Most of the time, your inability to progress and grow is due to a lack of self-discipline. Self-discipline makes about 80-85% of growth with the remaining 15-20% encompassing your vision and goals. Most people struggle with personal growth because they reverse the cycle. They channel the majority of their time planning and coming up with visions and goals instead of committing to achieving them. An intelligent man I know, Dr. Charles Cofie Hackman once said that the greatest enemy of personal progress and success is self. Yes, you are your greatest enemy.
My Greatest Enemy – Building self discipline
You are the reason for your lack of progress. Ask yourself why you always feign tired anytime you have to put in work to achieve your goals but are overly energized when it comes to inconsequential things. You can spend all day watching a movie, chatting with a friend, playing a game, and scrolling on social media. But can you put that much effort into something that will improve your life be it, family, business, career, or academics. You sit by your work for 15-30 mins, and you are looking for an excuse to run off. By now it has sunk in that you are your greatest enemy.
In this journey of growth, the first and most important thing you need to do is to discipline yourself to be able to commit to the journey. You need to let go of negative habits and take up positive habits. The big question then is how do you develop self-discipline so that this journey can be successful and fruitful? There are dozens of information outlining ways of developing self-discipline. Let’s rehearse a few for the new year.
- Self-awareness involves identifying your strengths and weaknesses. Most people think acknowledging your flaws or weaknesses makes you vulnerable. The truth is, it gives you a clear perspective of where to channel your energy and focus to develop. Weaknesses are not encountered in areas where you can exhibit self-control. It is hence imperative to acknowledge your flaws so you can work at overcoming them. With consistent effort, you can develop the discipline to shy from attitudes feeding your weakness and channel energy to become better.
- Prioritization helps you outline what is worth your time and what is not. Set clear, specific goals and have an execution plan. This will help remove temptations and distractions. A priority list will also help you challenge your excuses. You tend to have excuses for the most essential things in your life. Truthfully, these important things are necessary for your growth but because they may be uncomfortable and challenging, you tend to run away from them. Taking charge and control over your mind always helps to limit excuses. Try restricting yourself from perceiving the tasks as challenging. If possible, divide them into exciting bits so your mind perceives them as easy. If you can conquer your mindset, you will stop running away and face tasks head-on. Also, having a priority list especially in view will help you to challenge the excuses and also help you delay gratification. Decide to designate the smallest amount of time even if it’s 5-10mins every day to work on projects. Before long you will be able to pick up with the amount of time you designate to this project and the results will come gushing in.
- Consistency is all about repetition and repetition comes with improvement and eventually establishes habit. Executing important tasks and goals can be daunting and challenging and over time becomes difficult to execute. To avoid this hurdle, it’s necessary to properly infuse tasks into daily routines. Once you start working on these tasks repetitively, you become conversant with them to a point where you stop seeing them as uncomfortable and challenging. Exhibiting daily self-control is not an attitude anyone is born with but rather it is a learned and acquired attitude. Hence, going at it daily will ensure that it becomes embedded in your usual routine and habits. For instance, if you need to incorporate reading into your life but find it challenging, try reading a paragraph/page/chapter of a book every day. If you can do this consistently for 21days, it might just become a new habit since it’s widely purported that doing something consistently for 21days turns it into a habit.
- Try as much as possible not to drag decision-making. Decision-taking is part of our everyday life. These decisions take the majority of your time due to the vast number of choices you have. The longer you drag them, the more confused you get and the easier it becomes for you to procrastinate. Truly, some decisions require a lot of time. Always thinking about decisions ahead of time can aid in making informed decisions. Instead of you waking up on Monday morning and getting confused about what to wear, why don’t you decide on that on Sunday. You can even pick up clothes for the whole week, so you don’t have to think about that every other day. This will even clear your mind and schedule for you to do some equally important things. Try as much as possible to practice “advanced decision making” so as not to be overwhelmed with choices. This will reduce the tendency to procrastinate key projects and tasks because you don’t know what to do.
- Having people in your life that you are accountable to goes a long way to develop self-discipline. If you respect someone, you try as much as possible to prove yourself to them. Hardly will you want to disappoint them or let them presume you as a failure. Having a mentor or friend you are accountable to will push you to your limit to achieve all the things you want to do, especially those that they are previewed to.
You need to know that developing self-discipline is not a day, week, month, or year task. It is a lifelong journey. It is not about developing some superpowers or becoming a superman. You just have to be patient with yourself and take it a day at a time. Just be sure of your commitment to it and gradually you will marvel at how much progress you have made and the amazing changes you have effected in your life. Always remember that self-discipline is a learned and acquired attitude. You need to work it consistently to be able to keep it.
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” In this journey of growth, the first and most important thing you need to do is to discipline yourself to be able to commit to the journey. You need to let go of negative habits and take up positive habits. The big question then is how do you develop self-discipline so that this journey can be successful and fruitful?”
