Take 5: 5 Jan 2015 by Mr Lee Kah Wai

05 JAN 2015

The Most Important Success Principle
Brian Tracy, a well known motivational speaker, once had an encounter with Kop Kopmeyer. Kop was a legend in the field of success and achievement. Kop Kopmeyer had written four large books, each of which contained 250 success principles that he had derived from more than fifty years of research and study.Brian asked him the question that many people in this situation would ask, “Of all the one thousand success principles that you have discovered, which do you think is the most important?”

Kop smiled at Brian Tracy with a twinkle in his eye, as if he had been asked this question many times, and replied, without hesitating, “The most important success principle of all was stated by Thomas Huxley many years ago. He said, ‘Do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not.’”

Kop went on to say, “There are 999 other success principles that I have found in my reading and experience, but without self-discipline, none of them work.” ” (extracted from “Introduction from The Power of Discipline — 
By Brian Tracy” posted on inspire21.com)

Strategies for Building Self Discipline
On hearing this story, we might say, “but I don’t have the self-discipline! Am I destined to be a failure?”

What can I do? If I believe that self-discipline is an innate characteristic, then I will do nothing since I am either born with more or with less self-discipline, so nothing I do will increase or decrease my self-discipline. I am either lucky or not lucky!

But if I believe self-discipline can be “grown” like muscles…ha! Then, surely I can do something about it, beginning today! Here are 6 strategies to build your self-discipline, suggested by a psychotherapist Amy Morin:

  1. Acknowledge Your Weaknesses – Whether cookies are the downfall to your diet, or you can’t resist checking your social media accounts every two minutes, acknowledge your pitfalls. Too often people either try to pretend their weaknesses don’t exist or they try to minimize the negative impact their bad habits have on their lives. For example, many smokers think, “I could quit if I wanted to,” because they don’t want to admit they’re hooked.
  2. Establish a Clear Plan – No one wakes up one day suddenly blessed with self-discipline. Instead, you need a strategy. Whether you want to increase good habits – like exercising more often, or you want to eliminate bad habits – like watching too much TV, you’ll need to develop a plan to outline the action steps that will help you reach your goals.
  3. Remove the Temptations When Necessary – Although we’d all like to believe we have enough willpower to resist even the most alluring enticement, it only takes one moment of weakness to convince ourselves to cave to temptation. Making it difficult to access those temptations can be pivotal to increasing self-discipline. If your weakness is Facebook, turn off the internet while you’re working. If you can’t resist overspending when you go to the mall, leave the credit card at home and only take a small amount of cash.
  4. Practice Tolerating Emotional Discomfort – It’s normal to want to avoid pain and discomfort, but trying to eliminate all discomfort will only reinforce to yourself that you can’t handle distress. We can usually stand a lot more discomfort than we think we can. Practice allowing yourself to experience uncomfortable emotions like boredom, frustration, sadness, or loneliness and increase your tolerance to the negative emotions that you may experience as you increase your self-discipline.
  5. Visualize the Long-Term Rewards – You’ll be less likely to cave to temptation when you focus on the long-term gain. Giving in to today’s temptations may make you feel happy now, but long-term happiness and contentment requires you to forgo immediate gratification. Visualize yourself meeting your goals and reaping the rewards that you’ll gain by practicing self-discipline on a daily basis.
  6. Recover From Mistakes Effectively – Self-discipline comes easier on some days than others. If you’re feeling stressed about an upcoming presentation, you may convince yourself to skip your workout. Or if you’re ecstatic about your most recent business deal, you may let your good habits slide for a bit. Making mistakes is part of the process to becoming better. The way you recover from those mistakes is what’s most important. The key is to acknowledge your mistakes and move on from them with even more resolve to do better next time.

Amy Morin’s 6 strategies were extracted from http://www.forbes.com/sites/amymorin/2014/10/03/6-ways-to-develop-the-self-discipline-necessary-to-reach-your-goals

So, GESSIANs, the 6 strategies again:

  1. Acknowledge Your Weaknesses
  2. Have a Clear Plan
  3. Remove the Temptations
  4. Practice Tolerating Emotional Discomfort
  5. Visualize the Long-Term Rewards
  6. Recover From Mistakes

Personal experience on self discipline
What will you do, Gessian? Let me share a personal episode in my life which on afterthought, illustrate rather well the above principles at work.

After my A levels, I got hooked playing a computer game known as PacMan. PacMan is a simple game – easy to play but highly addictive! I came to the point, when I sat and in the army truck while being transported to the shooting range, that I can have the entire PacMan game replayed in my mind! When i realised I was addicted and couldn’t get a gripe of myself, I knew I was in trouble – that’s acknowledgement.

My plan was simple – delete PacMan from my computer, cut and destroy all the files in the floppy disk. – that’s having a clear plan.

Don’t visit any arcade store, or borrow the game from friends. – that’s avoiding temptations.

Live with the withdrawal symptoms of not playing the game! – that’s practising tolerating emotional discomfort.

Think of the benefits of being freed from Pacman! And use the time to do worthwhile things. – that’s visualising the long term benefit.

Mission Accomplished!
Years later, I chanced upon a widget app on Google website – a PacMan game app! Free to download and play! I thought, “surely I am now freed from this addiction of gaming, and being a responsible adult and a teacher, surely I can exercise self-control! I downloaded the app and played, for a while…the “a while” turned into hours, repeated many days! When I realised it was taking my time away from important things, I immediately deleted the widget! – that’s recover from your mistake!

So, Gessians, what is your weakness that you need to develop self-discipline around? Take this week to ask yourself hard questions, and use these 6 strategies to help you turn over a new leaf.

Onward!

Thank you.