The Miracle of Self-Discipline

The Miracle of Self-Discipline by Brain Tracy

All people who are well disciplined feel that they are not very well disciplined. The more disciplined, the more organized, the more focused you are the more you feel that you could be doing much better. In our time together, I’m going to give you some ideas on how to do much much better.


Cap Capmyr: Self-discipline is more important than anything else. Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should it, whether you feel like it or not. It is the key to success. You can know every success principle in the world, but it won’t do you good unless you can discipline yourself to put it into action. Napoleon Hill: With that everything works, without that nothing works. Jim Ron: Discipline weighs ounces, regret weighs tons.

Dr. Edward Benfield: Why it was that some people were more successful than others? Why did people move up socio-economically in their age group, or in their society, and others did not do it? What he found was the key was time perspective. The length of time you take into consideration when deciding upon what you are going to do is the key determiner of whether or not you are going to hit. From lower-lower class the poorest of all to upper-upper class the richest of all there is a longer time perspective. The further you move up, the longer you look in to future. Therefore a person who is going to be really successful in the long term, will make decisions in the short term that make that possible. And the most important word is the word: sacrifice. People who are going to be really successful in the future are willing to make sacrifices in the present in order to guarantee that future. By sacrifices we mean they are willing to put in long hours, they are willing to get up earlier, they are willing to work harder, they are willing to stay later, they are willing to invest and save their money - even though they don’t have a lot - knowing that with compound interest it will grow and grow over time. They are willing to spend an enormous time investing in their children knowing that this investment in their children in time, love, affection and support will pay off for decades and generations even into the lives of their children and grandchildren. So sacrifice is the critical world. And sacrifice means that you have the ability to discipline yourself. You have the ability to delay gratification in the short term, so that you can enjoy far greater rewards in the long term.

Self-discipline is self-control. It’s self-mastery. It is the ability to have dinner before desert. Well, in a normally ou, when the desert come? The answer is it comes after the meal. When is it that most people eat their desert? They eat it first. Now let me give you an example. If you came home from a hard working day, and came in, and you ate a big piece of apple pie with ice-cream. How much appetite would you have for a substantial dinner? And the answer is probably little or no appetite. How would you feel afterward? Sluggish? What affect would have on your health? It probably make you overweight, slug you down and so on. Well it’s a same thing in life. People say we are going to have fun, fun, fun. Till the daddy takes the tilber away. And then they are going to do the hard work. But in meals, desert comes after dinner. So the great choice is always, do you have your dinner first? In other words do you do what is hard and necessary, what is essential and correct? Or do you have fun, you watch television, go out socializing, go drinking with the boys or the girls or so on? Which do you do first? And that’s the critical determination. Successful people do what is hard and necessary first, and then they enjoy the rewards afterwards.

Now, the pay off for practicing self-discipline is immediate. People think, oh Jesus I will get this rewards way down in the future. No, no. There is an immediate reward. There is a wonderful line in spiritual development that said: You are not punished for your sense, but by them. In other words, there are things that you do that are harmful to you that cause immediate deferment. But you also rewarded for the good things that you do, and you rewarded immediately. So what we know is when you practice self-discipline, you actually like and respect yourself more. How you feel about yourself on the minute to minute basis, do you feel that you are a good person? A likeable person? A successful person? The more you like yourself and respect yourself and value yourself on the minute to minute basis, the better is your attitude, the better is your reaction to other people. You just feel happy inside. And wonderfully enough when you practice self-discipline, when you exert yourself to do what you know you should do - even though there is endless temptations to do something fun and easy - when you discipline yourself to do it, your self-esteem goes up. You actually like yourself more. Your self-image improves. You actually see yourself as a better person. And of course as you know your self-image determines your performance. The person you see in your mind, will be the person that you will be on the outside. And the wonderful thing is when you practice self-discipline, your brain releases endorphins. And endorphins are called nature’s happy drug. And it actually makes you happy to practice self-discipline, to take control of yourself and make yourself do the right thing and complete it. You feel good about yourself in the moment and of course the affect it has on your future can be tremendous.

Now, fortunately self-discipline is a habit that you can learn with practice and repetition. If you do something over and over again, you eventually develop a habit. The difference between successful people and unsuccessful people is successful people have success habits. And the most important success habit they have is the ability to make themselves do what they know they should do its time. And wonderfully enough, if you practice it over and over again, it finally locks in. Everything is hard before it easy. Developing the habit of self-discipline is hard and be patient with yourself. Because you slipped back all the time. All your life you will be slipping back. All your life you have to fight this battle. You never get it to the point where its locked in forever. Every morning you get up and that alarm goes up and you say “Do I sleep a little longer or do I get up?” You gotta fight this battle every single day. But every time you fighting you feel better about yourself. Well, it only takes 21 days they say, to develop a new habit. So you can lock in the foundation of the habit simply by practicing self-discipline every single day without exception for 21 days.

Herbert Gray: What would be the common denominator of success? Quite simple. Successful people make a habit of doing what unsuccessful people don’t like to do. And logical question is what is it unsuccessful people don’t like to do? Well it turned out to be same thing that successful people don’t like to do either. But they do it anyway. Because they recognize that it’s the price of success. A simple thing like exercising, going for a run or a walk at the end of the day. Do people like to do this? To look forward, to exertion, pursperation, sweating, straining and everything else. No. But we do it, because we recognize that its price of looking and feeling fit, trim, living a long life, taking a good care of our bodies and so on.

It’s hard to prospect, it’s hard to recrue, it’s hard to build a business, it’s hard to come home after work and work on building your business. There is lots of things in life that you don’t like to do. There is lots of hard things that contain stress, and that contain rejection, and potential failure, and hard work and so on. But you do them, because you want to do the other things. And it is only by doing things that you don’t want to do that you can finally create the opportunity to do all the things that you want to do for yourself and your family. And again it comes back to our favorite word: sacrifice. We are willing to pay the price in the present to enjoy the great rewards in the future.

Now, there are 9 disciplines you can develop that we will talk about today. There are 9 disciplines you can develop that will improve every area of your life. And here is a rule every exercise in discipline in any area, strengthens disciplines in every other area. Every weakness in discipline also weakens your other disciplines as well.

1. Clear Thinking

What is the highest pay/most important work in any company? And the answer is thinking. Clear thinking is important. Because the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your decisions and choices. Your decisions and choices determine the actions you take. The actions you take determine your results. Your results determine the quality of your life. And all starts with your thinking clearly. To think well:

• Take time to think. Use long, unbroken chunks of time. 30-60 minutes. Fast decision are usually wrong decisions involving people or money.
• Think in silence and solitude.
• Mind calming 20-30 minutes.
• Think on paper.
• Receive feed-back from a friend.
• What are my assumptions? What if my assumption was wrong?

2. Daily Goal Setting
Daily goal setting provides focus and concentration.

• What do I really want to do with my life? To clarify that ask yourself (removing all your problems to be not preoccupied by them): What would you do if you would earn 10.000.000 $ in the lottery and if you would have only 10 years to live? What would you really want to do with your life?
• Take a spiral notebook, write down 10 goals that you want to accomplish in the next 12 month.
• Write in the present tense.
• Write the word “by” at the end of every goal, to give deadline.
• Use positive expressions.
• Use the word “I”.
• Every day before you start the day, write your 10 goals, to program subconscious mind.

3. Daily Time Management
Time management increases your productivity by planning.

• Make list of everything you have to do in the course of the day.
• Make this list night before.
• During the day, don’t do anything unless its written down.
• Organize your list by priority using 80/20 rule and ABCDE method.
• Do your most important job as first thing in the morning.
• Concentrate by single handling.

4. Courage
Fair of failure. “I cant”. Overcome this. If you desire to have a quality that you don’t have, act in every instance where quality is called for as though already you had it. And you will have it. The frear is in your own mind. Face with your fears. “I can do it”. Whenever you afraid of anything, say to yourself over and over again: “I can do it”. And then just do it.

5. Excellent Health Habits

• Your goal should be to live to be 100 in sound physical health. Say yourself, “What would I have to do in order to get there?”
• Design your ideal body. Weight, fitness, tone etc. What would it look like? Make a list.
• Key to physical health is “Eat less and exercise more”.
• Exercise every day, every morning 05:00 to 06:00. Exercise first thing in the morning.
• Eliminate 3 white poisons: Flour, sugar and salt.
• Avoid pasta, bread, cakes, desserts, soft drinks.
• Eat fruits, vegetables and proteins.
• Drink 8 glass of water a day.
• Eat salad.
• Eat light.
• Eat before 06:00 PM.
• Have regular medical and dental check-ups. Especially if you are over 40, you should have a complete medical every single year, and you should have regular dental check-ups at least twice a year. If you are in business of any kind, you should have 4 visits to orthodontist to clean your teeth every single year.

6. Regular Saving and Investing

• One of the greatest goals that we have in life is to be financially independent. One of the greatest worries we have in life is our bills. So set a goal “to be financially independent”.
• Get out of debt and Stay out of debt.
• Whenever we get a lot of money, our first thought is spending it on something that makes us happy. People when they are happy, associate going out and buying stuff. However, what this does its keep you broke all your life. So instead of saying “I live spending money”, you say “I like saving money”. And you begin to think of how much you enjoy having money in the bank. And when you develop the habit of being happy about saving money, you start to find yourself more and more careful with your expenditures.
• Rule for financial independence is to save 10, 15, 20 % of your income throughout your life. And as your income grows keep saving more and more and investing it putting a way. Compound interest. To well-chosen funds.
• Saving technique: Begin by saving %1 and increase %1 every month.
• A key to save your money is to Delay major purchase decisions. If you think about buying a car, or washing machine, or stereo set, or a new computer, if you think about it for 30 days, in many cases you won’t wanna do it at all, or if you do do it you will do a better decision.
• One of the smartest things of all, Buy things that are used rather than things that are new. Do you know millionaires never buy new cars? Millionaires never buy new cars.
• If you are going to invest, the rule is “Investigate before you invest”. 2/3 of all success in investing is avoiding making mistakes. Spend as much time investigating the investment as you spend making the money. Quick investment decisions are invariably poor investment decisions.
• Only invest in things that you know and understand. Don’t invest in somebody else’s idea, or scheme, or business.
• Number 1 rule is “Don’t lose money”.
• Pay cash, as often as possible. Get rid of all your credit cards except for one and only use that one when you have to. Paying cash causes you to spend less money.
• The primary reason why you save your money and accumulate it carefully is because it gives you 2 things:
• Freedom: You know you got money in the bank. If you don’t like your job, you can walk away from it.
• Opportunity: If an opportunity comes along, you prepared to take advantage of it. As an adult you should always have opportunity money put a side, and when you have it you feel great about yourself.

7. Hard Working

• There is nothing that will help you more than for you to Develop a reputation as a hard worker. Most self-made millionaires work 60 – 70 hours per week, 5 – 15 years before they breakthrough. Harder you work, the luckier you get; the more opportunities you have; the more doors open up to you.
• Most people waste half of their time at work. The average person waste %50 of their time in idle chit-chat with co-workers, coffee breaks, lunches, reading newspaper, surfing the internet, doing the all kinds of things that don’t contribute anything to the work. Here is the rule that will make you successful, happy and rich: “Work all the time you work”. When you go to work, work; put you head down to work all day long. Don’t waste a single minute. If somebody comes and say: "Hi, how u doing?" "Fine, right now I got to get back to work." "You got a minute to chat?" "Yes, but not now, let’s talk after work. Right now I got to get my job done." They will go away and ruin someone else’s carrier. Remember the greatest time wasters in the world of work are other people who take up your time with idle chit-chat and worthless gossip. You got to avoid the time wasters.
• Here is a way to double your productivity, performance, output and income. A way to put yourself into fast track, increase your income and become one of the most valuable people in your industry. Its very simple:
• Start 1 hour earlier. And when you start, get to work. If the starting time in your company is 08:00, start at 07:00. Now you gonna say, where you gonna get the time. Get up a little early, and get going. Plan your day, get going, get organized, get started. When other people come in, you are already running, already on your way.
• Work through lunch. Eat at your desk, eat quickly, eat on the go. Use that time to work. Don’t use that time to hang around.
• Work 1 hour later. Be the last one to leave. Be the person who turns off the lights.
• If you look at entrepreneur or business that somebody that really driving forward, you will find that the business owners usually first one there, works through the all day, usually the last one to live. Business owners usually work at Saturday and Sunday. And so at the end of the day, the business owner has a better life standarts.
• Dont have fun at work. Work is not the fun time. Work is not school. Work is work. What you have to do at work is work all the time. Don’t worry about the fun. Have your fun later, knowing that you’ve done a fantastic job.
• Keep asking “What is the most useful use of my time right now?”
• Keep saying “Back to work”, “I have got to back to work”.

8. Continious Learning

• If you want to earn more, you have to learn more. Work at least as hard on yourself as you do on your work.
• Read on your field daily. 60 minutes daily. It makes 1 book at a week, and 50 book at a year.
• Listen to CD’s in your car.
• Attend seminars, take courses given by experts.

9. Persistence

• When you persist in the face of adversity and you drive yourself forward to complete your tasks 100%. There is two part of courage. Courage to begin and courage to endure/persist. Keeping on going when you are tired, when you disappointed, when nothing is working, and when there is no guarantee of success.
• Your persistence is your measure of your belief in yourself in what you are doing. If you truly believe in the goodness and rightness and value of what your doing, you will persist regardless what’s happening at the outside. Believe in yourself and value of your work.
• In reality persistence is self-discipline in action. Persistence is the measure of your self-discipline. Self-discipline leads to self-esteem. You make yourself into a superior human being, a better and stronger person by persisting when you feel like quitting.
• Always persist until you have completed the task. Eventually you develop a habit of persistence and you become unstoppable.

There is 7 benefits of self-discipline.

1. Habit of self-discipline guaranties your success. 
2. You will be more productive. 
3. You will paid more and promoted faster. 
4. You will have a greater sense of personal control. 
5. You will have self-esteem. 
6. You will have self-confidence. 
7. You will have a strong character.