One of the most challenging things in life is learning self-discipline. It is a valuable skill that can be directed into so many different aspects of life. Like any other skill, it can be built up by using exercises and being consistent. 

The exercises used to develop self-discipline can be hard to sort through and find which ones you need for the situation. No worries! Focus on the rest of the article to learn some great techniques to improve self-discipline.

Self-Discipline Exercises You Can Do Now

The exercises to increase your self-discipline are:

• Practice meditation for five minutes a day.
• Make your bed each morning.
• Get rid of anything that distracts you.
• Use your energy for working, not complaining.
• Change your mindset to fit your goals.
• Keep your motivations close at hand.
• Grow outside your comfort zone.
• Make your phone an ally in building self-discipline.
• Learn that failing is winning in the long run.
• Make a vision board of your goals.
• Practice time management by writing out your day in a planner.

Practice Meditation

Meditation is an excellent way to improve your mental health, make you happier and help you deal with anxiety and everyday stress:

• Set aside 5-10 minutes of your time each day. 
• Sit comfortably, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths.
• As you breathe, inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth. 
• Concentrate on the sensation of breathing or the feeling of expanding your chest or abdomen

Meditation isn’t about not thinking. It is about training your mind to identify thoughts and letting them pass without any judgment. It drastically improves concentration and your ability to focus on the given task. If you are just starting out, and 10 minutes sounds like a daunting task, it’s okay to do less. Do not try to overwhelm yourself causing burnout.

The important part is to be consistent about it and do it regularly. That alone will massively improve your self-discipline.

Remember, it’s much better to meditate for just five minutes six times a week than rather do it once a week for an hour. 

Meditation can help you recognize what is essential and get rid of the junk. Life puts so much stress on the human body that our defense mechanisms take some time to calm down. Breathing removes toxins from the body and can be very calming. 

Tips for a successful session: 

• Find a quiet room or location where you can sit undisturbed for five to ten minutes. 
• Try to use the same time of day for each session. 
• Set the timer on your phone or watch, and once you hit go, it is all business.
• Don’t try to control your breathing, and instead, let it happen naturally. Just notice all the little sensations you experience (be that in your nose, mouth, chest, or your abdomen)
• When your mind wanders off (and it will!), without judgment, return your focus to the sensation of breathing and concentrate. 

Make Your Bed Each Morning

It may seem like building self-discipline takes running a marathon or climbing Mt. Everest to become a reality, but a dull chore is where to start. 

Making your bed is the perfect chore to start the snowball rolling. If every day you can set aside the time for a two-minute job, you can build up to a much larger goal. Tacking small hurdles leads up to conquering the big ones. Keep this in mind as you navigate the world of self-discipline.

Almost every single important thing you want to achieve in life takes discipline, a strategic plan, and then executing it by putting one foot in front of the other. 

Even marathoners begin by running just a couple of miles. Find something easy enough to do and accomplish it before moving on to something more challenging. 

Making the bed is a great way to hold yourself accountable and build strong self-discipline. Once making your bed becomes part of your routine, add something else, and don’t stop improving until you see yourself at the top of the mountain. 

Get Rid of Anything that Distracts You

Find out what keeps you from accomplishing your tasks and blow them out of the water. Leaving on the television or spending too much time on social media can be a real drain on your ability to practice self-discipline. 

The biggest nut to crack in the discipline game is mastering your mind. Each task is going to put you in a position to flow. Flow is a state where you are on autopilot but continue to work at optimal efficiency.

If something distracts you from your current task, cut it off, or move away. Allowing distractions to get in your way will cause you to miss deadlines or run out of time on a personal project. Self-discipline requires focus. Focusing on doing one thing at a time, but doing it well.

Make your path to success shorter by removing obstacles. Removing the items is just clearing the runway for you to fly. Once they are gone, you can find out precisely what it takes to make you enjoy the work and not fear it.

Finding out how many distractions you can take and still be productive is the name of the game. Working with soft music could be something that fuels your creative and productive sides, while a TV left turned on can cause distraction and lost time. How you shut down your distractions is up to you. Make sure that they are away from your senses and won’t be on your mind. Again, control your thoughts and move forward with the job at hand. 

Use Your Energy for Work, Not Complaining

If you tend to complain about tasks before or during, there’s a neat trick you can use to break this up:

• Place a rubber band around your wrist. 
• Every time you complain, pop yourself with the band.
• Move the rubber band to the other hand. 

After five or six good snaps, your mind will stop you from repeating that particular thought pattern – complaining.

Like Ivan Pavlov, a famous Russian physiologist, and a specialist in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (also known as CBT),  you are rewiring your brain’s responses.

Once your brain begins to understand the reasoning behind the pops, it will filter out negative thoughts and center you on the good stuff. This is a more extreme example of the idea but still has the same principle at hand. Adverse actions will be rewarded with pain. The body wants to avoid this and will do whatever it can to get away. 

Control your thoughts and breathing after the first snapping. Every instance, follow the same process as before. For some, the change will come in the first few minutes; for others, it could take days. Stick to it! Nothing good ever came easy, and self-discipline is a road map to personal freedom. 

Change Your Mindset to Fit Your Goals

Many people want to improve their self-discipline for better health and a more active lifestyle. This involves a total mindset change. It would help if you began to see that what keeps you from your goals is bad for you. 

Labeling old or harmful actions as things you don’t do anymore is powerful. It can change who you are as a person. Let’s talk food — everyone’s favorite subject 🙂

• Snack foods
• Sweets
• Ice cream
• Sugary drinks 

You need to move these things from something you sometimes have to something that you don’t eat. This subtle change in how you think about desserts could be a game-changer. Begin to classify foods or actions that are bad for you and replace them with healthier options.

This change won’t happen overnight. Know that once you realize an action can be wrong for you, it is time to stop. Train your brain to think ahead and plan for situations. If you are weak around food, eat before going out or prepare food for a long trip. If alcohol is your Achilles heel, stay away from bars and parties. Keep in mind, that it gets easier the more disciplined you become, as the snowball effect is very powerful. 

Keep Your Motivations Close-at-Hand

A sure-fire way to find out exactly how much progress you are making is to keep a journal or log nearby. Every day you complete a task, write it down in the journal and stow it away for later. 

Writing things down makes them concrete, and people often react well to objects they can see and feel. The reasoning behind keeping your journal nearby is to use it as fuel for the times you don’t feel like getting up early for work or the weather isn’t right for you to take a run. 

Read back to one of the times you set a goal and completed it. This will show that you had doubts even then, but despite that, you got it together and completed the task. Sometimes all you need is just a nudge to get you going.

Here are a few tips:

• The notebook should be small and light, and easily accessible

• Write your goals down for the next day. But make them realistic and practical. These goals are a contract. Don’t break a promise to yourself. 

• Check-in on your goals throughout the day to update them. As you complete them, check them off the list and give a short description.

• At the end of the day, look back over what went well and what didn’t. Remember that as you start the process all over again for the next day. 

Grow Outside of Your Comfort Zone

Self-discipline is about growth. The best way to grow is to try something out of your comfort zone. If you want to sneak into the Yoga class or take the stairs at work, there are tiny steps to break your comfort zone. 

You already know that a small task can get you going – and stepping outside your comfort zone can give you the same boost. 

Once you start to do things that you didn’t think were possible, a level of confidence sets in. Confidence can be applied across all aspects of life and only reinforces your self-discipline. 

A few tips to get you out of your comfort zone:

• Find a sport or class that plays into your weaknesses. 
• Sign up and attend the class meetings.
• Fight the urge to run or skip the class. Know that this anxiety is normal, and trying something new could open a whole new world of possibilities.
• Commit to making your weaknesses your strengths. 

The results from moving outside your comfort zone are often immediate, and the boost in morale is addictive. Once you have taken down a significant goal, your mind begins to believe it can handle more because you have already accomplished so much.

Make your Phone an Ally in Building Self-Discipline

Our phones can often be a killer of motivation, and hours can be spent staring into the void. Take a weakness and make it a strength. 

Today, phones have apps that will keep you on a mission and provide the motivation needed to get through a rough day or workout. People always need to be in touch with others or have a desperate fear of missing out. In order to build self-discipline, it’s time to move away from these phone habits.

You can use an app like Flip’D that blocks time-consuming apps on your phone and keeps you on task. It logs time at work, and the times that would have been wasted are now turned to production. It works by stopping notifications and news stories from showing up while you are working. Times can vary depending on the user.

Set the phone to increase the time the blocker is in use each day. The longer it stretches, the longer you have to focus and knock out whatever you are working on. Time management is critical, and self-discipline flourishes when your time is managed. iPhone users have a built-in function called “Focus” where you can manage notifications easily.

Some other ways to keep your phone working for you while practicing self-discipline are:

• Turn your phone off while you have office hours or workout time.
• Set it to airplane mode while you work.
• Place it in a separate room to avoid being alerted.

Learn that Failing is Winning in the Long Run.

Self-discipline’s primary purpose is to teach you to keep going even when things get rough. Often failing or missing a goal can seem like a devastating blow that many don’t make it back from. 

Learn to take comfort in the learning experience of the journey. Every trail to a new goal is going to have failures and setbacks. That is unavoidable, and that’s a normal part of life. Don’t let your failures keep you from moving forward.

A great thing to remember is that failure always comes with a lesson. After a setback, sit down and analyze every part of the failure. Take into account everything and find out what didn’t work. 

Once you know where you went wrong, you know where to start. Train on the weaknesses that made you fail in the previous attempt. Get better at them and try again. Never stop trying.

Failing is something that our society doesn’t glamorize. There isn’t any fanfare in the locker room of the team that just lost the Super Bowl. There aren’t ticker-tape parades for the team that didn’t win a game all season. Failure in real-life happens every day. Self-discipline is the key to turning these failures into fuel for your larger goals.

Build a Vision Board of Your Goals

Another great way to keep your goals in focus is to build a vision board. Vision boards give you something, like a journal, that keeps your mind on what is essential. Use pictures of people you wish to emulate or places that you would like to go to. Things to use on your vision board include:

• Photos and images
• Magazine and newspaper articles
• Quotes and affirmations

If your goal is to lose weight, find motivating quotes or pictures of people who have had similar journeys and place them on your board. Their image will serve as a reminder to keep up the fight. 

Self-discipline is built by keeping your mind in a focused state. Having visual aids reminds you that there is a bigger goal at work. 

You can use post-it notes or clipped images from the internet and magazines but use something that will catch your attention. A single letter or picture will not convey the same message as a wall of great advice, and people you can empathize with. 

Practice Time Management by Writing Your Day Out in a Planner

A great way to incorporate self-discipline is to track your time management with a daily planner. Having a schedule gives you a rigid frame to base your entire day off. If you break it down into hour chunks, you can get a better idea of how much time is wasted each day. 

Once you see how many hours a day you are wasting, sticking with a schedule will be much easier. 

Time management can be broken down into shifts or by half-hours if needed. Taking control of the time you have each day is an excellent way to build up self-discipline that will unlock so many doors for you in your life and career. Once a rigid timeframe is set, you begin to crave a schedule. 

The steps to begin tracking your time are:

• Use a ‘normal’ week to set a baseline for management. Use the first week to write down what you do in a typical week. This will show you how many hours are wasted and how to reduce time in other spots.
• Plug in times for a new schedule. Use the planner to create a new schedule for your week. Concentrate on work and exercise while keeping a little downtime as well.
• Adjust the schedule to fit your needs. The first week of a new schedule can be changed for optimization. Add and remove things until you have maximized the time you have available.

Benefits of Self-Discipline

Famous Navy SEAL and author Jocko Willink has a saying that discipline will set you free. He has an amazing book that I love —”Extreme Ownership”. Also, he has a “Jocko podcast” that will teach you everything you want to know about discipline, freedom, and accountability.

Not only does discipline help you keep going in tough situations, but it will unlock life goals that you didn’t think were possible. 

The trip to running a marathon isn’t begun without days of tough training and sacrifice. Some of the most prominent benefits of self-discipline are:

• Controlling impulsive actions.
• See projects through until the end.
• Push yourself to exercise no matter how you feel.
• Eat clean and improve overall health.

Controlling Impulsive Actions

One of the biggest things that can defeat self-discipline is your lack of ability to control your impulses.

When the mind wanders, it will begin to do something to make itself more comfortable. Think about your phone and how often you use it. If you continuously need to check the social media pages for likes or comments, your brain will gravitate this way. 

Reducing distractions and compulsions is the key to controlling actions. Once you recognize an act as impulsive, think about why you did it. Your mind is quite powerful and will also retain any new commands that you concentrate on. This close look at the impulsive action will make you realize it more, and at that point, you can begin to stop.

As your self-discipline grows, the number of times you catch yourself doing impulsive things will slow and eventually come to a stop. As your mind adapts to the new information, your awareness will shift to the task at hand. Once distractions and impulsiveness are gone, your demeanor will change, and things like social media will lose their luster.

See Projects Through Until the End

A hallmark of self-discipline is to work at something until the job is finished. 

Obstacles will always pop up and knowing how to handle them and get the job done is a trait that you must build. Procrastination once a job becomes hard is something that affects every single one of us. Our minds think it is easier to move on and will find anything to take you away from the problem. Fight this instinct to walk away.

When a job becomes too much, try and break it down into smaller parts. 

The mind can want to run when it sees a task that looks impossible or something that will be hard work. It is natural. It’s a version of your fight or flight response that seeks out the safest way to maneuver around the problem. Refined self-discipline will see large jobs as a treat and not something to run from.

No matter what the situation on the job take ownership of the problems and move forward. Once a new challenge is found, keep finding workarounds until you have a way to knock out the job. Not all jobs are going to be fun. Forge on despite any setbacks. 

Push Yourself to Exercise Whether You Feel Like It or Not

A hallmark of great self-discipline is to strap on your running shoes and get your run in no matter how you feel or what the weather is doing.

Ultramarathoner, and former Navy SEAL, David Goggins, is a master of pushing himself past the limits of normal human functioning. One of his central tenets of self-disciple is to get up and get those shoes on no matter what. Snowing outside? Great time for a run! The coldest day your state has seen in a century? Better run twice as much. 

While his example may be extreme, there is merit in this. Being able to lace up your shoes, crawl onto your bike, or strap on your heavy rucksack when the conditions aren’t ideal is a pure form of dedication and self-discipline. 

Your mind knows what you are scared of and what it is going to take to make you quit. Take control of your thought process by showing the voice in your head just how far you can go.

Exercising gives your mind a great platform to produce self-discipline. As your heart rate increases, your mind will scramble to find a way to get out of it. Shift that focus on other things. Music. Politics. Whatever. Just hang on for as long as you can and then ease up a bit. 

Going back and forth to a place filled with pain will drive your mind in exciting ways. Through exercise, you can find the path to all the answers to your life questions.

Eat Clean and Improve Overall Health

Just like exercising, eating healthy can be a great place to build self-discipline. 

Start small by keeping a food journal of what you eat and by replacing food items like sweets and soft drinks. Removing sugar from your diet will cleanse the body and improve the body’s craving for natural organic foods.

For specific diet instruction hiring a dietician or fitness professional isn’t a bad idea. Great things to add to your diet are:

• Get a habit of drinking regular water throughout the day.
• Try your best to get a quality 7-hour+ sleep every day to boost your recovery and overall feeling.
• supplements for things you do not get enough naturally— like fish oil, and vitamin D.

Your food intake is as important (arguably more!) as your exercise routine. Having the willpower to exercise consistently but not eat well is not doing you any good. 

A combined diet, good quality sleep, and exercise are some of the most beneficial things humans can get. Change what you need in your diet to improve performance in all aspects of your life.

Another bonus of eating clean is setting aside the time for meal prep. Taking a couple of days a week to plan out and cook all your meals will take some self-discipline. While cooking, you have the time to catch up on your goal journal or search for new items for your wish board. 

Conclusion

Building self-discipline takes time and work. It may seem like a significant goal but making several small goals will create a schedule that allows you time to work and improve your way of living. 

Exercise and eating well go hand in hand with self-discipline and time management. Plan out your days and goals and keep them somewhere; you will see them often.

Self-discipline is like any other skill in that working on it will improve it. Take the time to sit down and iron out the kinks in your life by building some self-discipline.