Alexander’s Struggles 13 – My Brutal Battle With Discipline And The Simple Tools I Use
Hello everybody,
A new week, new opportunities, and new experiences. Isn’t it amazing? We are alive, have everything to secure our survival and the opportunities for so much more. I hope that you all have a vision for the future. A goal that you work towards. And one of the most important tools that brings us closer to the goal is discipline. Because without getting things done, you will never move forward. Of course, you need to choose first what needs to be done. Therefore, you need to prioritize the tasks. For this post, I will assume that you prioritized and made SMART-Goals (Although, I got to admit that the whole process isn’t easy for me but I am getting better).
So, what now? Now, it’s simply doing what you chose to do. Isn’t it simple?
What? For you, it’s neither simple? Do you fail at doing it regularly? You also sit there and do nothing for hours, although, you know that it’s stupid and makes it even harder? But this thought intimidates you even more and that makes you curl up like a ball and watch mindlessly something?
If something comparable to this is going on in your head, then, I guess we have the same problem. We need to train our discipline. Everybody uses this word but what does it mean? In my opinion, it means doing the things that need to be done, no matter what the circumstances are.
It’s like a professional sports player. He or she goes to the training, no matter if it rains, snows, freezes, or the car breaks down. Here, the task is very clear: Going to the workout and training to become better at your sport.
However, they also break down the goals. They don’t go to the gym with the ambiguous goal of training. They split up their training into smaller workouts and then on the day they only have to do the workout that was planned.
So, we agreed that we prioritized and made SMART goals. Hence, we are at the same moment as our imaginary player. But why do we still fail sometimes?
I believe that’s where discipline comes in. The player trained his discipline to work out for many years. Habitually, often daily, he goes to get his workout. That made him disciplined. He trained his discipline and so can we.
Until now I found three ways that help me to become more disciplined. I used to eat healthier, work out regularly, and learn languages. However, now I am struggling to become more disciplined at doing things more structured for my future without a curriculum made for me. Anyway, without further ado, my three ways to become more disciplined.
First, decide on what you want to become more disciplined and why it’s important for you. Remember our player, he has a clear goal to become better at his sport, likely because he likes the sport and wants to become as good as his idol.
Second, break it down into small tasks that you can spread over the week. As our player breaks his training down into workouts, we need to break down our goal into small doable chunks (maybe using SMART goals).
Third, I believe this is the most important one, consistency. It doesn’t help to workout one time and then stop. This is strongly connected to the second tip, of breaking it down into smaller parts, but it’s so important that I had to take it separately. A great example is when I started to go running regularly. Instead of telling myself to run 4-5 kilometers, I started to tell myself that I win the run when I go out in my sports clothes and start running. Suddenly, I went running way more regularly and I broke all my records. Therefore, I believe that it’s crucial to do whatever you do regularly.
Discipline is consistency of action.
James C. Collins
So, I hope that you can now take the next goal that you want to reach, remember why you want to do it, break it down into small chunks and then consistently work on those small chunks.
Tell me if you have other methods to become more disciplined or for what you want to apply those steps next.
See you next time and wish you all the best,
Alexander
Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
Seneca