What is discipline? And what is it good for

Discipline is about doing something consistently. You do what needs to be done. Self-discipline, for example, involves the willpower to do something that others view as a good thing. For example, you have the willpower to finish your homework on time. In that case, you need self-control to avoid procrastinating or to delay receiving a reward.

For example, you have realized that you have to do your best to get a degree at VWO level and that this reward takes longer than if you want to get a degree at another level.

Discipline and self-control are components of being able to regulate yourself.

So to get things done it is helpful to have discipline, but you have to be careful not to have so much discipline in your life that you can no longer have fun and find it hard to enjoy yourself because you still have so much "to do."

So it's important to have a balance between being disciplined and being able to have fun, or being flexible in when to do what needs to be done.

In addition, highly disciplined women (not men) are more likely to develop depression.

In addition, discipline learned in school can lead to a work addiction[1] later in life.

So discipline is useful for things like what you can achieve and accomplish, but make sure you don’t become so disciplined that you forget that life is also supposed to be fun.

Discipline may be needed to keep your home tidy, to put time into important relationships, for your work and for your health.

Discipline at work

Research shows that motivation and discipline are important for what you accomplish at work. Motivation is about wanting to do work, and discipline is about actually doing the work, regardless of how much you enjoy it. Motivation and discipline also interact with each other. The more motivated you are about something, the more discipline you have to actually carry out the tasks.

In doing so, you don't even have to have real motivation for your work, as long as you have the discipline to perform your work[2].

Learning Discipline

If you're just not getting done what you want to get done, and you're not actually working all day and not very busy anyway, it can be helpful to learn some discipline anyway. That's why I offer some tips that can help you become more disciplined about doing what needs to be done.

But be careful: are you already swamped with everything that needs to be done? In that case, too much discipline can also lead to burnout or depression—it’s important to relax from time to time.

So these tips apply only to people who never actually do what needs to be done and would like to change this themselves.

Pulse Control

One of the pitfalls of a lack of discipline is that you cannot properly suppress impulses to do something else. For example, you want to clean your house, but instead you go for a walk or suddenly find yourself spending hours watching "interesting" YouTube videos.

In that case, the SWISH technique can help you get into the habit of doing what you want done first.

You then visualize your desired behavior, cleaning up the house, with the undesired behavior, watching YouTube videos, combining that desired behavior with a positive feeling and the undesired behavior with a negative feeling.

Then you start alternating those two visualizations in your mind, and you do this faster and faster, until your unconscious chooses the positive feeling, so to speak. This will make you feel better when you clean up your house. (Or whatever you want to do better in terms of discipline).

Affirmations in the morning

Affirmations can help them be more disciplined. One place where people would like other people (or children) to have discipline is in schools, for example. Research shows that if a school day is started with positive affirmations that helps children improve their behavior,[3] and in schools that includes children doing what they are supposed to do.

The older the children got, the more effect the affirmations had. They continued until ages 13 and 14. So for adults, this could be quite helpful as well.

In the study, children had to write down at the beginning of the day what values were important to them.

For example, if you want more discipline for cleaning, this could be.

"I think a clean house is important."

"I love a tidy house."

"A tidy house gives me peace of mind."

These kinds of affirmations in the morning can then help you have better discipline throughout the day to clean up.

For your work (or business), you can write down other values to start your day with, such as:

"I am a good entrepreneur."

"I care about doing my job well."

"It gives me peace of mind when I can get my work done with focus," he said.

These types of affirmations can help you get rid of your to-do list during the day.

Self-hypnosis also allows you to repeat these types of affirmations to yourself. If you are not sure which affirmations help you, a hypnotherapist can help you figure out why you have very little discipline and then give you affirmations that will help you become more disciplined.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness helps you stay focused on what you need to do. Studies show that you can use mindfulness not only for personal well-being but also simply to improve your focus and concentration[4]. This can strengthen your discipline when you start something, making it more likely that you’ll finish it.

Research also shows that people who are more mindful have more self-discipline than those who are less mindful[5].

Why don't you have discipline?

Another way to become more disciplined is to figure out why you prefer to slack off. What beliefs lie behind your feeling that it is better not to do what needs to be done than to do it?

One example of a time when you might need discipline is when you’re recovering from an addiction and face a stressful situation. That’s when you need discipline to prevent a relapse. In such cases, hypnotherapy can help you maintain the discipline to make healthy choices when dealing with stress, social pressure, and destructive urges; hypnosis therefore also aids in personal growth[6].

Depending on what you want more discipline for, hypnotherapy can help you figure out why for that area of your life you seem to lack the willpower to do what needs to be done.

For example, why you are blocking yourself from having the discipline to exercise regularly, or to eat healthy or to just get to work on time.

Those beliefs that cause this can be found out in multiple ways with hypnosis. For example, you can have a conversation under hypnosis in which the hypnotherapist asks targeted questions to get to the heart of your problem. Sometimes even then you can find out that what is stopping you from doing what needs to be done is actually not logical at all. This may help enough to remove the belief so that you then do what needs to be done.

Eliminate lack of discipline

If such a conversation isn’t enough, you can choose to take your thoughts back to the moment when you first formed the belief that something isn’t important enough to pursue with discipline.

These are often moments from your childhood, because those are the moments when you figured out how life works and how you are supposed to function then. When you are then in your mind with that memory, the hypnotherapist helps you reinterpret that moment, using your adult knowledge.

New insights about what happened then and how people felt can make the conviction go away and then you won't have a problem with the part of your life you want to see more discipline yourself.

Sometimes it may also be necessary to change the moment in your mind, by engaging in a conversation with your inner child , for example.

Once the limiting belief has been removed, you can receive new suggestions that help you become more disciplined. This can also be achieved through affirmations that aren’t about discipline at all, but rather, for example, about self-confidence and self-esteem.

So discipline is very useful in your life to get things done, but you must be careful not to become too disciplined because that can actually lead to workaholism, depression and burnout. So make sure you have a good balance of perseverance and relaxation.

To strengthen discipline, you can use hypnosis techniques, affirmations and mindfulness.

Would you like to learn more about how hypnosis works? Then join us for the free online masterclass on hypnosis.

Or register for a seminar or one of our training courses.

Sources: