Self-Discipline article by Steve Pavlina

For my first article presentation, I bring to you an excellent, thorough article I found by a personal growth expert named Steve Pavlina. He has a ton of good information on his website that I have actually used before, for example an article on Becoming an Early-Riser. This was extremely informative and there really isn't a lot of information out there on self-discipline and changing smaller habits like getting out of bed in the morning. There is a real need for help with this sort of thing for people like me who have trouble telling themselves to do something and following-through.

Anyway he is presenting a week-long series on the nature of self-discipline and how to develop self-discipline. Here are a few quotes he had on achieving your goals that I felt were especially useful:

"Self-discipline is the ability to get yourself to take action regardless of your emotional state."

"Self-discipline is like a muscle. The more you train it, the stronger you become. The less you train it, the weaker you become."

"...The basic method to build self-discipline is to tackle challenges that you can successfully accomplish but which are near your limit."


He also described what tools we have at our disposal to help with achieving goals: passion, goal-setting, and planning, and self-discipline. I think it would be a good idea if we discussed these tools further in upcoming entries.

I really enjoy his analogy of starting where you are. If you say you are going to do something, and then you fail to do it, you have set out to do a goal that was too high for you right now. Thats a much better way of thinking about it, then just thinking you are a plain-old failure, isn't it?

In the spirit of this article I am going to resolve to try to eat one serving of vegetables every day for the next week, instead of resolving to do my usual "eat healthier from now on". I will let you know how I do and I will follow up with this goal and also present Part 2 of his series a week from today.

Hope this helped you, and a special thanks to the author of the above article and information!

To read the article in full, check out: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/06/self-discipline/