You may have encountered some army official, who usually brags about their life, how punctual and disciplined they are, and how they maintain the equilibrium of their life. Discipline is one of the keys to success, but it’s harder to adapt. Discipline is the ability to control one’s behavior and actions in order to achieve any goal. People who live their lives with discipline have more chances of success than others. People who are lazy and inconsistent in nature always suffer when it comes to hard work. Discipline helps in fields such as school, work, office, and even in personal relationships. There are so many examples of daily life where disciplined individuals succeed for example a student who watches Netflix a lot also scores in academics.
The Role Of Goal Setting In Self-Discipline
There are two types of discipline: Self-discipline and external discipline. Self-discipline is the ability to control one’s own behavior and emotions. This skill can be developed through practice. The way to develop self-discipline is by setting clear and realistic goals and breaking the goal into steps or levels.
External discipline is using external influences to make anyone change their habits or behavior. External influences include rewards, praise, and punishment among others. One may fear punishment and try to behave or act in a disciplined way. Teachers and parents in order to develop skills in the personality of a child sometimes use punishment.
This article will cover the psychology of discipline as to why an individual wants to be a disciplined person, how to be a disciplined person and what are the tips for embracing discipline in one’s life and finally the role of discipline on an an individuals discipline.
What Is Self-Discipline?
Most of us have dreams and aspirations about things we want to accomplish or the type of person we want to be. Even if you don’t have a clear vision for yourself, you’re likely capable of many great things. You might even have talents or resources to make certain goals more attainable. However, it’s discipline that helps you take control of your life and drive the actions necessary to develop good habits, reach your goals, and become the best version of yourself.
But what exactly is discipline?
Discipline can be defined as making choices that are unpleasant in the short term but better for you in the long term.
These hard choices guide you toward your goals.
Unlike motivation (discipline from someone else—for instance, a motivational speaker or drill instructor—temporary influences that are unreliable and outside your control), self-discipline is consistent willpower that you exert over your mind and body enabling you to do what’s necessary to reach your goals despite your feelings or external influences.
The Dilemma of Discipline
We’d all like to believe that we have control over our own behavior, but the truth is that accessing our willpower is often a struggle. Often we’re at odds with ourselves: We want to achieve our long-term goals, but we also want to do what feels good right now. We might desire for long-term happiness, a healthy, slim physique, but we also want the 30-second happiness of devouring a silky lemon cupcake. We know we can’t have both, but that doesn’t stop us from wanting both.
In psychology, discipline is most commonly called “self-control.” Self-control is what allows us to override the tendency to choose immediate gratification in the interests of our long-term goals. In the human brain, self-control is governed by the prefrontal cortex. Some people are born with a larger, better developed prefrontal cortex than others, which makes a difference in their behaviors. When people with a larger prefrontal cortex think of saying “yes” to a second helping of dessert, their brains remind them that this is a poor idea, and they say “no” instead.
The rest of us have to contend with having what scientists call “one brain but two minds.” One mind caters to immediate gratification. The other mind delays gratification in the interest of achieving long-term goals. Our prefrontal cortex struggles to keep us focused on the long game, but when we are tired, distracted, stressed, or even mildly intoxicated, we tend to give in to immediate gratification.
When you see a well-maintained and disciplined person, you might think about how this person can be disciplined and what factors make them disciplined.
So, the psychology of disciplined persons works very differently, they have some positive qualities like:
1) Self-control:
Disciplined individuals have a good capacity for self-control. They resist skipping work, to get delayed, they work to control their temptations and urges, they work on their long-term goals and achieve them level by level which makes it easier for them to gain self-confidence.
2) Goal Orientation:
Disciplined individuals are seen as very goal-oriented. They have clear, unidirectional, and well-focused goals and also have enough attention power to work on those goals perfectly. This goal orientation helps them to stay focused and motivated.
3) Delayed gratification:
They show interest in long-term goals, but in a stage by stage manner, which means they forgo short-term rewards in order to attain long-term benefits. They are often focused working on the drawbacks at the initial level and hence improve the outcome.
4) Willpower:
Disciplined individuals often have will as their strength. They have enough will to start afresh and gather all the mental strength to start any challenging task easily.
5) Self-awareness:
Disciplined people are often self-aware about their strengths and weaknesses and this allows them to work on themselves effectively. This self-awareness helps them deal with their drawback and also helps them make adjustments accordingly.
Now, the question arises, how can an individual become disciplined? Following are some tips for including discipline as one of the skills in your personality or life.
1) Set clear goals:
If you have a zeal to achieve success then you should have clear and realistic goals. Get to know what you want to do with your goal. Why do you want to achieve it? It is psychologically proven that if an individual has a clue what they want to do with their life or what their goal is, they are more likely to stay focused and motivated.
2) Break down your goal into smaller steps:
Breaking down goals into smaller steps would make it easier for you to understand and manage the work. And with achieving each
small step you will get self-motivation to achieve another step. And these little motivations will help you to stay on track.
3) Create a plan:
Create a plan in which you have prepared what task you have to do in what period of time. Give yourself a deadline and work according to the plan. Your consistency is the key.
4) Reward yourself:
Rewarding yourself gives motivation, reward yourself whenever you achieve any bit, maintain consistency, etc. Discipline is not a fixed trait and no one is naturally born with this. This is initially guided by parents and teachers, but by learning the psychology behind this, one can also develop and strengthen the skill of discipline easily.
Strategies to Improve Your Discipline
While we can’t alter the fact that we have conflicting desires, we can learn strategies to minimize those conflicts.
Strengthen Connectivity With the Prefrontal Cortex
According to Anna Lembke, the author of Dopamine Nation, one way you can develop more discipline is by reinforcing the connection between your prefrontal cortex and the brain’s reward pathways through deliberate use of the prefrontal cortex.
To that end, she advises that you make an effort to think about the future. Lembke found that just thinking about what you want your life to look like 10 years down the road activates your prefrontal cortex, helping you gain perspective and prioritize long-term rewards over immediate gratification.
Introduce Reinforcements
When you exert discipline over yourself, you make choices that are unpleasant in the short term but better for you in the long term. In other words, you forego immediate gratification for a future reward, which requires sacrifice. Sacrifice is unpleasant, so you must find a way to mitigate it. This can be done by introducing reinforcements.
Reinforcements help maintain continued behavior by allowing you to experience a win after a certain action. They are especially useful when you are trying to form a “habit of avoidance.”
Habits of avoidance include things like not drinking alcohol for a month and not spending money on unnecessary items. The habit is one of simply not doing something you don’t want to do, so there is no real element of action that creates a sense of progress. Reinforcements can help make the behavior more satisfying.
- For example, each time you pass up buying an unnecessary item, you can transfer the money to a special account earmarked for something you want, like a vacation or leather boots.
- The satisfaction of watching your vacation or boot fund grow reduces the feelings of sacrifice in not buying something you don’t need.
Discipline and Habit Formation
In psychology, discipline or self-control is often discussed in the context of habit formation. Lack of self-control is believed to be one of the main reasons people fall off the track when trying to do anything hard to achieve a certain goal (e.g. exercising to lose weight). We begin a new behavior but struggle to follow through because it’s hard to keep up the discipline.
However, what we fail to realize is that habits are hard only in the beginning. Forming a habit takes more discipline than sustaining one. But when we exercise discipline, we’re training ourselves to act in a certain way. And when we do it long enough, the new behavior becomes routine and no longer requires discipline.
How long it takes to form a habit depends on the nature of the habit. Self-help advocates often assert that it takes 21 days to make a change. However, researchers at the University College of London determined that it takes about 66 days—easier behaviors take fewer days to establish and difficult ones take more.
So don’t quit too soon. Decide on the right habit and apply discipline, giving yourself enough time for it to become second nature. Remember that success is sequential, and build new habits one at a time, building on the success of the previous habit with each new one.
Final Words
If you want to master your mind, become healthier, and achieve your highest goals, practicing discipline will drive the actions necessary to do so. In psychology, discipline or self-control is considered a trainable attribute.
So, if you have trouble disciplining yourself, don’t despair. With practice, you can cultivate discipline and apply it to achieve your goals and effect lasting, positive changes in your life.
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