The Power of Discipline: How to Use Self Control and Mental Toughness to Achieve Your Goals

by Daniel Walter

Self-discipline is like a key—it unlocks the door to personal fulfillment and opens the door to the life you have been dreaming of. With self-discipline, the average person can rise further than intelligence and talent alone will take them, and the ordinary person can become extraordinary. On the other hand, an educated, talented person without self-discipline will rarely rise above mediocrity.

When you make healthy choices, self-discipline is strengthened; on the other hand, making unhealthy choices diminishes self-discipline.

Discipline requires you to set goals, filter distractions, control unhelpful inhibitions, prioritize activities, and pursue the goals that you have set.

Discipline is about doing what you know you’ve got to do even when you don’t feel like it. But for your efforts to make a difference, you must be consistent. Slacking off every other day isn’t going to get you to your destination any more quickly. Consistency builds momentum and that’s how dreams become a reality. When you are aware of what discipline demands, you are more likely to choose to do the right thing.

A self-disciplined person is confident because, regardless of where they are at that moment, they know that they are the best version of themselves.

When people are easily offended, it’s because they are not self-assured; they don’t know who they are or what they stand for, and so they view criticism (even when it is constructive) as an attack on their character and become deeply offended. Self-disciplined people don’t have this problem. They are confident, calm, and self-assured, and so it’s easy for them to take insults and criticisms on the chin. Self-disciplined people can handle constructive criticism—in fact, they value it because it pushes them to become better.

The status quo bias describes the human disposition to cling to what we are familiar with instead of reaching for the unknown.

The trick is to keep reminding yourself that the more you get up early, the easier it will become.

People shouldn’t be afraid of failure; they should be scared of regret.

The feeling of looking back on your life and wondering “What if……” will torment you worse than the feeling of having tried and failed. Fortunately, having some self-awareness about this will help you make better decisions in the future.

Confidence is a great thing; it’s important that you know what you are good at and you don’t doubt yourself in that area. However, it is equally as important that you are familiar with your weaknesses.

The Dunning-Kruger Effect occurs when an individual is not only incompetent in a certain area but fails to realize how bad they are at it. The person suffering from this issue has what is referred to as a “double burden,” which means they are continuously making mistakes in the same area. It is difficult for people to correct them because they are completely ignorant of their deficiencies. Instead of trying to improve their skills, they will continue moving in that direction because they truly believe in their abilities and will argue that their failure is because of bad luck.

Research suggests that the more familiar you become with something, whether it’s a skill or a subject, the likelihood that you will claim you are an expert diminishes. In other words, the deeper you get into something, the more you realize how much more there is to learn about it.

Finally, remind yourself that there is no such thing as perfection. All humans have flaws, which is a good thing because it means there is always room for improvement.

The 40 % Rule: Everything starts in the mind, if you lift weights at the gym, you know that after a certain number of reps, your body feels as if it can’t continue. But the 40% rule states that when the mind starts telling the body it’s tired, we have only reached 40% of what we are capable of. At this point, it’s up to you to choose to believe that you’ve still got another 60% left in you. To push past the 40% threshold, you must accept the mental and physical pain you are enduring at that moment.

A popular study known as “the placebo effect” discovered that performance is enhanced when an individual believes they have done something to improve their performance.

Experts often advise people to manage stress, but I don’t think this is good advice when the Navy SEALs prove you can stop it altogether.

The 10 Minute Rule: You would assume that humans had better decision-making skills since we are far more mentally advanced than any other species. But a Harvard University study proves otherwise. The research involved giving chimpanzees and humans the same choice—to get two treats immediately or six treats in six minutes. The chimpanzees chose to wait for more treats seventy-two percent of the time, and the humans only chose to wait nineteen percent of the time. How did this happen? The problem is that the human brain is so overdeveloped that even when an answer is obvious, we overthink the decision. And because we have the ability to rationalize our behavior, we cheat ourselves out of a more favorable outcome. Humans tend to find it difficult to differentiate between a justification and an excuse. In the experiment, the humans may have convinced themselves that they deserved the treats because they were hungry and needed to satisfy their hunger, or that they weren’t too concerned about getting six treats later because they didn’t really like them anyway. Whereas the chimpanzees don’t have the ability to rationalize their decision; they act on instinct and it’s about survival of the fittest for them.

Parkinson’s Law: If you tend to procrastinate, one of the excuses you might use is that you work best when you are under pressure. Parkinson’s law validates this justification. A British historian named Cyril Parkinson developed Parkinson’s Law, which argues that when we have a set amount of time available, we will fill that time with the work. Parkinson started paying attention to the trend while employed by the British Civil Service. He noticed that as their bureaucracies increased, efficiency decreased. As employees were given more space and time, they took up more space and time. Parkinson noticed that even the most basic tasks were subconsciously made more challenging to fill the allotted time. However, when there was a tight deadline, they simplified the task to complete it faster.

Psychology Professor Peter Herman says that failure is more common than success, even though failure is never the goal. The reason for this is that we aim for extreme transformation that we are incapable of sustaining.

One of the most helpful things you can do right now on your journey to improved self-discipline is to remove the word “try” from your vocabulary. This minor change will transform the way you see yourself and boost your self-esteem.

There are different shades of gray to try. This means that when you aim to “try” instead of “do,” you are less likely to hold yourself accountable. When you operate with a “try” mindset, you give yourself plenty of room to give up as soon as you feel that you’ve done enough.

Discipline demands that you do what needs to be done even when you don’t feel like it. When you train yourself in this way, success is inevitable.

The assumption is that fear means we are moving in the wrong direction—this is not the aim of fear. If you are afraid to make changes in your life, it is a positive sign! Why? Because it means you are stepping out of your comfort zone, which is one of the main requirements for success and progress.

It is normal to want to predict the future, but how boring would that be if you knew for certain that everything you were doing was going to be a success? To some extent, the majority of us thrive on uncertainty; and if you persevere, your very best work might be just around the corner.

Striking the right balance between safeguarding your mental health and pushing yourself to the limit is a skill, and it will take a while before you perfect it.