Everyone wants to achieve success. However, most people just wishthey were successful and do nothing about it. Others try doing one thing or another but quit after a while, either because they don’t want to invest time and effort or are afraid of the competition.
Many quit their goals if they don’t get immediate results or because they are afraid of failure.
Usually, only a small percentage acts, perseveres, and does not give up.
Why do some people achieve success, and others don’t? People achieve success because they possess self-discipline, among other skills.
This ability helps them to avoid wasting their time and energy doing things that don’t get them anywhere. They don’t spend hours texting, checking mail, or sitting hours in front of the television.
You Need Self-Discipline to Achieve Success
Self-discipline equals perseverance, one of the most important qualities you need to achieve success.
Speaking of success, I don’t mean just financial success or status, but also success in many other areas besides career and job.
Success can manifest in studies, learning a foreign language, learning a new skill, losing weight, managing your time more efficiently, or changing some of your habits.
There are people who are appalled by the word self-discipline. They associate it with self-denial, limitation, pain, scarcity, and lack. This is a completely wrong assumption!
Self-discipline is not for the purpose of denying yourself or inflicting pain on yourself, but for manifesting inner strength.
Self-discipline helps you avoid distractions that distract you from your goal and stick to what you want to do until you accomplish it.
Look at the people around you who succeed in carrying out their decisions, doing their chores and tasks efficiently, and achieving their plans and goals. They all possess perseverance, and perseverance is part of self-discipline.
So, how do gain self-discipline?
Simple! By exercising and training this ability. I have written many articles on this topic, which you can find at this website.
You develop this skill by temporarily abstaining from doing something that you usually do. This arouses inner resistance, but by overcoming this inner resistance you gain inner strength.
Simple Self Disciple Exercise
Here is one of the first exercises I practiced:
Do you drink your coffee with or without sugar? If you are like most people, you put a teaspoon of sugar or even more into your cup of coffee. You can use this habit as an exercise for improving your self-discipline.
Make a decision that for a whole week you are going to drink your cup of coffee without sugar.
You may not like it, and the coffee might taste too bitter.
You might feel that you are spoiling a dear pleasure, but you are doing so for just a week and for a very good reason. You are doing so in order to improve your inner strength, perseverance and willpower. You are gaining inner strength, which will help you achieve success.
The exercise requires effort and overcoming inner resistance. Do this exercise for a week or even two weeks, and then, you may revert to drinking your coffee with sugar, as you did before.
This exercise trains you to make a decision and follow it, in spite of your inconvenience.
It is like training your body with lifting weight at the gym. Practicing exercises like this one, gradually, enables you to do greater things that require more inner strength. You gather inner strength that will help you achieve goals.
Incidentally, after practicing this exercise and up to this day, I continue drinking my coffee without sugar. I have learned to appreciate and enjoy the bitter taste of coffee when it is not sweetened. It tastes richer, and I find sugar to be spoiling its taste.
