Self Discipline is what I should have tried to learn a long time ago. Sadly enough I didn’t really understand what is self discipline and the the importance of it.
The good news is self discipline is a learned skill instead of a born habit. So here’s hope;). 2015 will be my first year to develop self discipline seriously.
Naturally, I dislike routine work and avoid doing the same thing every day. But research has shown a great correlation between self discipline and success. It requires a lot of self discipline to run your own business. Without planning and setting up a system, no business will survive in longer terms. I was very good at planning, setting up systems and managing projects successfully from the beginning to the end while working in the corporate environment. But I kind of let it all go free style in terms of running my business. As a matter of fact, I simply waited for things to happen and react to them. I let my business run me instead of running it effectively.
With the intention of learning, I must learn to be self disciplined and start to take action now. People say Discipline means behaving according to what you have decided is the best, regardless of how you feel in the moment. “the undisciplined are slaves to moods, appetites and passions.”
It’s going to be hard for me to stay on track & I don’t want this mission to be short lived so my journey is starting with a couple of baby steps:
1. 20 Day Plank and Push up challenge
This 30 day plank challenge from internet got my attention a while ago. While I know that I’m not capable of doing any kind of excise 30 days in a row, I also know from experience plank pose works for me to control my muffin top.
So I’m going to modify this to my version: 20 Day plank & Pushup challenge:
- 10 full push ups
- 1 minute plank pose everyday
for 20 days every month.
2. Get up the same time everyday: 9am to start with
For the last 5 years, I’ve allowed myself to sleep as much as I could and wake up naturally. That leads me to getting up after 10am every morning, some times after 11am. After a few failed attempts of getting up earlier in the morning, I surrendered and convinced myself once again: I’m not a morning person. The thing really annoyed me is that no matter how late/early I get to bed the night before, I still wake up at 10 to 11am. If I go to bed at 3am, I wake up after 10am. If I go to bed before 10pm in hope of getting up earlier in the morning, I still wake up at 11am the next morning!
You see – something has to be changed. So from now onwards, I’m re-introducing the old, trusted alarm clock in the morning to wake me up the same time every morning. Instead of watching exciting new movies in bed before going to sleep, I will read books from my e-reader from 10pm every night. I’ll only sleep until I feel really sleepy.
Larry Winget once said, “Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan.”
What I also want to add to this quote is: BE DISCIPLINEd to execute your action steps until the desired result is achieved. Remember what they say? “The price of discipline is always less than the pain of regret”.
Happy Friday.