7 Mindful Ways to Improve Your Self-Discipline
Use mindfulness to achieve self-mastery.
Self-discipline is the sine qua non for personal growth.
Many desirable traits like courage, team spirit, and sociability help you move forward in life, but they’re ineffective in the absence of self-discipline. No matter if you’re building a business, improving your physique, or taking on personal challenges, you’ll need a healthy dose of self-mastery to accomplish your goals.
So, what does self-discipline entail in the real world? According to Success Consciousness, self-discipline means:
“self-control, the ability to avoid unhealthy excess of anything that could lead to negative consequences.”
As such, self-discipline is about reducing excesses to control the consequences of one’s actions. That’s where mindfulness comes into play.
By connecting to the present and analyzing your current thoughts, feelings, and experiences, you create a holistic awareness of your actions. And this awareness will lead to more control, temperance, and willpower. On this basis, here are seven mindful ways to improve your self-discipline in life.
Find Motivation by Identifying Long-Term Rewards
When it comes to mindful ways to boost your self-discipline, the first step is to find motivation. Most of us lack discipline as a result of not realizing ramifications. We see short-term gratification but do not grasp our action’s long-term consequences.
Junk food gives us instant pleasure, but it damages our long-term fitness journey. Netflix is fun, but it prevents us from pursuing a side hustle. And we love the idea of financial freedom, but we’re addicted to small treats like fast fashion.
The solution is to stop thinking about instant rewards and assess actions in a broader context. To find motivation, we need to understand the long-term wins that self-control can provide.
As such, self-discipline is a path toward long-lasting satisfaction. In other words, people with a lot of self-control are more likely to be happy and satisfied with their lives in the long haul.
That was the conclusion of a 2013 study by the University of Chicago. According to the research:
“As they go about their daily lives, people with a lot of self-control appear to generally be in higher spirits; in the long run, they’re happier with their lives. […] Instead of constantly denying themselves, people high in self-control are simply less likely to find themselves in situations where that’s even an issue.”
Consequently, once you buy into the long-term rewards of self-discipline — as in durable satisfaction — you’ll be more mindful about your present actions and less likely to fall into the instant gratification trap.
Accept Your Temptations and Deal with Them
Much like understanding the long-term rewards, tackling temptations is another powerful way to bolster your self-discipline in life. Temptations are a natural part of life.
We live in an era of uber-connectivity — making electronic distractions ubiquitous in everyday life. The world bombards us with possibilities at every corner — be it events, experiences, or products. And finally, multi-tasking has become fashionable in many workplaces — reducing the space for high focus and deep work.
How do we deal with those temptations?
First, we have to accept their existence. They won’t vanish, and we have to find a way to live with them. As such, we have to be mindful of their presence. Nevertheless, we still control our relationship with them.
A great way to deal with temptations is to take a piece of paper and write down all the things that distract you at work or in life. Once written down, ask yourself how you can reduce their impact on your productivity.
When it comes to work, leaving your phone in a different room, only checking emails a few times a day, and eliminating noise with the right headphones are efficient starting points.
In the words of Forbes’ Jennifer Cohen,
“Removing all temptations and distractions from your environment is a crucial first step when working to improve your self-discipline.”
Consequently, to revamp your self-discipline step by step, you need a mindful approach toward temptations: acknowledge their existence, analyze their impact, and find a way to mute them.
Complete the Self-Discipline Puzzle One Piece at a Time
The next step toward building self-discipline is to see the concept as a puzzle that requires progressive completion. You wouldn’t try to assemble a large puzzle in a single go. You would start small and look for pieces that fit together. The same applies to self-discipline.
As Leo Babauta from Zen Habits writes,
“One of the most important things you can do to get better at self-discipline is to take small actions. It can seem overwhelming to tackle huge, intimidating projects, so don’t. Instead, tackle easy actions, things so small you can’t say no.”
If you’re trying to build a gym routine, start with two 30-sessions every week. Aspiring writers shouldn’t go from a few words to a book but instead, focus on completing 1,000 words every day. And reading 50 books a year won’t happen if you’ve never read more than ten over 12 months. Stick to 30 minutes every night, and you’ll work your way up from there.
Use Time Blocks and Intervals to Master the Art of Planning
In some instances, self-discipline isn’t around conquering your inner temptations. It’s about mindfully scheduling your tasks and breaks. The time-blocking strategy works wonders in this regard.
In practice, you divide your days into specific chunks of time, consisting of hour-long stretches. You dedicate these blocks to particular tasks like work assignments, gym sessions, or administration. There are two essentials when it comes to time-blocking.
First, you need to prepare the blocks before starting your actual work. As such, it’s best to draft your blocks the night before. Secondly, arranging them like a chessboard is crucial. Always schedule breaks between rigid blocks. In the words of Entrepreneur,
“Whether it’s five minutes or an hour, time-blocking forces you to add that much-needed “me time” into your calendar so that you can reflect, exercise, read, or do whatever else makes you happy.”
Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
Many people lack self-discipline because they fear discomfort. Instead of filing our tax declaration, we run to video games. On a chilly morning, we stay in our warm beds instead of doing a workout in the forest. And when difficult discussions loom on the horizon, we switch the subject.
The problem with avoiding discomfort is that it doesn’t solve our problems. It merely amplifies their future magnitude. Once we analyze our actions mindfully, however, we start to understand our escapism. We stop mentioning excuses like relaxation and fun and accept that we don’t do certain things because we dread uncomfortable situations.
That’s where discomfort training comes to fruition. If you want to increase your self-discipline, you need to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Akin to piecing together the self-discipline puzzle, discomfort training doesn’t happen all at once — it’s a step-by-step process.
Add a few uncomfortable activities — like cold showers, language practicing, or talking to strangers — to your days. The more you get used to a particular type of discomfort, the easier it will become.
Use the Power of Habit-Stacking to Retain Momentum
Habit-stacking is another mindful way to boost your self-discipline in life. The practice is simple: you stack one productive habit on top of another — creating a virtuous circle in the process.
Here is an example: after completing your home workout (habit #1), you sit down for a few minutes and do breathing exercises (habit #2). Once you’ve finished your meditation, you immediately take out a book and read for 20 minutes (habit #3).
By performing a sequence of habits regularly, you get into a flow state. And this productive groove will help you attain momentum in terms of self-discipline.
Be Mindful of the Alignment of Short-Term Actions with Long-Term Goals
Finally, mindfulness can lead to self-mastery when you control the connection between your daily actions and long-term targets. The absence of self-discipline is often a consequence of not seeing the bigger picture. We don’t assess our daily habits in conjunction with our long-term goals.
A simple trick to counter this problem is to ask a powerful question before giving into temptations:
What would my [current year+5] self say about this?
I’ve used this tactic countless times, and it always increases awareness and forces reflection. At the outset of my online business journey, I juggled a few side hustles with a demanding job in the finance sector. Every time I needed to put in a late shift, I wrestled with distractions and discipline-crushing habits — like weeknight after-work drinks.
The question did not always kick-start my self-restraint, but it induced a mindful understanding of what I was doing. As such, it helped me grasp the long-term effect of my daily actions. And this enhanced awareness led to a gradual improvement in self-discipline.