Get It Together! The Art of Self-Discipline & Its Impact On Your Relationships
What are the chances that you still execute on your plans and goals even when you don’t feel like it or are lacking motivation?
If you are like most people, executing on tasks that you don’t feel like working on, despite their importance, feels like scaling a wall whose height is equivalent to just how much you’re dreading that task.
In this blog, you'll learn why becoming a more self-disciplined individual will not only change the outcomes in your life for the better but will also create a positive impact on your relationships.
What is Self-Discipline?
Self Discipline is your ability to get yourself to take action regardless of your emotional state. The pinnacle of self-discipline is when you reach a point that when you make a conscious decision, it’s virtually guaranteed that you will follow through on it. Imagine what you could accomplish if you could simply get yourself to follow through on your best intentions, no matter what.
Your intentions won’t become manifest unless you have the self-discipline to take action on your conscious decisions and intentions. Self-discipline is a major personal-development tool available to you at any time. In and of itself, self-discipline is unmatched in its effectiveness within the domain of problems that it can be used to solve.
The Most Effective Tool in Your Tool-Box
If you struggle with self-discipline, it’s important to realize that the problems that it can solve in your life are some of the most pressing and important to you. It can empower you to reach any desired outcome. It can wipe out procrastination, disorganization, and ignorance. When combined with goal-setting, planning, and your passion, the outcomes you produce when you’ve been honing in on building your self-discipline can be absolutely unparalleled in comparison to any other time - and for that reason, it’s worth it.
“Growing your self-discipline is a process similar to weight training to grow your muscles. It’s best done methodically and requires patience for the process.”
How to build your Self-Discipline
Self-discipline is like a muscle. The more you train it, the stronger you become. The less you train it, the weaker you are. However, it is necessary to undergo a progressive weight training process to become stronger. Lifting much less than one is capable so as not to stress the muscles will keep you where you are. Whereas lifting much more than you are capable of will likely result in burnout and injury.
Dump Your Comfort Zone, but Stay Out of the Danger Zone
Similarly, the basic method to build self-discipline, is to tackle challenges that you can successfully accomplish but are near your limits of resistance. These challenges are not in your comfort zone, but they also don’t represent certain failure. Progressive training of both your body and your self-discipline means that once you succeed, you increase the challenge. Similarly, if you fail to challenge yourself in life, you won’t gain any more self-discipline. If you challenge yourself too much, you’ll become discouraged and burned out.
Most people are very weak in their level of self-discipline. However, it’s a mistake to push yourself too hard when trying to build self-discipline. You’re almost certain to fail if you attempt to transform your life overnight by setting dozens of new goals for yourself and expecting yourself to start following through consistently starting tomorrow. That’s not how you successfully install new habits or exercise your self-discipline muscle. If you’re very undisciplined right now, you can still use what little discipline you have to build more by taking it slow - start with one thing at a time!
The more disciplined you become - the easier life gets!
You’ll find that challenges that initially seemed impossible or very difficult for you will become much easier and lighter over time - leaving you with the capacity to take on new challenges to exercise your self-discipline muscle. Simply start by looking at where you are now and aim to get better as you move forward in a consistent practice of self-discipline. Yes, self-discipline is a practice!
Self-Discipline² - the Compounding Effect
Seek to raise the bar just a little each week and month. Your effort toward building self-discipline has exponential benefits that compound. You not only get the intrinsic value of greater self-discipline, you also get the benefit of overcoming a series of very specific challenges in the process - and doing so improves your outcomes in every area of your life!
How does growing your self-discipline impact your relationships?
Once you start placing even a minor focus on growing your self-discipline, something shifts in your relationships. One thing you may notice right away is that some of your relationships or relationship potential will expand significantly while others will contract.
What do I mean by that? Well, think abut it..
What types of people do you think you’ll meet during 6am workouts at the gym?
What types of people do you think you’ll meet at personal development/healing seminars?
What types of people do you think you’ll meet in any other high-performance context that you could imagine yourself becoming a part of in order to advance your desired outcomes in personal wellness, lifestyle, or business?
The people you find in these contexts are also likely to be people who value living a disciplined lifestyle and could inspire you to stay motivated. Not to mention, you may just inspire someone in your life to do the same and you could support and help motivate one another.
As you grow and evolve, relationships either transform or complete.
Conversely, you may also see some relationships around you contract as people become uncomfortable at the sight of you getting your sh*t together and performing at a higher level than they are. You may wonder why they can’t just be happy for you. The simple answer is that your progress is a reminder to them of what they are not doing to improve their own lives. You created a ripple effect that is rocking their boat and they don’t benefit from your changes.
Perhaps your new self-discipline flex is keeping you away from late nights at the bar in exchange for early mornings at the gym - and that’s not convenient for them. This is valuable information that you need to know so that you can manage your relationship effort and boundaries accordingly.
Flexing your self-discipline muscle will not only show you who your real friends are (and who they aren’t), it’ll reveal you to yourself. It’ll fill your tank with self-confidence, encouragement, engagement, energy, enthusiasm, motivation, and passion like never before - and the right people will notice. So what are you waiting for? I promise it’s worth the work!
Stay Edgy-
Coach Oriana Guevára, MHR, MBA
Co-Founder, The Edgy Entrepreneur
© Edgy Entrepreneur, LLC. • 51 E. Jefferson St. #3292, Orlando, FL 32802 • www.edgyentrepreneurs.com
