Achieving Your Goals Part VII - Discipline and Vocabulary
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.“Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice; it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.” -William Jennings Bryan
You must be realizing by now that success is almost totally an issue of the mind. Success or failure depends on what YOU decide to do. You have identified the goal, you have made a plan, you have made preparations, and you have committed yourself to this goal in every way that you can think of, changed your environment and keep positive people around you. You understand and try to implement positive affirming thinking.
Discipline
You know that you need to be disciplined to do what you need to do every day so that you can achieve your goal. Most goals are not achieved in one instant. If your goal is to make a million dollars, there is a very slim chance that you might play and win a lottery and that your goal will be achieved in an instant. But most millionaires are made one day at a time. Most goals are achieved one day at a time. If you want to lose the 15 pounds, you have to be disciplined and make the choice every single day to eat healthy food, and exercise every day. You must keep making this choice again and again, day after day.
The Importance your choices
Discipline is making of the right choices every single day. The article on the Power of Choice is very relevant to this. Discipline is built one choice at a time. Several times every day you are faced with choices – one option will help you achieve your goal and the other will hinder you from achieving it. You must be conscious of these choices that you make. That is why it is important to keep your goal in mind constantly. Every time you choose the fruit over the cake, the water over the soft drink, the treadmill over the TV, you are choosing to achieve your goal – you are in the act of achieving your goal. Discipline is making the right choice at each juncture.
How do you achieve this discipline? By keeping your goals in mind and by making conscious choices every day. Someone offers you ice cream in office. You must stop and think “Is eating ice cream in keeping with my goal?” “If I eat the ice cream what will happen?” You need to become accountable to yourself. This is challenging at first because you are accustomed to making “mindless” decisions. You are accustomed to doing what feels good right now without considering the consequences and how they impinge on your goals. So you need to retrain yourself to make more conscious choices. The great thing about this is that with practice it becomes very easy.
Vocabulary
Another aspect of goal achievement that becomes very easy with practice is adopting a goal-achieving vocabulary. This links back to the previous article on changing your thinking. Setbacks are just that – they are not failures – they are not a sign to give up – they are not evidence that you are incapable of success. They are minor setbacks and you must think and talk of them that way.
The word problem is a very negative word. The word challenge is much more positive – it implies that it is a bump in the road and you will soon conquer it and be on your way. Feel free to praise yourself and your efforts to date. Examine your speech patterns and see if you find statements such as the following:
“This is hard”.
“I will never be able to do this”.
“This is a real problem.”
“I messed up”.
“I hate this”.
“I am no good at this”.
“I am too stupid to do this.”
“I can’t do this”.
How you speak about the problem will have a direct impact on your success. Your vocabulary becomes a self-prophecy, an affirmation, an instruction to yourself. You need to have in your speech, statements such as:
“This is challenging”
“I am sure that I can do this.”
“This is a challenge to be overcome.”
“I can overcome this challenge.”
“I like doing this because it will help me achieve my goal.”
“I did very well yesterday.”
“I resisted temptation this morning and am that much closer to achieving my goal”.
“I had a minor slipup yesterday but I learnt from it and I wont allow it to happen again. I am now in an even better position to succeed.”
“I am smart and I will find a solution.”
“I am achieving my goal”.
Appreciate your small victories
A popular trend is self-denigration, self-effacement. Sorry, this may seem polite but it is not good for you. You need to blow your own horn, at least to yourself. You need to appreciate your daily accomplishments on the road to achieving your goal. You need to be proud of yourself if you chose the fruits and did your exercise, and chose the stairs instead of the elevator. You will be conditioning yourself to get accustomed to succeeding and your subconscious will find more opportunities for you to succeed. More will be written about this in a subsequent article.
There is much more that can (and probably will) be written about goal achievement. But if you take these words to heart and implement the strategies outlined here, you will definitely achieve your goals. Think about it.
What could you achieve in your life with these techniques?
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Related Articles:
- Achieving Your Goals Part I - Goal Identification
- Achieving Your Goals Part II - Form a Plan
- Achieving Your Goals Part III - Make a Commitment
- Achieving Your Goals Part IV - Staying Motivated
- Achieving Your Goals Part V - Change Your Environment
- Achieving Your Goals Part VI - Change Your Thinking
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September 2nd, 2006 at 4:51 pm
Excellent article. Keep it up.
November 29th, 2006 at 9:19 pm
Great site, helped alot with my “3-year plan”