The Habit of Self-Discipline

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“Once you have commitment, you need the discipline and hard work to get you there.” — Haile Gebrselassie

You can develop the habit of self-discipline. The regular practice of disciplining yourself to do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not becomes stronger and stronger as you practice it. You refuse to make excuses.
Bad habits are easy to form, but hard to live with. Good habits are hard to form, but easy to live with. And as Goethe said, “Everything is hard before it’s easy.”

It is hard to form the habits of self-discipline, self-mastery, and self-control, but once you havedeveloped them, they become automatic and easy to practice. When the habits of self-discipline arefirmly entrenched in your behavior, you start to feel uncomfortable when you are not behaving in aself-disciplined manner.

The best news is that all habits are learnable. You can learn any habit you need to learn in order to become the kind of person that you want to become. You can become an excellent person by practicing self-discipline whenever it is called for.

Every practice of self-discipline strengthens every other discipline. Unfortunately, every
weakness in discipline weakens your other disciplines as well.

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To develop the habit of self-discipline, you first make a firm decision about how you will behave
in a particular area of activity. You then refuse to allow exceptions until the habit of self-discipline inthat area is firmly established. Each time you slip, as you will, you resolve once again to keep
practicing self-discipline until it becomes easier for you to behave in a disciplined way than to
behave in an undisciplined way.