Personal discipline: A success key

It may be difficult to find anybody whom if asked would say he doesn’t have principles. The phrase, “I am a man of principles” is one that has become a regular cliché today whether the speaker knows what it means or lives it out. One eminent question that arises from this is, as there are […]

It may be difficult to find anybody whom if asked would say he doesn’t have principles. The phrase, “I am a man of principles” is one that has become a regular cliché today whether the speaker knows what it means or lives it out. One eminent question that arises from this is, as there are so many ‘principled’ people imminent, why are we unable to keep up a principled and self disciplined life style even when we see a parallel and clear distinction between good and wrong? More often than not, we still prefer to cut corners and go the ‘easier’ way. The most obvious answer is that we lack discipline. When we fail to develop personal discipline the likelihood is to cut corners and cheat to measure up.

When we hear developing personal discipline we are likely to think in the line of grueling efforts, long struggles and doing things we really do not want to do. The truth of it all is that, through self discipline you can achieve and make progress with those targets we have earmarked for ourselves. It is one of the most important success skills we can develop.

One of the major reasons we lack personal discipline is our desire for an immediate and often short term gratification. We are in too much hurry to see the outcome of something in the future and want immediate results. We therefore, concentrate on our immediate pleasure or pain rather than the long term effect.

Just like the Chinese who have a reputation for long term plans that go into decades before materialising, we too could copy that. One significant thing is when these plans materialize, they are for life and immensely beneficial to their society and younger generations; not necessarily to the generation that set it in motion.

To be able to live by principles and standards we set for ourselves, it is important for us to start by developing a comfortable level of personal discipline and then graduate on to higher levels once the previous level can be regarded as successful.  

The ability to mentally project oneself is elementary to developing a successful personal discipline. As a student, you have the choice to work hard and excel or gamble with your education and fail. Gambling and fun seem the easiest choice because there is immediate satisfaction which unfortunately could be at the expense of a long term failure.

Therefore, it is important for us to think long term and future. Our decisions today will have an effect on us some way or the other in the future because these are basically paving the road we will travel in years to come.

Once we have achieved this, our next step is to plan and set desirable goals to accompany our plan. With a plan comes implementation and documentation. Planning will help keep us on track and know when we are going astray or off limit. When we set a goal, we set them in motion and every time our revisit them we can see whether we are making progress or defaulting. This way we keep track of what we are doing. Anything that is tracked and measured gets achieved. We should ask ourselves on a daily, weekly or monthly basis what we intend to achieve at the end of that period. This simple question can help on keep us on track.

As much as we can, let’s not do what we are likely to derive pleasure from until we have accomplished the tough tasks.

Let’s create a mantra for ourselves. Like ‘With this success, comes the next’. This could be a motivation to go on to more challenging areas.

Discuss our goals with other people who will encourage and not dampen our spirit. Speak to positive minds that will prod and support us no matter how bleak the end of your goal seems.

After all said and done our habits and the system we choose to operate in will make all the difference.

According to the great philosopher Aristotle as quoted by Jill Estill, motivational speaker and writer, “We are the product of what we repeatedly do”. According to Estill, “Habits do not even take work. You just do them. I suspect you do not even have to think to brush your teeth. You just do it. It is a habit.” If we build a system and operate an efficient organised way of doing things these will help you accomplish our goals.

Best selling author and motivational guru, John C. Maxwell says, “People who desire to improve their character and their chances of success must be disciplined themselves when it comes to time, energy, goals and moods.”

Nobody is born self disciplined. It discipline can be learned and we can choose to be self disciplined or not. It is not easy but it is what will make us a success.