Why Self-Discipline Is So Difficult

Think about all the times you said things like “I need to drink more water”, or “I need to do more reading.” While these issues can feel more like mild irritations than wider life issues most of the time, they’re all reflective of one thing: your self-discipline. Essentially, it’s the continuation of good, healthy habits that ultimately improve your life. Put it this way, when life is running smoothly: work is flowing, you’re not making silly mistakes and you feel positive within yourself and your relationships – everything is the culmination of self-discipline.

Each time you put yourself in a position to win, you’re profiting from all of the previous times you’ve shown a sense of self-discipline. Without that trait, it’s easy to slip up and break a disciplined streak. The only person who can hold you accountable is you, potentially causing self-deprecation to creep in too. It’s important not to let that happen.

Self-discipline is like any muscle in your body – with enough training, you can grow and improve it. Primarily, this revolves around heightened self-awareness, starting with knowing why it’s so important and how it can affect your life.

You Can’t Always Rely on Your Environment

Let’s say you’re trying to complete an online course. You set everything up to maximise productivity – a Pomodoro app, relaxing music, no distractions and a belly full of food. You start, but you can hear noise from next door, or perhaps a roommate has turned the PlayStation on down the hall. All of a sudden, your environment has changed and there are things out of your control. These changes can become distractions which can derail any work rate, no matter how prepared you are.

Scenarios like this are precisely why you can’t purely rely on your environment. Of course, you can completely recluse yourself, but for those living in cities and even housing estates, distractions aren’t hard to come by. Self-discipline is the bouncer to your mind. It’s the force that allows you to keep plugging forward, day by day. A disciplined mind will learn to view the distractions for what they are – mere obstacles in the way of that drug-like feeling of accomplishment (no matter how small).

A disciplined mind is a prepared one, there’s no doubt about that. In the example just mentioned, you can prepare for distractions easily if you know what grabs your attention. But it should be noted that discipline doesn’t only lie in how you set up your environment. It also lies in how you react. Do you follow your wavering attention or bring it back in line? Knowing the answer is the first step in this process.