There's something about discipline that makes us all think of suffering. We imagine ourselves waking up at 5am every morning to work out and then struggle with not eating cake for lunch. But, the truth is that discipline is actually a friend. It helps us get stronger, healthier and happier—and we can't live without it. Here are five reasons why cultivating discipline will make you more successful.
Disciplined and decisive, how we love ourselves
Discipline is like a muscle: it requires consistent effort to build up. Discipline is a skill, one that you can develop and hone over time. It is a habit—something you do every day without thinking about it. In fact, it helps form all of your habits and patterns of behavior!
Discipline is something we choose to do because we want to do it. It's not necessarily easy or fun at first; there's no instant gratification with discipline (like there might be with letting off steam by watching Netflix), but the long-term benefits are worth more than any short-term reward could ever offer.
This is the key to a healthy, happy life. Discipline helps you be more productive, successful and resilient. You will feel more confident in your abilities and yourself.
This may seem like a stringent list of expectations but the truth is that discipline can help us in all those areas—and more!
It makes you healthier.
For starters, it is a key part of a healthy lifestyle. It helps you make better choices, avoid unhealthy habits, and avoid unhealthy foods and activities. These actions can help you lead a healthier life.
It brings you closer to your success.
Discipline is the key to success, happiness and mental health. Discipline is a key to being a good parent, partner and friend. Discipline brings you closer to your goals.
Discipline opens up more opportunities for you in life than any other skill or ability ever could.
The power of discipline can be used to achieve anything you want in life!
It makes you more resilient to failure.
You're going to fail, and you're going to make mistakes. There's no way around it. But you can learn from those failures, and they'll help you become more successful in the future.
It's not just about learning from your own mistakes; it's also important to learn from other people's mistakes as well. We can all benefit from learning how others handle their difficulties and use that knowledge to avoid making similar mistakes ourselves in the future!
Discipline is a muscle.
Discipline isn't a one-time thing, it's a muscle.
You can't do it once and expect it to last forever. This muscle will atrophy if not exercised, so you need to keep working at it. The more effort you put into exercising your discipline, the stronger and more powerful that muscle becomes over time with continual effort.
Discipline is required for success in any area of life: from business ventures to personal relationships to physical health and fitness—the list goes on! Making a commitment to do something every day builds discipline; practicing self-control creates self-discipline; building up mental toughness through rigorous training strengthens the mind; building positive habits leads to permanent change.
Practicing discipline is like going to the gym for your brain.
What does it actually take to improve mental health? The first step is recognizing that low self esteem and poor decision making skills are byproducts of poor mental health. Once you realize this, you will be able to make decisions about what you need to do in your life to improve your mental health. This can include therapy or medication for some people but for others, it might simply mean learning how to love themselves more through small daily practices like exercise.
A daily workout is one of the best ways I know of practicing self love while improving self esteem and decision-making skills at the same time because it requires commitment, self trust, and discipline. It also has an added benefit: regular physical activity improves our body composition (i.e., fat-to-muscle ratio) which leads us looking better and feeling better too!
Discipline teaches us how to trust ourselves.
When we are committed to something, we learn how to invest in ourselves and our goals. Being able to commit means being able to say no when necessary, even if it means disappointing someone else. We have the capacity for self-discipline when we practice saying “no” without guilt or shame over disappointing others.
Cultivating discipline through exercise also helps us develop habits of self-kindness and forgiveness which lead us towards better decision making and better mental health overall.
It helps you become better at decision making.
Good decision making is often referred to as the invisible discipline. It's a skill that people develop over time, and it's something we can all improve. If we trust that we honor commitments to ourselves, the world feels like it is completely available to us. When we know and trust, that whatever decision we make, we will do it; this develops a new skill, proper decision making.
Our decisions are supported by our discipline. The ability to make a good decision for ourselves and then follow through with it requires the internal base support system of discipline.
In a world of constant distractions and demanding expectations, it’s more important than ever to cultivate discipline. The good news is that the practice of discipline is rooted in self-love, so when you create new habits for yourself, you’re not only improving your life but also strengthening your relationship with yourself. Practice equates with success—or at least it can! With these tips in mind (and maybe check out our 7 Day Dose of Discipline), we hope that you’ll head out into the world confident in your ability to make positive changes and take control of your life!
If you would like to see what 100 Days of Discipline is all about, then I encourage you to check out this free offering and guide where you get to sample some similar workouts that are included in our paid challenges:
Bye for now,
Elle Honeycut