Building Discipline

I hope you had a delicious holiday weekend!  (We celebrated the Thanksgiving holiday in the U.S.)  It was a turkey day of many firsts for me – first time I tried deep-fried turkey (very yum!), first time I made stuffing and cranberry sauce from scratch, and a gluten and dairy-free apple pie for me.

 

Friends often ask me if it’s hard to eat gluten and diary free all the time.  Most of the time it’s not.  “But doesn’t it take a lot of discipline?”  Yes, it does.

 

Self-discipline is like a muscle.  You build it by working it out.  Thankfully, I had already built up super duper food-discipline muscles from what my friend called “The Can’t-Eat-It diet.” (It was the Anti-Candida diet.)  So a gluten and dairy-free diet feels like an easy-breezy walk in the park in comparison.

 

Truth is, we can all use more self-discipline in our businesses and our lives.  Self-discipline is your ability to take action, even when you don’t feel like it.  It’s what allows you to get-up earlier, to exercise everyday, to stay focused on your task at hand, to clean out your inbox and clear-off your desk at the end of each day, to follow-through on your plans and launch big projects, and to turn-off the TV and get to bed at a reasonable hour.

 

Think about this.  I mean, REALLY think about it.  How would your life be different if you consistently took action, regardless of how you were feeling at the moment?  Daily exercise, meditation, writing, making phone calls, taking classes… whatever it may be that you would like to take action on – your life could be completely different. When consistent, even the smallest changes have the ability to completely change the trajectory of your life.

 

When you practice self-discipline, it expands your comfort zone, builds your confidence and strengthens your follow-through.  Yup, by following through and taking action, you increase your ability to follow through and take action.  Just like it takes muscles to build muscles, it takes self-discipline to build self-discipline.

 

Need a little kick start?  Try these tips.

• Emotionally connect with the consequence.  What would you lose out on if you don’t decide right now to develop more self-discipline around _______ (fill-in the blank)?  What opportunities would you miss?  How would you feel?
• Emotionally connect with the reward.  What would you gain if you build amazing self-discipline muscles?  How would you feel?
• Start where you are.  It takes times to build your self-discipline muscles, so start somewhere between realistic goal and a stretch goal.  You’ve got to push your boundaries, but don’t want to set yourself up for failure either.
• Start anywhere. Studies show that strengthening your self-discipline in one area of your life increases the likely-hood that other areas of your life will also improve.  So even if it’s just making your bed everyday, it can get the ball rolling.

 

Be unstoppable.