Discipline - critical for success

People seem rationale and sensible one moment, but may seem irrational the next. The fact is that the emotional mind is far quicker than the rational mind. Individual feelings, fears, passions, and longings are quintessential guides and everyone needs to connect with them both as individuals and as groups.

The fact that human beings are emotional creatures by nature, is often ignored at great cost. You should never underestimate the magnitude of these forces that can reinforce complacency and resist change.

A sense of self-awareness and an ability to weather the emotional storms that life provides, rather than being slaves to those emotions has been praised as a virtue since the very beginning of civilization.

To exercise care and thought in leading a life tempered with balance and wisdom instead of emotion is a worthy goal.

We speak of business discipline being a critical success factor for any business. Organizations have policies, norms, processes and systems; all meant to bring about the controls needed to be solid, fair and consistent.

Self-discipline is critical to achieve success in life and it’s a major competitive advantage and discipline affects nearly any facet of our day-to-day lives. Absence of self-discipline gives rise to failure.

All religions advocate good discipline as the foundation for self improvement. Self-discipline is the ability to force yourself to take the desired action regardless of your emotional state.

Emotionally driven actions only take you down the wrong path; it leads to waste of money, time and energy. Giving into temptation can ruin one’s life.

Reward your successes

Inculcating the right disciplines is a long process. It needs patience, focus and commitment. First, learn to do everything in moderation, if you overspend and then you want to cut back, don’t simply state you are going to cut back or stop overspending at once, this only results in frustration and failure.

Rather, think about the rewards you will get by reducing expenditure. Write down in your diary all the constructive aspects of your intention. This will provide the justification for self-discipline. Take one at a time and give yourself a deadline to change all or most of it.

If you do fail to meet your deadlines, lecture to yourself and then keep going forward, don’t waste time wondering why or how or think that it’s too difficult. Promise yourself that you will do it somehow and go ahead and try again with greater mind power.

Keep a record of how you succeed with your determination and reward yourself when you have remained self-disciplined.

It’s okay to punish yourself for failing but you have to reward yourself for the good too.