Tricks to Master Self Discipline
Replacement activities
Self-discipline is the practice of resisting temptation. If you can resist temptation you can gain control over your habits, your productivity and your lifestyle but how do you train your brain to ignore all the temptations in your life? Let's suppose you want to reduce the number of hours that you spend on social media normally you scroll through social media during your downtime if you want to increase your self-control then you replace your social media with a different pre-selected activity so every time you feel like scrolling through your feed. You do your replacement activity instead of reading a book, talking to a friend, and doing some deep breathing exercises. You can choose whatever replacement activity you want but the goal is to channel your negative urges into positive habits over time those positive habits will feel more natural and your vices they will fade into the background.
The Hot and Cool System
Self-control is a hot and cool system. When you're hot your brain is swept up in passionate impulsive emotions. In this state of mind, people make reckless decisions without considering their long-term consequences. When you're cool your brain thinks slowly and logically it weighs the options and it makes safe educated decisions. Most people struggle with self-discipline because their hot system makes all their choices for them. Their emotions get the best of them and their impulses take over but your hot system loses its power over time. If you can resist that temptation for a few extra minutes, your cool system will come to your rescue and your decision-making will improve significantly. So if you want to build your self-discipline then empower your cool system to make smart long-term decisions all right let's say you're about to spend money on a new computer your hot system gets excited and your emotions take hold when you feel yourself getting excited just force yourself to step away take a 15-minute break during those 15 minutes your cool system will take over once you're cool you may discover that big purchase is not as smart as you thought.
Stress Control
The hot and cool system
is moderated by time but it's also moderated by stress when you're experiencing
higher levels of stress your hot system takes control this comes from a
1999 study in the psychological review researchers found that stress
offsets the delicate balance between your hot system and your cool system
in other words when you're stressed you're more likely to make reckless and impulsive
decisions by regulating your stress you can improve your self-control so whenever
you have a difficult decision to make just take advantage of simple stress-relieving
activities like stretching or meditation these exercises can decrease
your stress which ultimately improves the quality of your choices number
four environmental impact.
Let's say that two people are trying to live more disciplined lives both people want to increase their productivity. One person practices their new productive habits in a library, the other person practices his habits in a movie theatre. Your environment plays a huge role in your self-discipline so if you put yourself in tempting situations it's far more difficult to make good choices so use your environment to your advantage.
Disciplinary Fuel
According to some scientists you can, almost instantly increase your self-control with one simple trick. A 2007 study in the journal of personality and social psychology found that willpower has a strong association with cellular energy. In other words, your willpower decreases if your body doesn't have enough fuel. So how do you give yourself a big boost of willpower you supply your body with the fuel it needs to make smart choices before making a decision or tackling your work and enjoy an energy-rich meal refuel your body and give your brain the energy it needs to stay in control.
One Small Step
Oversized expectations can ruin your self-control if you're intimidated by the obstacle in front of you then it feels impossible to be productive. Luckily there's an easy way to trick your brain into overcoming any obstacle. If you want to start working don't worry about all the responsibilities on your plate don't think about the mountain you have to climb. Focus only on the first step so whenever you encounter a new challenge start with a small and simple goal that goal is all you need to worry about because once you accomplish that goal once you take that first step you can take a second step and then a third and before you know it you've overcome that huge intimidating obstacle you've climbed that mountain and you did it one step at a time
Faulty Excuses
Do you make excuses for your lack of self-control? Over time you've taught yourself to justify your bad habits but your excuses aren't as bulletproof as you think. Just take a minute to think about why you aren't accomplishing your goals. What excuses do you tell yourself when you're feeling unproductive? Let's say you want to read more books. Your goal is to read one book every month but you haven't made any progress so you tell yourself after a long day of work I don't have time to read and that excuse justifies your lack of self-control but is your excuse true just think about what you do after work. You may spend those hours watching television, scrolling through social media, and wasting the afternoon away. Couldn't you sacrifice a sliver of your time to read a new book? Building self-discipline doesn't happen all at once you have to start with small chunks of time. Let's say 30 minutes each day, now that may not sound like much but every chunk puts you one step closer to your goal.
Linguistic Sabotage
Your language can increase
and decrease your self-discipline. Experts found that people who overemphasize
power and self-control, experience deficits in both. So the more you
concentrate on your lack of self-control, the harder it becomes to make good
choices.
For example, you might
say I make bad choices because I don't have enough self-discipline
this
language creates a passive self-defeating mindset. Instead, you might say I make bad choices because I’m putting myself in harmful situations. This time you're giving yourself control over your choices and your environment. You're empowering yourself to make changes and that's how you build self-control.
Discipline Depletion
Scientists explain self-discipline is like a muscle it gets stronger the more you train in practice but muscles do get tired if you practice too much. You experience fatigue, in the same way, there's a limit to how disciplined one person can be. If you try too hard you may experience depletion. You lose the energy required to make good decisions even though your heart's in the right place. Too much enthusiasm may come back to bite you. So if you want to build self-discipline, work on your bad habits one at a time and give yourself a break every once in a while. You can't expect a hundred and ten per cent every second of the day. Disciplined people have the self-control to make smart long-term decisions but they also have the self-awareness to relax, recover and reward themselves for a job well done.
Advanced Decisions
Self-discipline is limited so how do you make good choices without depleting your energy? Smart decision-makers avoid impulsive decisions by making their choices in advance. Let's say you want to increase your productivity at work but you find yourself picking up your phone more often than you should. It takes a lot of energy to resist this continuous temptation, so smart decision-makers would save themselves the trouble they would eliminate this distraction by leaving their phones at home. This technique takes advantage of your hot and cool system by making planning in advance. You can make decisions when you're cool and that way when you're hot all your temptation is already off the table; you can also plan to reduce the number of decisions that you make each day. You may not even realize it but you make hundreds of little choices daily and that consumes a lot of energy if you eliminate those small decisions then you'll save extra energy for the moments that matter most.
Habit Measurement
Do you know how much time you end on your bad habits? You may be wasting hours every day on meaningless activities but it doesn't feel like hours you engage with these distractors. In short bursts many people, for example, pick up their phones hundreds of times every day you check messages and emails you check the time the weather and the news and by the end of the day, you've spent four or five hours on your phone to save yourself hours of wasted time try measuring the time you spend on your bad habits if, for example, you pick your phone up too often there are applications you can use to calculate just how much you're losing these measurements are great motivators they force you to take responsibility for the time you're wasting you're much more likely to avoid your bad habit when you're conscious of the damage you're doing so start measuring your bad habits today because chances are you've wasted enough time already.
Consistent Performance
Some days you’ll set records and empower your personal growth, other days you'll do just enough to get by but that's okay. Whether it's a good day or a bad day. There's only one thing that matters you showed up and you tried to build self-discipline. You don't have to function at the top of your game every single day, what matters is consistency.
If nothing else, make sure you always follow through even if it isn't your best work. Even if you're tired and unmotivated, if you want to increase your self-control then you need to show up at your best and your worst.
Thank you
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