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7 Ways to Maintain Self-Discipline

Maybe you’re trying to lose weight. Maybe you’re thinking about a promotion, a career change or a bigger bank account. But why learn how to maintain self-discipline?

Self-discipline can help with all of these goals. It’s one of the pillars of a productive lifestyle, and like a real pillar, it can support much bigger architecture for health, wealth and happiness.

What is self-discipline? How can you build it and channel it for a better life? Not everyone can do it, but if you think that you might be an exception, read on.

What is self-discipline?

Self-discipline is basically self-control. It means that you have enough control over your thoughts and actions to identity good behaviours, resist bad ones and work towards whatever aims that you have for the future.

How can self-discipline improve my life?

Self-discipline can improve everything from your eating habits to your efficiency at the office. It can help you sleep better, work harder, run farther and accomplish greater things. It’s one of the foundational skills involved with setting goals and seeing them through.

Three Cs of Self-Discipline

The best way to look at self-discipline is to memorize the three Cs:

Commitment: not giving up even when things get hard
Conscientiousness: accomplishing tasks thoroughly and competently
Confidence: believing that you can do anything that you set your mind to

Without all three of these cornerstones, self-discipline will fail. For example, if you don’t have conscientiousness, you might take shortcuts on your work or have lots of cheat days with your diet. If this is the case, can you really say that you’re a self-disciplined person?

7 Ways to Maintain Self Discipline

Now that you’ve learned about self-discipline and what it can do for you, it’s time to work on developing and maintaining it. Like anything else, self-discipline is a skill, and it needs to be sustained to keep it strong. Think of it like a muscle that will atrophy if it isn’t used regularly.

While there are many, many ways to cultivate self-discipline, here are just a few tried-and-true techniques.

1. Set Goals

The first step of any self-improvement routine is to establish what you actually want to get out of it. Is it health, happiness, money, friendship, confidence or something else entirely?

Once you’ve figured out the end goal, the next step is creating smaller goals to help you get there. Something that’s often used in professional project management is the SMART method:

Specific
Measurable
Assignable
Realistic
Time-related

Under the SMART system, rather than just saying “I want to lose weight,” you would say “I want to lose five pounds by next month, so I’m going to exercise at least three days per week and cut back my calories by 500 per day.”

2. Establish a Routine

Your brain loves routine. In fact, if you don’t give it routines, it will create its own, and these might be unhealthy, unproductive or just plain gluttonous.

Change your habits by changing your routines. For example, if you want to improve your sleep schedule, start waking up and going to bed at the same time every day. Do this consistently every single day of the week until your body starts to anticipate your routine. When you start naturally waking up a few minutes before your alarm goes off, you’ll know that the routine has taken effect.

Read this blog on how I maintain my Daily Routine. (DMO)

3. Remove Temptations

With enough self-discipline, temptations aren’t a problem. You’ll have the willpower to ignore them even when they appear.

If you’re just starting out on your self-improvement journey, however, you might not have the physical and emotional strength to resist temptations just yet. They might manifest as cravings, distractions or general enticements that prove too much for you.

There’s no reason to make self-discipline any harder than it has to be, especially when you’re just starting out. Take the chips and sodas out of the kitchen. Remove the television from your workspace. Install browser extensions so that you can’t access social media from 9 – 5. If the temptations aren’t there, you can’t indulge in them.

4. Know Thyself

Retro instagram style image businesswoman hands holding white card sign with it starts with you! text message isolated on grey wall office background

What are your weaknesses?

This isn’t a job interview. You don’t have to dance around the subject or try to spin negatives into positives. Be honest: What bad habits do you have, and how will they impact your quest for self-discipline?

Once you’ve identified your weaknesses, it’ll be much easier to counter them. For example, if you’re on the disorganized side, you can invest in a good daily planner to manage all your tasks and projects. If you tend to lose track of time while working or taking breaks, you can start setting alarms for better time management.

There’s a way to conquer every bad habit. You just have to find it.

If you have a fear of failure you are welcome to check out 5 Ways on How to Overcome Your Fear Of Failure.

5. Track Your Progress

Tracking your progress is a great way to stay motivated, especially if your goal is something slow or not easily seen with the naked eye. It’ll be a real, tangible record of your efforts, and it’ll serve as physical proof that you are moving towards whatever finish line that you’ve set for yourself.

Here are just a few ways to track your progress:

Notebooks and journals. These are nice and private, and you can also customize them with colors, doodles, stickers and more.
Apps. Apps like “Stride” and “Way of Life” are multipurpose goal-setting programs that will allow you to make notes, generate graphs and give yourself rewards for a job well done.
Calendars. These can be hung on the wall for daily, visible motivation as well as a reminder of how far that you’ve come.

6. Have an Accountability Partner

This is a trick that’s often touted by weight loss gurus, but it can also be applied to work, school and anything else that requires self-discipline. The premise is simple: Have someone that you report to about your progress.

It could be a trainer or a lifestyle coach. It could be a friend who has the same goals as you. If your ambitions are work-related, it could even be a boss.

The psychology behind this trick is that it’s easy to underperform when no one knows that you’re performing at all. Once you put actual expectations on your performance, however, you might be motivated to perform well.

7. Refresh Your Motivation Regularly

Motivation isn’t a magical, inexhaustible resource. Like anything else, it can fade or get less effective over time, so it’s important to replenish it just like you’d replenish oil in a car.

Maybe this means finding new affirmations to post around your mirror. Maybe it means changing up your diet and fitness routines so that they stay fresh and invigorating. You can always find new clothes to buy, new food to try, new celebrities to admire and new goals to set.

The important thing is not to backslide into old habits when you realize that you’ve lost motivation. This is a completely normal part of the process, and it isn’t a sign of failure, weakness or a lack of willpower. It isn’t a sign that you should give up. It just means that you need to find new motivation to keep you going.

Bonus Tip

Being able to focus on one thing for a well-defined period produces better work. It also helps get the work done quicker. With less noise, you also tend to have less stress and worry. If your mind is in a stress-free environment your creativity booms.

To be focused means you need to have goals and objectives defined. Once you know where you are going you can organise your time around achieving the goal in short, focused bursts. Learn more about Focus Time Here.

Final Thoughts

It’s hard to have self-discipline. There’s no getting around that. If it were easy, everyone on the planet would look like a supermodel and have a million dollars in the bank.

It takes time and effort to have self-discipline, especially in the pursuit of specific goals. It takes inner strength. It takes a person who is really, genuinely seeking self-improvement.

Is that you?

Practise makes perfect, Positive Phycology lays out some Simple Exercises to Build Your Self-Control Muscle

If you like this article, you may want to learn the 5 Secrets to Ending Perfection Paralysis

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How to Prepare to Launch Your Online Business in 2022

As the year swiftly comes to a close we begin reflecting on the past year. The highs and lows. The wins and losses. Maybe you’ve reached a tipping point in your career, or maybe you feel you need a change. Here are some things to consider if you plan to launch your online business in the new year.

Why didn’t you start this year?

Looking back over the year gives us perspective. All those “what if” questions. Like… what if you started working on that business idea this year. How far could you be now if you had started earlier on your idea.

When we realize that its simply time and effort that gets results, you can get focused on doing what needs to be done. Opportunities are everywhere. Its just a matter of looking for them, and acting on them.

Break Through the Fear

Are you stuck procrastinating about your business. Waiting for the right time? There is no good excuse to keep putting off your goals and dreams. There is never a perfect time to do anything. During the worst of the pandemic, many people started businesses. And many have made progress despite the most difficult circumstances. Now is as good a time as any, to get your idea off the ground. Why not start today!

How to Start an Online Business Doing What Your Love?

Start Small… Really Small

One of the biggest challenges when starting to build any business is feeling overwhelmed by the task. A great strategy is to break things down and make them more achievable. The smaller the better.

Instead of just stating “I want to start an online business”, identify the steps:

Setup a social media page for my project.
Connect with people doing what I want to do.
Read blogs about the business I’m interested in.
Watch youtube videos about the business I want to start.
Start sharing my learning on social media.
Register my own domain.
Setup a WordPress blog.
Write my first blog post.
Etc, etc, etc…

Its much easier to pursue small steps than take one giant leap from zero to a full fledged business. No one can do that. It takes many small steps to get a business off the ground. Take your idea or business and break it down. The smaller the better. Identify the tasks and do them one at a time.

Focus on Milestones not Goals

Often goals are more complicated to achieve than we think. And when we fail to achieve them we are left feeling depressed. Why not set milestones for each of your goals.

Your Goal: Start an online blog marketing affiliate products.

Here examples of milestones:

10 January – Start posting on my social media about my idea.
15 February – Setup up a WordPress blog for my venture.
15 March – Post first blog post
30 March – Post second blog post

And acknowledge your success for every milestone, its one step closer to your goal. Milestones will also help you manage the timeline of your progress.

Embrace the Journey.

An online business takes time to build. Its a journey that never ends. Its not a destination. Embrace the journey, embrace the learning and enjoy the ride. The more you see it as an adventure, the more excited you will be to pursue it. The more passion and energy you will have to persevere through every challenge you face. You going to struggle at times, but with the right perspective you can keep yourself motivated!

The Best Ways to Learn Digital Marketing Online?

Enjoy the Process

If you not having fun, why are you doing it in the first place? Enjoy the challenge of building something new and it won’t feel like work. Have fun while you learning new skills. Building a business doesn’t have to be all serious and dreary. Embrace the creative process of learning, building and creating.

It will do wonders to your energy levels. And that energy will reflect in your efforts.

Start Today!

Why wait for next year? Start taking time everyday for your business. Remember your success will not come from one days effort. Not even a few days. But rather the compounded effort you take every day, every week, and every month! Take small steps daily, and build your dream business brick by brick, day by day, and one day soon you will be looking back and thinking “WOW, my business idea has become my business reality…”

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How to Set Goals for 2022 and Achieve Them!

2021 was another year many would best forget about. COVID lockdowns and restrictions continued to wreak havoc with our lives. Business faced the continued challenges of remote working and continuing to maintain productivity. Many people lost their jobs. Many had to start over. And now you face the end of another year. And I’m sure you are looking to make 2022 a better year.

But like most things in life, success isn’t an accident. Good fortune may come to some, but most success is undoubtedly achieved through a deliberate conscious effort. And that is both encouraging, and the challenge. Because you have the power to change your life. To manifest new things, better opportunities, if… you are up to the challenge.

You want a better year?
What are you prepared to do about it?
Are you prepared to make changes in your life, and put in the time needed to get momentum going?

Yes, obviously you are, here are some ways to make your 2022 goals a reality!

Visualize the End you Want

The best way to set goals for the year is to start with the end in mind. Envision in your mind the end of 2022.

What is it you want to have achieved?
Who do you want to have become?
Where do you want to be?

Take time and really think about these questions. Dig deep. The clearer your vision of the end of the year, the more focused your goals will be.

Your vision should drive your goal setting. When you know where you are going its easier to plan your journey. Goals are what lead us to our ultimate vision. For example, you may want to buy that luxurious holiday home on the coast, but there are a number of goals you going to have to achieve to make that a reality. The vision reveals the goals. And the goals are the pathway to your destination.

What is the ending you want for 2022?

How to Prepare to Launch Your Online Business in 2022

List Long Overdue Goals

So let’s be honest for a minute. We all have those goals in our lives we seem to constantly brush off. Every year those goals are on our lists, but we seldom carry through with them. But what if you did? How would that make you feel?

How would it feel to exercise for a solid year and get fit and healthy?
How would it change your career possibilities if you actually just mastered that one skill?
How would you feel if you could actually get that business idea off the ground?

We all have those goals we want to achieve, but keep putting off. Make your list and choose at least one to pursue, anyone! Preferably the one that would make you feel the greatest sense of achievement!

Stop procrastinating, stop waiting for the right time, weather, circumstances and just start! You’re going to be so proud of yourself when you get to the end of 2022 and have followed through with it! And all the sacrifice and discomfort you might have to endure will be absolutely worth it?

So what goal are you going to finally conquer in 2022?

Set Goals with Purpose

Anyone can set goals. In fact all of us set goals all the time. But few of us achieve every goal we set. That’s because we don’t have a strong emotional purpose driving them.

Let’s take health for example.

Whether it’s losing weight, toning up, strengthening your body or running a marathon, often we lose the desire to follow through because we lack a really good reason.

Why do you want to improve your health?
Is it just because it sounds like a cool goal?
Or is there a backstory, an emotional reason, something that makes us jump up and say “that’s it I’m doing this?”

Is it because you want to break through your own limiting beliefs about yourself? Is it because you want to fit into sizes of clothing you could years ago? Or are you sick and tired of feeling weak, lacking energy, mobility, strength, or endurance?

Whatever holds the greatest emotional value, hold onto that!

You want to make more money? Why? Just because, or do you want to give your family a better life. Don’t just set the goal, think about the purpose behind it, that reason is what will push you beyond every setback and failure to your ultimate success.

Map Your Journey

Taking time to visualize the end of 2022, is a fun exercise. Setting goals you want to achieve for the year is the easy part. The real challenge is how do you get there? And that’s why many goals in our lives seem to remain just that, goals, and not reality.

Once you’ve chosen a goal to achieve, take some time to think about the journey you will need to take to achieve it. Remember a goal is an objective. It says little about the steps needed to achieve it.

For example, let’s say you wanted to start your own business. That’s a long-term goal. It’s going to take hours of work, every week, consistently. So how do you map this journey?

Research people doing what you want to do.
Follow people on social media that do what you want to do.
Look for opportunities and niches to exploit.
Create a clear idea for your business.
Be able to explain your business clearly to anyone.
Start talking about your business idea on social media.
Start connecting with people and growing your network.
Ask for feedback from your audience to better develop your service.
Reach out and offer a free trial of your service to get feedback and recommendations.
Use those recommendations to build social proof.
Consistently talk and share about your field of expertise.
Create resources to help your prospects understand your services.
Establish yourself as an authority in your field of business.

It’s not going to cover everything you need to do, but will help you get perspective on what you need to do to build momentum!

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Monitor Your Progress

We all want progress! In fact it’s when we don’t see progress that we get disheartened and discouraged. That’s why you should set time aside daily, weekly and monthly to evaluate what you have done, and what you haven’t done. This will help you maintain focus, keep perspective and identify areas you need to focus more time on.

You cant just go through each month hoping you are going to reach your targets. Monitor your progress, don’t be obsessive, just maintain focus and perspective. Motivate yourself when you gain ground, and reprioritize if you see any areas are losing momentum.

Life is up and down, and things happen that are unexpected. That’s life. Just be flexible to adaptive to your circumstances and maintain focus. It’s why getting into a habit of monitoring your performance is important!

Conclusion

The journey to achieving any goal worth achieving is often fraught with challenges! Goals are most often than not as simple as one, two, three. They require consistent and deliberate action. Some days you will feel like you are progressing fast and furious. Other days you will feel like you are moving backwards rather than forwards.

This is just the nature of life. You have to remind yourself, persistence is the greatest reason you will succeed! Every day you have an opportunity to further your progress. Keep working at your goals, be relentless, don’t give up hope and acknowledge your progress however small it may be!

The positivity you can extract from the journey will fuel your motivation and resilience.

Wishing you the best year ever for 2022, may all your goals finally become a reality!

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6 Easy Steps for Maintaining Good Habits

I have recently started running again. Usually, I set myself a goal and I go all out until I hit my target. (My new goal is to run 21.1 km in under 2 hours) But once the running goal is achieved, I tend to fall into lazy habits again. So how do I keep on maintaining good habits?

What is a good habit?

Before we get into how to maintain good habits, we need to understand what a good habit is. The free dictionary defines it as A behaviour that is beneficial to one’s physical or mental health, often linked to a high level of discipline and self-control.

Whereas many of these good habits can be general and common, it’s better you define your own good habits. At least define them in your own way. One person’s good habits will not fit another person’s good habits. It often helps you to define your values first. Knowing your values will allow you to form habits that you will be more likely to keep.

For example, my values include family, time outdoors, and exercise. One habit I have no trouble keeping is taking regular walks in the park with my family (That includes my best friend, Bruno!)

How habits work

The world counts have a great article on Habits. The importance of Good Habits. They explain habits in an interesting way.

There is a habit loop.

A trigger: This can be a place, time, person or even feeling
Routine: Something you do because of the trigger (i.e., watch TV)
Reward: This is a chemical response from your brain.

Because of the reward, the habit loop is reinforced. The loop is a self-reinforcing mechanism that over time becomes automatic. Knowing this means we can create good new habits.

Find out : How To Launch an Online Business

What is the importance of maintaining good habits?

So why is it even important to maintain these good habits?

They can keep you healthy

Eating good foods, exercise and mental health can all be set by creating habits. You need to identify them in your unique frame of reference and set the habit in motion.

They help you to reach your goals

Habits are the building blocks of doing things consistently to produce results. You will need to tweak, change, and reset your habits from time to time when you need to make the step to your next level.

If developed correctly, they keep you focused

By forming the correct habits, it can keep you focused on your goals. For example, I have a daily method of operation which includes a list. My habit is to get this stuff done first. If you want to learn more about DMO, check out this post. Daily Method Of Operation Simple and Fun.

Habits get you through the mundane

And let’s face it, a lot of the things we know we need to do to get where we want to be are not “fun”. Some of them can be rather mundane and easily skipped if not placed into a good habit. One thing I would not do if it were not a habit is to follow up with prospects.

6 ways for maintaining good habits

So now we know what a habit is, how habits work and why habits are important to keep. So here are 5 ways that will help you in maintaining them.

1 Access your goals (Regularly)

It will be very hard to keep a habit that is not in line with your goals. Make sure you have a defined goal, and a plan to get there. If these are in place, it will help you form the habit necessary to get there.

2 Start today

Start immediately. Don’t wait till next Tuesday. Habits are all about momentum. The momentum you have from the thought of what you need to do only lasts for this moment. Next Tuesday there will be an unforeseen problem preventing you from starting.

3 Start small

If you are unfit and decide to run 10 km tomorrow, you might do it once or twice. But when you feel sore and in pain tomorrow and the next day, your body will relate it to a painful experience. What we need for the habit is related to a good feeling. Rather run 1 km a day every second day for a couple of weeks. Build on that once the habit is formed.

4 Schedule it

Related to starting today, and starting small, just make sure it’s in your calendar. To begin with, it may be hard, so get it done first. Get it out the way. You’ll feel better when you get into bed at night. That is the feeling you need. In time the habit will form, and one day you even notice you are doing it. That is the ZEN in forming habits.

5 Get Accountability

If you find it hard to get started on your own, get a friend to hold you accountable. Just let them know what you are doing and why you are doing it. Share your schedule with them. Hopefully, they check in with you regularly. Eventually, hopefully, you will be telling them of your daily success before they ask the question!

6 Create new goals

I started this article with my problem. How will I keep a good habit going once my goal is achieved? Well, I think I may have answered it here above in a way. I need to make sure it aligns with my values (checked) and I will need to create a new goal before I reach this one.

The new goal after this one is: Run a marathon. 42.2 KM

Just a note here: Make sure you enjoy your success in between goals. Otherwise, you might lose the point of why you are doing what you are doing

In Closing

As important as it is to form habits, a habit can go into overdrive. Picking up this overdrive can be tricky, as habits are invisible when in motion. So just remember to regularly access your values, improve your goals, and listen to those around you. You should be able to spot one in overdrive.

So, happy habit forming!

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What is focus time? (5 ways on how to achieve more!)

Every one of us has 24 hours in a day. Why do some people achieve more results than others? As a manager in a software business, there are so many different aspects that I must keep my eye on. Project management, team management, client relationships and some more technical aspects. To deliver a project on time and with quality, I must divide my teams time and my time. So what is focus time?

Focus Time is a simple time-management technique that can change your life. The technique, when set up and implemented, requires you and your team members to work several defined short intervals. Outside of that time, you can attend to the clutter (emails, social media and other distractions).

Why do you need focus time?

To be focused means you need to have goals and objectives defined. Once you know where you are going you can organise your time around achieving the goal is short, focused bursts.

How to get more Focus Time

In a complex work environment like today’s, each person must wear many hats each day. To find the time to focus can be a challenge. Here are some techniques I use myself and for my team. Later, I will show you a tool, RescueTime, that shows you where you spend your time, how much and for what periods of time.

1) Improve Self Belief

You need to believe in your own ability to follow through on a schedule. Focus becomes a lot easier when you can manage up and down and know the urgency at the moment. Most urgent tasks are not important and can wait for later. You need to believe in your ability to make the right call.

2) Get Rest

Not getting the right amount of sleep for you can lead to impaired cognitive ability. To set yourself up for success, make sure you get 7-8 hours of sleep each night.

3) Set Daily and Weekly Goals (Get accountability)

As a manager, setting the tone of what is important for the day or week will help your team to get their focus dedicated to the right tasks. By communicating and providing the schedule, it’s clear what needs to happen. There will be urgent issues that arise during the day and can derail a schedule. Working together and continually defining the focus will keep you on track.

4) Schedule in advance and with set focus periods

Once the goals and objectives are defined, it’s up to you to focus your own time. Getclockwise defines it like this.

Swerve, Stack and Schedule.

Swerve: Learn how to ignore people: Delay your response to incoming messages. Rather have a focus time for that. It will allow you to be more thoughtful in your response and reduce the back and forth of emails.
Stack – Schedule your meetings back-to-back in your calendar: First thing before you start your workweek, re-arrange events to maximize your (and your team’s) productivity. Try to create more meeting zones so that you have larger chunks of time to dedicate real work focus time.
Schedule – Block off Focus Time on your calendar: Once you have the blocks in place, you and your team can look at the week’s goals. Place the focus blocks in your calendars’ and stick to them. Protect your focus time.

To add to this, make sure your focus time is at your peak performance times. If you are sharper in the morning, make sure your plan pushes more focus time here.

5) Declutter your space

I don’t know about you, but I work better when my workspace is clean. Sometimes I find myself cleaning up my space before getting to the focus time. Everyone’s circumstances and preferences are different, so you need to figure this out. For example, if you work at home and it’s too busy to focus, think about going out for periods of time. Have a look at this blog post on how to declutter your brain.

Rescue Time

Rescue Time is an Automatic time-tracking and distraction blocking tool you can run on your PC all day long. RescueTime shows you exactly how long you spend on apps and sites down to the minute.

Find out more and use the free version. Upgrade to premium for 14 days free.

RescueTime

Features

See exactly where your time goes.
“Turn off” distractions like social media and news.
Stay focused on goals all day long.
Keep track of time spent in meetings and calls with one-click.

Summing it up

Focus time can help you and your team achieve your goals. With more time dedicated to the right tasks, you should see more quality work. Your team will also feel less stress and learn skills to manage time more effectively.

So now that you know what focus time is, it’s up to you to find the time.

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