Counselor's Corner: The Importance of Being Disciplined

Do you desire to be successful, productive, achieve goals, break destructive habits, or even form healthy habits? If your answer is yes, then you must develop discipline in your life.

Discipline also brings stability and structure into your life. This is a must if you are recovering from any addiction or you struggle with any form of instability in your life.

Discipline means delaying gratification. People that lack self-control are unable to delay gratification, this can lead to disastrous results such as overspending when you really haven’t “counted the costs” down the road for a financial splurge.

When you are disciplined you can choose to do what you know to do rather than doing what you feel like doing. Discipline will get you out of bed to exercise when you would rather stay in bed and sleep.

People who are disciplined are not better at fighting temptation, just better at avoiding it. For example, a disciplined person may avoid going to a bar or a party if they know they could not resist the temptation.

A disciplined person knows who would sabotage their disciplined life and places firm boundaries on those people.

A disciplined person is great with time management, they don’t waste valuable time sleeping late, running late, or aimlessly wandering around because they have a plan.

Being disciplined can help you eat better, exercise, be more productive in life, be a good financial steward with your resources, and achieve goals that you want to accomplish in life.

Discipline can help you with your thinking that may be negative. When you take those negative thoughts captive and begin to replace those thoughts with the truth in God’s Word and faith-filled statements you can eventually discipline your mind or train your brain to think on those thoughts that are lovely, good report and praiseworthy.

A disciplined person is overall more satisfied in life. If you lack discipline, start with one small thing you want to get disciplined in and then gradually build as you achieve your desired results. You are not looking for perfection, we will all have days where we forgo our discipline, but don’t stay there; forgive yourself and get back up.

It usually takes 30 days to learn something new or break a habit, however it can take up to six weeks. Discipline takes hard work, dedication and commitment to stick to your goals even though you may not feel like it.