Master The Art Of Discipline
5 Strategies to turn procrastination into productivity
5 Strategies To Master Discipline:
1. Mindset – first and foremost you have to get your head right. You have to want to be disciplined and you have to believe you can be. I am not sure I would have ever gotten here if I had not been forced to “decide” to change. Having the pressure of working day-in-and-day out alongside our executive team and just the fear of being late had me jumping out of bed early every day.
2. Baby Steps – take this one-step at a time. Don’t try to go from never going to the gym to going seven days a week. Take your time. When my boss and his boss decided to become vegans, it influenced me to clean up my diet. However, even as they swore off meat, fish and dairy, I still indulged in a little chocolate now and then. But slowly the French fries didn’t look so tempting, and not eating ice cream everyday started to feel good.
3. Change the view – If you want to be disciplined, you need to spend more time around people who are and less time around people who are not. I was lucky. Starting a new job, in a new city, with a new apartment, ensured everything about my life was changing. Suddenly I found myself around people who went to the office by seven, spent their lunch hours doing yoga, and thought a healthy diet was the perfect way to live. There norm become my norm.
4. Take a breath – before you hit the snooze button, eat that donut or skip the gym, simply take a breath. Take a moment and think what are the consequences of either doing something or not taking action. This probably helped me more than anything else did. Before I turned on the television and skipped the gym, I would take a moment and think about what I was doing. Sometimes I did not do the disciplined thing, but slowly and more often, I started to. Taking the time to think about what you are doing, just a moment, so often ensures you make decisions that are positive for your life.
5. Reward – it’s so important to take the time to reward yourself for the changes you have made and what you have achieved. For me that reward was of course my trip to Italy. A trip where I got up early every day, hiked like a super star and still ate gelato just in much smaller portions.
So, there you have it! That is my journey to mastering the art of discipline, a journey I am still working on. I would love to hear yours. Share what has worked for you and what challenges you are still facing.