what is hard, you gain access to a realm of results that are denied everyone else. – Steve Pavlina

A Schedule I plan on doing a full post on keeping a schedule late on, but for now I will say that a schedule is the most powerful tool for enforcing discipline in your actions. I set my schedule for postings on this site at every Tuesday and Thursday instead of just posting whenever I feel like it. Doing so ensures that the work gets done and keeps me from wandering. One of the biggest enemies of good discipline is poor schedule planning, so before you go to bed every night, set your schedule for the next day (doing that is yet another example of a behavior conditioning routine)

Social Circle This includes members of your family.  Once you set a new goal and put together a schedule to accomplish that goal, tell every single one of your friends and family about both the goal and your schedule to achieve it. They will constantly ask you about it, remind you of your promise, and be ready to clown you once you stray. Having other people holding you accountable will help you stay the course. In addition, surround yourself with people that are doing the same thing as you. Once I decided to hit the gym, I set 5am as my gym time because thats when all the serious bodybuilders would be there. Having them in my social circle kept me motivated, gave me insight into what they had done to get results, and kept me disciplined during training. If your goal is to become a good public speaker, join toastmasters. If your goal is to learn how to dance, kick it with other dancers. You get the idea.

Motivation If you havent already, go back to the first step of the success cycle and read up on motivation. Motivation is a tool that will get you moving in the right direction. But understand, it’s not your motivation that will produce results — it’s your action! Motivation simply drives you to maintain your discipline (for instance, “I am motivated to getting a better body, so I will maintain my 5am gym schedule”)

Homework

• Schedule a particular task in the morning and one in the evening. The task should not take more than 15 minutes, and be related to one of your goals.

• Wait for the exact scheduled time.

• When the schedule time is due, start the task. Focus on this one task and complete it before moving on to something else. Give that one task 99% of your focus and effort and then be done with it.

• Stick to the schedule for at least two months.

Remember, discipline is something that is gained over a long period of time. Dont lose heart if you slip up a few times, because the advances that you will make over the long term will more than make up for it. Stay the course and hustle hard!

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