Discipline to Achieve Your Goals

Two months into the year and the gyms are finally starting to clear out of all the well-intentioned resolutioners who are constantly starting at the gym and quitting after a short time. It’s not just at the gym, this is the time when people learning to code or a new language will start to fade. Pluralsight has gotten it’s subscription but the use will start to dwindle. Unread books will go on a shelf or into a pile of other unfinished books. This time of year is the chopping block for new year’s resolutions. Discipline is the act of training someone to follow a set of rules or prescribed behaviors. Self discipline, what we’ll be referring to as discipline, is the “the ability to pursue what one thinks is right despite temptations to abandon it” according to the Oxford Dictionary. Discipline is what helps us to stay on task when we are tired, overworked, annoyed, or just plain bored. Discipline is inconvenient, it’s not easy. It requires you to set your priorities and challenges the perspectives you have in life. Achieving big goals requires sacrifice. In order to get the things you want you will have to hold fast through a lot of difficulty. These are not all of the aspects of discipline but just the ones that are most important when looking to achieve your goals. Use the information to help improve your own discipline whether it be for a work, business, or even a personal goal. Episode Breakdown Prioritization As the year progresses we tend to be too busy just getting by to actually accomplish anything. If we aren’t careful things will slowly pile up and take over our time just maintaining and not actually moving foward. When setting goals it is easier to determine what we see as a priority, however as we start working toward those goals priorities shift or we get distracted by minutia along the way. Prioritizing your goals involves determining what actions or steps are important in accomplishing those goals. Once determined urgency needs to be put into those actions so they get accomplished before the other things. Discipline in going after goals means maintaining the priorities we created when we set the goals. The steps it takes to reach those goals should be important and more urgent than other things. Perspective Once you’ve set your goals as your priority, the next most important aspect of being disciplined in accomplishing them is the attitude you have toward the work involved in getting to the goal. Achieving your goals will take work, there is no other way to put it. You will have to put in effort to get what you want. Your attitude or perspective will influence how well you are able to maintain your discipline. Depending on your age the term attitude adjuster could mean a really big stick or a really strong drink. You can set your attitude, it is not an uncontrolled emotional state but something that you can set. There is a difference between happiness and joyfulness. The root of the word happiness is hap which relates to chance or luck, it’s what is happening now that affects it. You don’t have to be happy in the moment to enjoy doing something because the joy you take in it is how you choose to respond to what is happening. There are two types of people in the world the “get to” and the “have to”. The “get to” people look at everything from taking out the trash to speaking in front of a thousand people as something they get to do. The “have to” will look at any task no matter how glamorous or honored as something they have to do. How you perceive the work involved in attaining your goal will affect your discipline when times get tough or when you have to make difficult decisions. Inconvenience Our culture is built around convenience,