Okay, so you decided you need to make a change in some aspect of your life– business, personal relationship, health. If you are like many people, you waited until staying the same produced enough unpleasantness that you believed you had little choice but to change. Perhaps a physical revealed high blood pressure. Your favorite pair of slacks seem to tight around the waste these days. When you play racquetball with your friends from work you seem to become short-winded sooner than they do. Or, this past holiday season, perhaps, the promotion-fairy didn’t leave anything in your brief case. Time to hit the road. But the road to success at any task is paved with potholes of temptation (“Boston cream pie? Well, just this once.”); potholes of distraction (“It’s an important ball game, I’ll study later.”); potholes of excuses (“There’s just not enough time.”); and potholes of pessimism (“My boss will give me a raise when Hell freezes over.”).
Navigating the road to any goal involves having the self-discipline necessary to steer a steady course and avoid those potholes. Self-discipline allows you to work systematically and progressively toward a goal without being derailed by the many road hazards that exist. You may be surprised at what you are capable of accomplishing by adequately disciplining yourself to perform in useful ways. Even those among you who consider yourselves extremely disorganized and unmotivated can become more disciplined in working toward goals. It begins with a commitment to change yourself in some fashion because that change will represent an improvement. Something of value that is beneficial to your overall well-being.
How can you become more self-disciplined?
1) Getting to know YOU. Self-discipline begins with discovering who you are. Make yourself comfortable in a quiet area and consider your strengths and weaknesses. What would you care to change? What would you like to be able to accomplish that has thus far eluded you? The purpose is to discover your purpose– where you are going in life. For example, “In two years at my job, I have received cost-of-living increases but not advanced. During the next year, I would like to acquire some managerial skills and become promoted.”
2) Step by step. A goal is an end-point. You can’t get there from here. At least not all at once. Can you eat an entire meal in one bite? Most human beings cannot. Dogs come close– but not people. People divide it into courses, and each course into mouthfuls, all successive steps toward the accomplishment of the goal: finish the meal. Once you decide upon a goal worth pursuing, consider the steps you will need to perform to get there. And, if need be, the “sub-steps” of which a particular step is comprised.
3.)Schedule the action. Your goals are more likely to be realized when your schedule the performance of their progressive steps. Set deadlines for the accomplishment of each task. But be careful. It is not as useful to base your motivation for performance on what will happen if you don’t do so. Rather, strike an agreement whereby the successful performance of some incremental step is followed by something pleasant, desirable. Keeping track of progress can often be it’s own reward. Keep a chart of your progress and post it in a highly visible area, for example, the refrigerator (sometimes known as the “Children’s Art Museum”).
4) Use your imagination. Underlying the self-discipline needed to accomplish your goal is remaining consistently focused. Remaining focused really means keeping the same level of interest or excitement you had when first realizing the need to change throughout the achievement of the steps that lead to that change. A useful way to accomplish this is to form an internal image of yourself already accomplishing your goal. How would you appear differently? What would be in the scene that is not there now? Would other people be involved? How would they look? Try to represent this experience using other senses such as sound and feeling. The greater your sensory involvement, the stronger the experience!
Create internal representations for each of the incremental steps of which your goal is comprised. These “rehearsals” can help reduce potential anxiety about facing a new challenge, as well as building the self-confidence and control necessary to be successful. Once you have mapped your course of action, get on the road to success. And happy motoring.