Discipline--A Good Business Strategy

If you have self-discipline in your work, and towards your goals, you will accomplish everything that you set out to achieve. It is not easy to become self-disciplined, but the rewards are great. There are many areas in your life where you can be self-disciplined.

You can be disciplined with your thoughts. Do not let your fears carry you away. If you have thoughts of worry filling your head it chokes out productive and solution-filled thoughts. Discipline yourself so that any time a thought of worry or fear comes in, you stop it immediately.

If a thought shouts at you, “This is useless,” discipline yourself to shout back and continue on with your work and your goals until you have achieved what you want.

You need to practice self-discipline with your words. Stop negative words from flowing out of your mouth all the time. If you have the impulse to say something negative, close your mouth. Even if you did say something negative about yourself or another, cut yourself off in mid-sentence and don’t say one more word. Change your words to positive. Correct yourself immediately. Be self-disciplined in your evaluation of yourself.

Really look deeply at yourself. If you don’t like who you are, or the results you are getting, take steps to change your behavior, change self-defeating patterns, and discard what is not working. Be honest, and thorough with your self-evaluation. If you can’t be honest with yourself or you really can’t see yourself clearly, ask for help, and then really take in others’ evaluations. Listen carefully to at least three close people and then use truth that all of them tell you.

It is not easy to hear the truth and to acknowledge it fully. But if you want change it is because you don’t like YOU as you are now, and you MUST change to feel better inside.

Be self-disciplined in your actions. Do what is necessary now; don’t put it off because it probably will never get done. Write down your goals, and check them off one by one. Don’t be led off-track by an undisciplined person. Most people want to accomplish great things in this life but they procrastinate when it comes to doing the nitty-gritty work: exercising, learning, planning, writing, phoning, and pushing through when you don’t see any results.

I speak from experience, as one who didn’t finish, often procrastinated or was intimidated by some task. I like myself much better when I’m disciplined and you probably will, too.

Self-discipline means doing something like exercise when you don’t feel like doing it. Writing on something when you don’t really see the direction that the work is taking; working diligently on your project even though you don’t know if it will succeed, or what its outcome will be. Putting yourself there day after day even though you are tired; keeping yourself fired up when there is no one there to encourage you; taking the time and energy to master something new. Make the steps to transform your life. And do them over and over again until you are where you want to be.

We are all disciplined in some areas of our lives. I used to teach a couple of men and women who were completely disciplined when it came to going to the gym to work out. They would run, rain or shine, and then would go to the gym for two hours no matter what. Those same students were incredible drinkers and partiers. They would stay out drinking and partying until 4:30 in the morning and then feel horrible with a hangover for the next day or two because their discipline was limited to only certain areas of their lives.

If you wish to make any substantial changes in your life, you need to be disciplined towards your new goals. Change does not happen overnight, especially if you are coming from a lower place to a higher place emotionally, financially or spiritually. If you wish to have money for the down payment of your house you can’t keep charging on your credit card all the time.

You have to be disciplined with a savings program and a not- spending program until you have what it takes to make your dreams a reality.

If you have dreams of being someone creative, like a painter or a writer, but you don’t know the first thing about painting or writing, you must discipline yourself to the learning and the doing of your craft. Put yourself into a self-learning and mastery mode. Read everything that you can on your new craft. Buy appropriate tools towards that goal, and then use the tools.

A writer becomes good by writing and writing, and editing and editing. An artist becomes good at painting by observing and painting and working with colors, and painting as much as she can.

When you are learning a new trade, be disciplined also in the control of judgmental thoughts. Do not condemn your efforts. Keep practicing, keep improving. If you don’t know how to improve or to work properly go to classes with a professional. But don’t let the classes be your only work. Work on your own. Encourage yourself with your thoughts, “You can do this. You can figure this out.” Also visualize yourself further down the line, when you are making a good income with your new profession, working in your own space with joy and ease and comfort. That is very important in the transformation too. Know where you are going and what you want to achieve. But be disciplined towards your goal every day.

If you disciplined yourself and did something for only thirty minutes per day, but you did it every day for ten years, you would become very good at what you were focused on. Thirty minutes or an hour per day: that is not very much time when you think of the lifetime we live on this planet, but you could accomplish a lot with that thirty or forty minutes a day, doing the same thing year after year. Turn off the TV for one hour and suddenly you have an hour free.

Let’s say that with that hour, you meditated for thirty minutes per day and with the other thirty minutes you wrote every day. You would be a very calm and peaceful person, and you would have a lot pages written on your story or your autobiography.

It takes a commitment to change, and a commitment to yourself and to the discipline. If you want your body to change, you must be disciplined in your exercise and your eating. I know it may sound obvious, but you have to practice discipline to achieve the results that you are seeking. No one can be disciplined for you. You need to do the work and you will see the results. Be disciplined to see all phases of a project before you begin, break down the steps and the tasks and be disciplined to do each of the steps diligently. One big project can be broken down into several little jobs or sections. When you have finished all the little jobs that you have determined, your project will be completed also. You can accomplish a lot if you learn to become a disciplined person, and follow through, and do things consistently.copyright 2006 Yoga Kat

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