Why Self Discipline Is Better Than Motivation

Feb 8, 2017 5 min read

To fulfill any goal you need to have a clear path, whether it’s a happy life or a successful business. You need to be sure about what you are going to do and how you are going to do that.

The important question here is 'What should drive you to your goal?'

The general answer to that is motivation BUT motivation is not what will take you to success.

"It just makes you feel like you want to be successful"

Contrary to popular belief, motivation is not the answer.

Self Discipline is what will help you in the long run. It is about believing in the core value that what you want to achieve is important to you. This is the fuel that will keep you going and drive your commitment towards your goal.

If I talk about businesses, every successful business is a case in point of why discipline is better than motivation. They contribute to their user’s lives. This is how they built a reputation and this is how they became successful.

As an entrepreneur, you aim is to try to solve people’s problems. Even though you are doing something that you love, the process gets repetitive and boring. Not getting an ROI, even after continued efforts is one scenario. This is where patience kicks in. Self Discipline instills that patience in you.

Something that I notice everyday is that people use our Publish feature to schedule a lot of posts. This is the first step in initiating interaction with your audience. Failing to get desired results causes many people to drop out and discontinue their engagement with their users. The few that are persistent and patient, manage to get the desired result after trying their best. This is an example where patience matters.

Self Discipline gives you the Commitment, Consistency and Patience that will take your business from just a name to a brand you want it to be.

At an individual level, self discipline changes your life for the better. It is what will get you through the tough times, the times when you 'don’t feel like doing something'. Discipline inculcates some great values in you, that are of paramount importance if you want to be productive, like:

  1. It will give you self confident
  2. You will have self control
  3. You will not be driven by impulse but by logic
  4. It will help you become patient
  5. It will teach you how to tackle failure.

On the other hand, the idea of motivation is highly overrated. It is fickle and driven by emotion which causes you to make impulsive decisions that are inconsistent because emotions change everyday. Motivation will last for a day or two but self discipline will make you work for your goal when you don’t want to.

Despite the fact that self discipline and motivation are both important for success, it is absolutely wrong to think that motivation is prime.

Motivation is what will give you the start and then self discipline alone will be responsible for keeping you going.

In the process of making your business a brand, there will be situations where you will be required to make important decisions. These circumstances will demand you to be level minded and not be driven by impulse.

Self Discipline removes that emotion and impulse from your decision making process so that you can make important decisions quickly and efficiently.

Consider an analogy, think of your goal as a physical destination and you want to reach there by a car. Turning on the ignition is motivation and the fuel in that car is the self discipline. Turning the ignition on and off inconsistently is not going to get you to your destination. Once you start the car, it is the fuel that will get you through all the ups, downs, turns and even the traffic during the journey.

If we go by statistics, self discipline has been tested by time and proven to be successful. In 2013, Wilhelm Hoffman conducted a survey and found that people with self control are more happy and focused in life than the people without it.

Our lives have only become more stressful and self discipline is a great life hack that works every time to make it simpler. Self control is one of the many values that become a way of life for you when you start to be disciplined.

Attaining Self Discipline

Becoming self disciplined is not something that anyone can learn in one day. By incorporating certain activities in your daily life, you can achieve the discipline that you need to have to get to your goals. Here are some tested methods that are worth giving a shot:

1. Prioritizing

You only have limited time in a day and limited amount of energy to dedicate to tasks. Prioritizing will help you give sufficient time to your important tasks so that you can be more productive on other ones.

2. Active goal setting

Doing this will help you become organized. You will know what your plans are and how you are going to implement it. This is something that is practiced regularly at Statusbrew in form of Sprints. We make our tasks for 2 weeks and set deadlines. This way we keep our short term and long term goals in check.

3. Take breaks

Self Discipline is confused with having a strict regime and doing work continuously 24/7. This is not what it is. Being disciplined also means that you have enough room to rest so that you can concentrate on the rest of your tasks for the day.

4. Eat regularly

“Health is wealth”. This might seem clichéd but clichés exist for a reason. If you do not eat in a regular manner, your health will suffer and your resolve will weaken. This will keep you out of your schedule and the longer you are out of it, the harder it is going to be to keep up in the future.

There is nothing better than free food, right? At Statusbrew we have free and healthy food for everyone so they don't have to worry about anything else and focus on what they love to do.

5. Focused

Every once in awhile, you will feel like not doing what you planned but following up on your goal is what will keep you focused and not let you deviate. You need to remove distractions from your work. If it is out of sight, it will be out of your mind. Persistence is what will keep you in the game.

Following a schedule and being disciplined is not something that is going to make your life difficult, on the contrary you will have more time to contribute to other things and live a stress free life. You will spend less time solving conflicts and contribute more to being productive.

At Statusbrew we know that to attain our goals, we have a long road to go but we do not forget to feel good about what we are doing. We have our share of fun and this reflects on our community page Discipline will bring that into your life and your business, not motivation.

Discipline should be practiced continuously because success is not ultimate, it is a continuous process.

Sanchit Raina

Innovator | Strategist | Blogger | I create, plan and execute Marketing Strategies, to create value for businesses | Marketing Lead

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