It has been proven that those people who accomplish more and are respected more have the ability to delay gratification. Think about who we respect – doctors, professors, writers, black belts, successful business people. All of these have made sacrifices to get to where they are today.

I like to be self disciplined but truthfully, I am not. What I do is use tricks to keep me on track. The following are 8 tricks I use:

1 – lead me not into temptation. I simply do not have tempting stuff around me. If I want cookies in the evening, I need to either go out to a store or get out the flour. Either of which is usually enough deterrent to keep me from eating them. I have even gone so far as to not have a TV.

2 – Plan. A small amount of planning keeps me on track. This can be as simple as planning what things I want to accomplish that day to planning what health snacks I want to have on hand. I set out my workout clothes every night and have my work clothes packed in my gym bag so I head straight to the gym.

3 – Set goals. The act of setting goals starts them in motion. The more you revisit them, the more you keep on track.

4 – Track what you do. It seems odd but the simple act of logging what you do or do not do is a great way to keep you on track. This works well for diets, workouts and just about anything. What gets measured and tracked, gets done.

5 – Ask yourself “what would I like to accomplished by the time I go to bed”. This simple question can keep you on task.

6 – Get a coach. This person can be a friend or a paid coach. Coaches tend to push and keep you on track. I always thought it was strange to pay someone to tell you what you already know you should do but years of working with a personal trainer has taught me that I push harder when I am coached.

7 – Increase to pain of not doing something. Simple – do not allow yourself to do what you find pleasurable until you complete the tough job.

8 – Increase the pleasure of success and make it more immediate. For example, writing an article has very little instant reward. So rewarding myself with a tea for successfully completing it can work.

9 – I use the mantra “successful people do tough things” I am a successful person so that drives me to do the tough things.

10 – Tell other people your goals. If your goal is to stop something (like smoking), your friends and enemies alike will enjoy pointing out when you are failing. If your goal is a positive like reading a book per week, tell your positive, supportive friends – they will help prod you and support you.

11 – It is all about habits. “We are the product of what we repeatedly do”  – Aristotle. Habits do not even take work. You just do them. I suspect you do not even have to think to brush your teeth. You just do it. It is a habit.

12 –  It is all about systems. Build systems to help you accomplish your goals. Systems might include your support, your organization, your methods of doing things efficiently.

Self discipline can be learned. You can choose to be self disciplined. It is not easy but it is what will make you a success.

Poker is a game where discipline must have a special place. It is true that discipline is a quality and a very important tip poker. Discipline is necessary in our daily activities, at work, on the street, even at home. Each player must know from the start that discipline is an elementary thing in poker if you want to become champions of this game.

The biggest enemy in poker are the emotions, feelings that you must learn to control. Self control is what you must learn and apply in your poker game. There are many people who cannot control and are not disciplined when they have to take difficult decisions, and this behavior is a disadvantage that do not always bring victory. Poker winnings in most cases arrive in time, after you have experience. Many of beginners tend to not be disciplined and instead of winning the game, they lose.

Players who are not disciplined in the poker game should make these a priority and a principle of the game. The enthusiasm at the poker table is not often something good. When you are delighted and you do not even have finished the game can make mistakes in the decisions you take after. Can make moves without thinking, irrational moves that can cost you. Poker has many rules and tips, and one of them, very important is discipline. If you manage to use it, the more chances to earn a lot of money in time and you should be on top of the biggest fortunes of poker.

Poker discipline is the key skill that marks out big poker players and place them apart from the rest of people. Over time has proven that great professionals have come out on top thanks to this tip and they have learned this in time. You can learn from them and so one day you will get to make fortunes because of discipline in your game of poker.

Discipline means obedience to rules for regulation of human conduct. A life without discipline is like a ship without a rudder. Discipline is be -all and end-all of life.It does not mean a negation of individual liberty or a life cabin-ed and confined in iron case. William Slim says ‘It is only discipline that enables man to live in a community and yet retains individual liberty’. No body can prosper in his life without it.

We find discipline in:

If we take a closer look around us, we will be able to realize that all of things abide by the rules of rolls of nature. There are many examples around us. Here is some examples where, we can take lesson of discipline from-

– The nature: Discipline is the first low of nature. Nature is not a chaos but a cosmos. Had there been no order in nature, the world would have destroyed in the twinkle of an eye. All the planets of the solar system move on their respective orbits in a discipline way and do never come in collision with one another

– The army life: Discipline is must be obeyed in army life. Here discipline is a question of life and death. The soldiers must follow the command of the leader without any question, without any excuse, without any hesitation. It is because here a moment’s hesitation may mean defeat and death. There goes a saying ‘Do or die’

– The animals: Discipline is also seen in the life of lower animals. The life of bees is an eye-opening example of discipline. All the bees obey the queen bee. Ant are also disciplined. They lead their life in a discipline way. If any ant find a drop of water he share this drop of water with another ant. All other animals also follow a disciplined course of life. And so on.

Value of discipline:

– In daily life: Great value of discipline in our life. Man is a social being. He can not do whatever he likes. He must abide by the rules of the society. Where there is no discipline, there is no rule of law and where there is on rule of law, there is only chaos and confusion everywhere. Than “Might is right” becomes the go of the day. A well-regulated disciplined man can enjoy all the boons of a happy life and leave behind him foot prints of glorious deeds on the sands of time. M.K. Gandhi says ‘Discipline maintains system, system maintains development and development vibrates human life.’

– In family life: Discipline is of great value in a family life. A family with good discipline is like a team under a good captain. On the contrary, a family without discipline is cannot go nicely. A family is the first training ground for a man to learn discipline.

– In student life: Students are the future hope of the nation. There life is life of preparation – preparation for the struggle of life. They can’t expect to win in the battle of life without discipline. A less meritorious student with discipline can beat out a more meritorious student without discipline in the competition.

– In playground: Discipline is strictly followed in the playground. A team can’t play well without discipline. A well disciplined but a weak team can easily beat out the strong rival team bereft if discipline among them. Discipline may be called a million dollar secret for winning victory in the competitions of game and sports.

– In traffic system: Discipline is strictly followed in the traffic system. This is why the traffic police are posted at important crossing points in the roads to maintain the traffic rules. They guide the vehicles to follow their due course and avoid jams and accidents. We know that a road without discipline would be a road with a horrible scene of accidents only.

Finely, discipline is the key to success in life. It actually means a prescribed code of conduct which helps us to lead a peaceful life in a community along with liberty. We all should work in the way of discipline.

In my last article I wrote about learning organizations and the five disciplines that, when fully integrated, will transform an organization into a learning organization. This article is devoted to the first of those five disciplines, personal mastery. Personal mastery is the foundation on which organizational learning is built.

What is personal mastery?

Personal mastery, as defined by Peter Senge, is "the discipline of personal growth and learning." ( The Fifth Discipline , p. 141.) It is more than just competence and skills or spiritual growth. It is about creating a desired future and moving toward it. People with high levels of personal mastery are skilled at creating a personal vision and accurate assessing their current reality with respect to that vision. The gap between current reality and personal vision propels them forward. This gap is often referred to as "creative tension." Personal mastery is about generating and sustaining creative tension and living comfortably with that tension.

So how does one recognize individuals with a high level of personal mastery? Below is a list of characteristics of those individuals:

• They have a special sense of purpose – a calling.
• They accurately assess their current reality; In particular, they quickly recognize inaccurate assumptions.
• They are skilled at using creative tension to inspire their forward progress.
• They see change as opportunity.
• They are deeply inquisitive.
• They place a high priority on personal connections without giving up their individuality.
• They are systemic thinkers, that is, they see themselves as one part in a larger system.

These people are continually expanding their capacity to create their desired future. In doing so, they create the potential for reasonable organizational capacity building, a potential that can only be realized through integrating all five disciplines of organizational learning.

How do individuals develop personal mastery?

Developing personal mastery is a lifelong process, and it is never too late to start. Much of what needs to happen has to do with shifting how we think and how we view the world in which we live and work. Here are some things to try:

• Thinking systemically: When you encounter an unexpected or undesirable outcome, try to think about what processes enabled that outcome to happen, rather than looking for someone to blame. Thinking systemically is about looking at the whole and the relationships amongst the individual parts. It is also about looking for patterns over time, rather than taking a quick snapshot.
• Assessing current reality: In order to be effective at assessing current reality, you need to be very aware of the assumptions you make about existing situations. Those assumptions shape, and sometimes cloud, our view of reality. Assessing current reality requires a great deal of reflection on your own thought processes and an ability to recognize your assumptions.
• Balancing advocacy with inquiry: Most of us are accustomed to entering into a discussion with our defenses securely in place. What this means is that we often do not hear what others are saying. By balancing advocacy with inquiry, we take as much time to understand the points of view of others as we do in explaining our own point of view. Those skilled at personal mastery will gently probe until they fully understand a different point of view while inviting others to question their own perspectives and thought processes.
• Creating shared meaning: Creating shared meaning takes the previous point to the next level. It involves finding the common ground within various perspectives and broadening the understanding of all involved. People with high levels of personal mastery understand that they only have a piece of the puzzle and only by inquiring into the points of view of others can those puzzle pieces begin to fit together and take shape into a clearer picture of current reality.

Each of the above techniques can take a lifetime to master. In fact, one never really "arrives"; there is always something new to learn. Therefore, it is important to start with small incremental steps. It doesn't matter where you start, just that you begin at a place where you can feel progress and success.

How can organizations foster personal mastery?

Organizations must have people at all levels capable of personal mastery in order to become successful learning organizations. It is important to remember, however, that this is a matter of choice. It cannot be dictated from on high. Efforts to do so will only backfire since employees will likely develop a "personal vision" that they think the boss wants to hear.

The most important thing an organization can do to help employees develop personal mastery is to create an environment conducive to individual pursuits. Here are some ideas for doing that:

• Encourage inquiry and curiosity: In most organizations people are rewarded for coming up with solutions and not for asking probing questions. The problem with this is that an organization will often settle on the quick fix rather than take the time to truly understand the nature of the problem. Encourage employees to look deeper into the nature of problems, particularly recurring problems.
• Encourage employees to challenge the status quo: New employees are particularly good at doing this because they don't have a history with the organization and are not yet assimilated into its culture. Take advantage of their fresh perspective and encourage veteran employees to do the same. The results will be infectious.
• Change your assumptions about what motivates your employees: Most organizations, whether they would admit it or not, use external incentives (money, recognition, fear) to motivate their employees. Personal mastery is all about internal motivation, and under the right conditions, it will blossom. Create an environment that is consistent with the belief that most employees are self-motivated and want to do their best.
• Be a model: It is important that organizational leaders practice their own personal mastery. By setting an example, you will send the message that this is important.
• Make a commitment for the long haul: Personal mastery is not a single event or one-day workshop. It is also not a precise process. Make every effort to be flexible in helping employees develop personal mastery and realize that the gains will be incremental over time.

By creating a safe and supportive environment where employees can develop their personal mastery, you are helping them generate that creative tension that will propel them forward and ultimately move the organization along the path toward becoming a learning organization.

In my next article, I will focus on the second discipline of learning organizations, mental models.

Most of us know the children’s story of the Lion and the Mouse. You know, the one where the lion chooses not to eat the mouse, the grateful mouse later chews a hunter’s net to set the lion free, and in the end both become BFF’s and live happily ever after?

Well, I recently heard a grown-up story about a lion and a mouse that does not, I’m afraid, have quite as happy of an ending. In this story, the lion decides to eat the mouse. In fact, he decides to eat lots and lots of mice, chasing them around the savannah. After all, they were always popping up everywhere – not like the occasional gazelle. Hunting gazelles took patience and planning. Why should something as regal as a lion waste time doing that? The lion was sure he was on to something!

But, sadly, a month later the lion had died. Why? Because although he was able to eat as many mice as he wanted – whenever he wanted – each time he chased a mouse, he used up more calories than the mouse could provide when eaten. As the weeks went by, the lion ate and ate but he was too busy chasing mice to notice that he was slowly starving to death.

How about you? In the wilderness of the work place, are you chasing mice or hunting gazelles?

As a business consultant and personal coach, I see so many hungry people, yearning for more recognition, job satisfaction, career advancement and success. They have the tools they need to survive – strength, agility, drive, and instincts – but they continue to starve. Why? Well, like the lion, they have not developed self-awareness and self-discipline.

1) Self-Awareness: The poor lion; he never saw it coming. How could he? He was so busy reacting to every rustle in the grass he couldn’t possibly pay attention to what was happening in his gut. Sound familiar? So often we continue to pour our energies into something when, all along, our gut tells us it isn’t working. To survive long-term, we have to take the time to stop reacting to everything outside and start listening to what is going on inside. Being successful in “busyness” will not make you successful in “business.”

2) Self-Discipline: We don’t like to hear this, but we can’t achieve success without self-discipline. Plain and simple. Like the lion, we want the quick fix that will lead to instant gratification. But, lasting success comes from patience and planning. To achieve our goals, we have to think through them, create action steps, outline priorities and then – here’s the kicker – actually follow through. Sure, we have to invest much more time and energy on the front end; but, when we do, we’ll be better prepared to pounce when the right opportunity leaps out in front of us.

Depending on the day, it can be a jungle out there. Developing your “self skills” by listening to your instincts and reining in your impulses will not only help you survive, it might one day help you be considered, like a lion, the king of it all.

Recent studies have shown that industrial supervisors are working at less than 60 % of their potential. Basic management skills training is guaranteed to change all this and at such little cost

Introduction

The word discipline has a negative sound as we immediately think of authority and punishment. However, there is another more constructive way to think about this, which we can call – POSITIVE DISCIPLINE.

Positive discipline is all about creating an orderly environment where people can conduct themselves to agreed standards of behavior to the benefit of everyone. In this way we avoid unnecessary conflict and potential accidents.

Most family groups establish an atmosphere of Positive Discipline, which protects individual’s rights but also develops harmony in the family. Positive Discipline is also an excellent learning medium for our children, which allows them to develop in a safe environment.

NEGATIVE DISCIPLINE is conflictive by nature and is damaging to group harmony. A potential negative discipline situation occurs when rules are disobeyed or when they are clearly accepted reluctantly.

Discipline line

The first step is to establish and maintain a reasonable, but firm discipline line.

TOO HIGH – People are insulted. Productivity drops.

TOO LOW – People take liberties. Productivity drops.

This line must be a well-defined set of behavior standards that you expect all employees to abide by and support. It is also important to ensure that these standards, rules or regulations are well-communicated and everyone is fully aware of them. This will tell an employee what is expected and what is not permitted.

It is essential to set a discipline line that is achievable and effective in the real world. The key success factors are:

Consistent

Well communicated

Reasonable and justifiable

Flexible

Immediacy

There are many aspects to positive discipline and the following is an interesting one.

The “Hot Stove Rule”

However well you handle discipline it remains an unpleasant task that often causes resentment. The challenge to the supervisor is to apply the necessary disciplinary action so that it minimizes damage to individuals and to the manager himself.

A really effective way to incorporate all the rules that are described above is to adopt the hot stove rule. When you touch a hot stove, the reaction is immediate, with warning, consistent, and impersonal.

For example:

The burn is immediate; there is no doubt about the cause and effect

There was advance communication, since everyone knows what happens if you touch a stove when it’s red hot

The result is consistent; whoever touches a hot stove will always get burned

The result is impersonal because whoever touches a hot stove is burned. The burn was caused by the act of touching the stove, not because of who the person is. Discipline should be directed against the act and not against the person.

The comparison between the “hot stove rule” and disciplinary action is obvious.

There is no single recipe for sure shot success. However, with that said, it is easy to point out certain traits which found in most of the successful leaders. The top three of those are courage, humility and discipline. The interpretation of these terms can vary widely depending upon the field of application. Let me share with you how to interpret these values when talking about a successful leader.

Leaders with courage are often successful

Courage is a highly desirable quality in any successful person. While some may interpret it as the ability to take higher risks, in the business world, it is more related to having the power to be brutally honest whether it means accepting your fault or it means point out the flaws in others. What most leaders believe to be an aura surrounding them is an invisible wall that they create around themselves which stops anyone from giving them an accurate feedback. For such leaders, no feedback means that everything is perfect, which is never the case! A genuine courage of a leader lies in listening to the feedback about this work and then making efforts to bring in the changes.

Leaders never lose Humility

It is easy to forget humility once you reach a certain position. The satisfaction of accomplishing your professional goal can often lead to a feeling of contentment and arrogance. It has the potential to become the single biggest reason for your downfall. As a leader, losing your humility is the worst things that you can do to yourself. Unless you are humble enough, you would never accept that you need to evolve with time and this would saturate your career in no time. Until the time you want to keep on improving, you need to keep your humility intact.

Discipline – A real leader’s virtue

There are no substitutes to discipline. Though discipline is annoying at times, this is what makes you dependable in the eyes of others. Following up on the feedback given or received, following the predetermined method of doing things are some of the ways of inculcating discipline in your routine. As a leader, there are always several pairs of eyes on you and your actions. A well-disciplined role model is what you must be to gain the respect of your team members.

I would be the first one to accept that listing out these qualities is much easier than actually inculcating them in oneself. Leaders need a mentor to remind them of where they are heading or lacking on the path of attaining these qualities. These guides come in the form of Executive coaches who can be the guiding lights for any real leaders trying to evolve into a great leader.

In life, no attribute, trait or ability is more critical in accomplishing anything than personal discipline. A broad sweep of history and the modern era reveals that the most accomplished in every field had one thing in common: discipline. Whether you’re looking at the most renowned philosophers, scientists, politicians, and sportsmen, from Aristotle, Einstein, George Washington, to Babe Ruth, the one thing they had in common was discipline, sometimes called self-mastery.

No matter what you know, if you do not exercise the discipline to do, execute or implement what you do know, you’ll accomplish very little. Here are some of the things that discipline can help you accomplish:

Holding yourself accountable:

Holding yourself accountable means knowing and understanding that your destiny is in your own hands. You can decide to blame the government, you can decide to blame the unfair system, you can decide to blame everything under the sun, but ultimately, the capacity to surmount all the odds and triumph requires holding yourself accountable. Babe Ruth once said, “you just can’t beat the person who never gives up.”

Focus:

Focus means pursuing your dream, vision, and passion until it becomes mission accomplished. Only discipline can help you do that. Without discipline, you look for excuses to give up at the slightest setback. Les Brown said “it’s not over until you win.”

Being ethical:

Being ethical is at the centre of our character and integrity. It’s about what you do when no one is watching. It’s about being true to yourself. Needless to say, without discipline, it’s near impossible to follow the straight and narrow path for overcoming temptations.

Being faithful:

Whether you are looking at being faithful to a cause, or being faithful to your marital vows, nothing in the world prepares you more than self-discipline.

Being incorruptible:

As a leader, you’re assailed by all manners of temptation. You’re tempted to be partial, you’re tempted to cut corners, you’re tempted to reap where you didn’t sow. But with iron clad discipline, you can overcome and leave a legacy worthy of emulation.

Learning new things:

Whether you’re looking at learning a new language, whether you’re learning to start afresh after a massive setback or learning something as mundane as operating a personal computer, you require discipline.

Reading a book:

Charlie “Tremendous” Jones is quoted as saying, “The two things that will have the greatest impact on your life are the books you read and the people you meet.” When you read a book, you mastermind with hundreds of people, if not thousands. Imagine reading three books in a month, in a year you would have read 36 books and in ten years three hundred and sixty. While reading may not necessarily make you richer, it will certainly make you wiser.

Time management:

Time is the essence of life. The most accomplished in life are those that manage their time well and channel their efforts towards worthwhile endeavours. Managing time is not something abstract but it’s the one discipline that separates those who came, saw, and conquered, from all others.

There you are. First you suffer the pain and after you enjoy the gain of discipline. Archimedes said, “give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Only self-discipline can lead to the accomplishment of such tall orders. If you want to stand out from the crowd, if you want to leave your footprints on the sands of time, discipline yourself, discipline your mind and with the self-mastery, you’ll gain the world.

Good trading rules are important. However, even those who concoct great rules tend not to follow them. Most people lack the consistency necessary to stick to those rules even when things are going badly.

Make the decision. Will you be consistent in following your rules or not? Most people who invest or trade never make the decision. It is almost impossible to be a consistent winner in the stock market without the consistent application of good decision rules. Think about how the market reacts to news events. A new jobs report is released by the government that shows more people are jobless. Immediately, the market plunges. The debt of a foreign country is downgraded and panic hits the market. Stocks plunge in many sectors. What is going on here? Just as an EKG can tell a cardiologist some things about a person’s heart function, so we can consider the market to be connected to the nervous system of millions of investors.

There is a stimulus and a response. Depending on the nature of the stimulus, the response is reasonably predictable. The market reflects emotional states of the population. In order to profit in the stock market, it is necessary to avoid thinking like the rest of the population. When the population pushes the market down in a fit of panic selling, the negative attitude about owning stocks is at a peak. However, that is precisely the time when people should be most positive about owning stocks. The individual investor tends to feel the same way the population as a whole feels. To follow a set of rules with consistency, therefore, is difficult. It often forces a person to act contrary to his emotions.

Assume, for example, that you have just bought a stock with a fantastic story. Blixis Company (BLIX) has just discovered a permanent cure for the common cold and has patent rights to the serum. The stock is at $10 a share and you note that it has been closely following a rising trendline. You buy it for $10 when it is right on the trendline. You believe this stock is likely to go to at least $100 and that it will probably split several times before it stops climbing. After a week, the stock is at $15 and it is still moving along the trendline. One day you happen to be looking at the chart of this stock and you notice that it has fallen below the trendline. It is selling at $15 but the trendline is at 15.46. What do you do? Do you say to yourself that this is only a temporary bout of profit taking and decide to continue holding? Two days later the trendline is at $17 and the stock is still at $15. Do you tell yourself that “stocks fluctuate and you must give them room to do so” or do you sell? At $15, the stock is 11.76% below the trendline.

Most investors in this situation would keep holding. However, if you are still holding, then you must face the fact that you probably do not have a strategy at all. You have bought a “story stock” and you are psychologically locked into it because you believe in its story. A strategy consisting of a set of decision rules enables a person to draw a line in the sand and say “this is where I pull the plug.” The probability of a person coming out ahead in the scenario described above, without his adhering to the dictates of a good set of decision rules, is not great. What if the FDA insists on additional data before clearing the drug? The stock would then plummet. It could take a year or more to acquire sufficient data to satisfy the FDA. What if while you are waiting another company comes up with a cure that is based on a slightly different process that will enable the company to manufacture its drug more cheaply than Blixis Company can manufacture its drug? If that were to happen, BLIX would probably plunge and you would still be holding the stock.

A consistent rule-following strategic investor times his purchase so he can buy when risk of further decline is minimal. He never becomes married to a stock. Finally, he always has an exit strategy, because unexpected bad things happen. In fact, these are the broad principles followed by stockdisciplines trader/investors. Beyond these general concepts, an investor/trader should have specific well-defined rules for buying and selling. For every buyer, there is a seller. One is more likely to make money on a transaction, and the other is more likely to lose money on the same transaction. Without strictly adhering to a sound strategy, guess which one you are most likely to be.

Copyright 2018, by Stock Disciplines, LLC. a.k.a. StockDisciplines.com

Discipline is all about how you practice daily procedures and systems. It begins from waking up early in the morning to the time of retiring to bed early. During the day, your chores at home and in office can play a vital role in indicating how disciplined you are with yourself as well to those around you.

List your duties for today and tomorrow

What you can do today and how you wish to complete jobs is all about your time management. Managing your time effectively both in kitchen and for performing jobs outside is equally important as it contributes saving of your time. In fact, when you practice good timing, you have left to relax over a cup of coffee or tea. A day of 24 hrs is highly sufficient to complete jobs in time and to relax your body after completing jobs at home as well in office.

Discipline sets you on the right path

Procrastination and delaying things that are to be done now and today, can often change your pattern of work and life style and at times you may feel lethargic not willing to do jobs in time.

Practice of First Things First

Yes. This is the top priority while implementing discipline in daily life. While some practice to complete small jobs first and take up big jobs later, keeping short term goals for and long term goals can bring a lot of success with the practice of discipline.

Practice of One Step of Discipline At A Time

Sky scrapers cannot be built in a day and discipline is no less than a Big Ben or Eifel Tower and if you wish to become an expert in your discipline, follows the path of One Step at a time. This is much safer and secures way of achieving things successfully.

Do One job at a time

Too many chefs spoil the broth, is the saying and that is absolutely true when you take up too many jobs to perform. It is always a good challenge to be on one job at a particular time and go to the next job.

Enhance your discipline accords as you share discipline traits

Many either do not follow or not aware about discipline and that is why parenting is so important to teach children about discipline. Charity that begins from home can be taken to the stage of society and community where people appreciate when you speak good about the practice of discipline.