We all want to be successful individuals in our personal and professional lives. And guess what, it all starts with your ability to be disciplined in your thoughts and actions. You should be able to put your God-given resources to high priority, productive and value-adding situations. This takes discipline. Well come to think of it, self-discipline is like the cement in every palatial palace and towering skyscrapers. 

Discipline is nothing new and has been discussed for thousands of years. This is quite self-evident in most successful people in the history of our world.

Talking about discipline Robert Kiyosaki said “Self-discipline is the No.1 delineating factor between the rich, the middle class, and the poor.”

John C. Maxwell said, “Success doesn’t just happen. You have to be intentional about it, and that takes discipline.” and “Great leaders always have self-discipline -without exception.”

Charles M. Schwab, a business tycoon said “Most talk about ‘super-geniuses’ is nonsense. I have found that when ‘stars’ drop out, successors are usually at hand to fill their places, and the successors are merely men who have learned by application and self-discipline to get full production from an average, normal brain.”

What successful people have come to understand is that discipline is the gateway to the achievement of their goals. They learned how to use discipline in their lives to achieve their dreams. They leveraged the art of self-discipline by creating a foundational set of good habits that helped them to see things through.

Let us look at ourselves, do we employ the necessary tools when we set lofty goals while seeking to achieve them. Let me share with you 4 factors which we need to look at. The first is:

Active Goal Setting

Active goals have to be written out. They’re specific and measurable. And you have a plan towards their attainment. To set active goals, first you must set some long-term goals. If you have long-term goals, then you need to engage in monthly, weekly, and daily goal setting and planning. And you also have to actively track your progress towards your goals. Perhaps the most important reason why goals work is because they build character. Actually, achieving goals builds character. While the process of goal setting is important because it helps unearth and identify what’s truly important to you, pursuing your goals is the real money-maker (literally and figuratively) because it builds self-efficacy; it develops yourself as the type of person who can achieve goals.

Remember, you can’t manage what you don’t measure and you can’t improve what you don’t manage. Start with goal setting. The second factor is:

Organization

To be self-disciplined and achieve our goals, we need to be organized. Organization is a habit that needs to be wholly embodied, not only in your professional life, but also in your personal life. This includes organizing the items in your home and office along with the items in your mind.

Have you ever heard that it only takes 21 days to build a habit? Find on play store good Habit tracker that works for you. It will help you track the things you need to do on a daily basis to help you create and achieve long-term goals.

Do you have a lot of things on your plate and you want to keep track of your goals and its tasks, do you need to also collaborate with people too? There are apps like Asana and Trello which are arguably one of the best organizational tools. These apps are designed to allow you to visualize and effortlessly track your ideas and tasks.

How many keep dairies, jot down ideas, write paragraphs, take pictures, make audio recordings or save links and what if all this can be organized in one place? Try apps like OneNote or Evernote or find a note taking app that works for you. Having your personal notes, ideas and snippets of information in one place will set your life for personal growth and keeping yourself organised.

Next, start using the calendar app on your mobile. Set your self reminders and events or appointments will ensure you are on top of keeping yourself organised for your day, your week and months. The third factor is:

Time Management

In time management, they call this the Not Urgent but Important quadrant of activities, also known as Quadrant 2. However, where most people spend their time is with the Not Urgent and Not Important activities, also known as Quadrant 4. Also known as the time-wasters.

I would recommend you see the video related to this in link provided. Mark Twain once said, “If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

Gross? Sure. But, the point that Twain was making that you should take care your biggest and most-challenging tasks in the morning, aka your most important tasks of the day.

There are a couple reasons why this such an effective time management trick. For starters, you usually have the most amount of energy in the AM. So it’s better to tackle these tasks when you’re not drained. Also, you can use that feeling of accomplishment to get through the rest of the day. And the fourth factor is:

Persistence

Persistence is that certain habit that helps us to not give up. Even when we do fail, it allows us to get back up again. Because achieving our goals is hard. Getting discouraged is easy. To give you an example, Abraham Lincoln, He failed in business at the age of 21. He was defeated in a legislative race at age 22, failed again at business at age 24, overcame the death of his lover at age 26, had a nervous breakdown at age 27, lost a congressional race at 34 and 36, lost a senatorial race at 45, failed to become vice president at 47, lost a senatorial race at 49, and then finally was elected president of the United States of America at age 52.

There are certainly many ways to instill discipline, but the best way is to really come up with some profound reasons as to why you want the things in life that you do. When our reasons are strong enough, they can get us through just about anything.