Get Discipline like a Monk in 7 Days!
Discipline is the bridge between creating and achieving your goals, and it's a crucial part of your skillset as a successful entrepreneur.
Unfortunately, mastering this skill isn't easy. Keeping a close eye on your work, planning, and mindset is an art that requires a lot of self-awareness, willpower, and, you guessed it, discipline... For many of us, striving for a disciplined lifestyle feels like an unattainable goal.
Is it impossible? Not at all. The path to a disciplined life is full of obstacles, but with the right approach, a good dose of motivation, and these life-changing tips, you can overcome the biggest challenges.
With this 7-day plan, you'll turn the chaos in your business life into a well-structured, fine-tuned machine, and you'll master this highly sought-after skill in no time.
Ready to achieve real results?
Day 1: Make Promises to Yourself and Keep Them
Discipline starts with honesty, not just in your relationships with others, but especially in your relationship with yourself. The first focus point of this challenge is about making and keeping promises to yourself.
Think about an action or habit in your daily routine that could be improved in terms of happiness, focus, or productivity. Choose one clear area for improvement and promise yourself to work on it every day, no matter what.
Whether you vow to stop hitting the snooze button, promise to start your day without social media, or commit to cooking something fresh every day, your promise to yourself is sacred, and you'll keep it this week, no matter what.
By working on small, realistic, and achievable goals that contribute to your happiness, you'll guarantee yourself at least one victory every day and stimulate the motivation you need to find discipline.
Day 2: The 'Anti-Discipline' Tactic
When you think of a discipline challenge, you might expect a rigorous plan that requires you to take drastic steps to change your life every day. But appearances can be deceiving, and it's often this 'over the top' approach that holds you back from success.
Forcing yourself to make the right choices all the time might sound disciplined, but it's simply not sustainable in the long run. By only imposing restrictions, you're actually reducing your chances of creating a truly productive lifestyle. Instead, focus on removing distractions that hinder your goals, rather than trying to resist them.
How do we apply this on day 2? By simply choosing one factor that undermines your discipline and removing it from your life. You'll be amazed at the impact one small change can have on your mindset.
Day 3: Set Your Alarm 5 Minutes Earlier
'Starting tomorrow, I'll really get up early', 'from today, I'll set my alarm for 06:00' - sounds familiar, doesn't it?
We often associate getting up early with productivity, and it's something we'd like to achieve and regularly promise ourselves. The problem? 99% of these goal-getters go about it the wrong way and fail after just 2 days.
But why does this go wrong every time? It's simple, we set the bar unrealistically high. Unfortunately, you can't learn new habits overnight, and so by applying extreme measures that differ greatly from what we're doing now, we're asking too much of ourselves. This quickly creates a vicious cycle where we set ourselves up for failure, get frustrated, and eventually give up.
What a shame, right?
So, on day 3 of this challenge, we'll focus on making small, realistic changes that bring us closer to our ultimate goal and can actually be achieved. From this day on, you'll set your alarm 5 minutes earlier each day, and we'll slowly build up to a new life as an early bird!
Day 4: Remove energy drains from your life
Simply eliminating distractions isn't enough for a disciplined lifestyle. To perform your tasks efficiently and productively, and to keep track of yourself and your goals, you need a lot of energy and focus. And those are exactly the two things we often (unconsciously) waste on useless things.
On day 4, we'll tackle this problem by identifying and eliminating 'energy drains' that hold you back from reaching your full potential. When you feel sluggish and tired, it's much harder to hold yourself accountable than when you're fit and full of energy.
What to do? Try to create an overview of your routines and habits, and think carefully about what they bring you. Do you often feel sluggish after that fast food snack? Does your coffee addiction get you into trouble at night, or do you feel lazy after hours of binge-watching and lounging around? Protect your focus, choose one of your energy drains, and eliminate it right away!
Day 5: Hold each other accountable
A promise to yourself is often not taken seriously, but a promise to someone you don't want to disappoint is much harder to break and you're more likely to keep.
And how do we use this on day 5? By sharing our personal goals and agreements with someone else. This gives your environment the opportunity to hold you accountable for your plans and creates a kind of 'stick behind the door' that gives you that extra push you need to take action (or not). With this strategy, you eliminate all the excuses you can think of for yourself and become much more motivated to work on your success with focused intent.
Not afraid of a challenge? Try expanding this challenge by sharing your goals with a broader network, like social media. The pressure we feel when it comes to performing increases as more eyes are on us.
Day 6: Say goodbye to the snooze function
You love it, we love it; we get it, snoozing is life. Those extra 5 minutes (or 10, or 20…) in the early morning are unparalleled, but unfortunately, they don't add much to your quest for a disciplined existence. Moreover, those little bits of sleep don't make your life easier, as you're constantly disrupting your sleep cycle and making it harder to get out of bed.
Time for a change, then. How? Simple: snoozing is forbidden from now on!
By getting out of bed immediately, you set the tone for a productive day and start the morning on a positive note. You'll also find that you have so much more time to execute your 'discipline master plan' and tackle your day with focus and intent.
The first few days will be tough (more like hell), but believe it or not, once you get the hang of it, you'll feel more energetic than ever!
Day 7: Get to know yourself and your ambitions as well as possible
The final step in your 7-day challenge is all about your vision. What do you want to achieve? Who do you want to be? These are the questions you'll try to answer.
How do you approach this? Find what works for you. Take a moment each day to visualize or meditate, or create a mood board, so you can get a clear picture of your goals and ambitions and how to achieve them.
Now that you have your goals in sight, it's time to work on your mindset, because without the right mindset, you won't get anywhere. So, what are you going to do? Work out your visions and goals until you know exactly what you want and what steps to take.
When you have a clear idea of your ambitions, you'll see that taking action will become much easier. Still want to watch another episode or order pizza instead of cooking? When your vision is clear, you won't even have to think twice about these kinds of temptations and distractions, because you'll know exactly what you need to do!
If that's not discipline…
In conclusion
Your challenge starts today! Stop doubting and procrastinating, follow this golden plan, embrace your true potential, and transform yourself into a disciplined professional.
