Have you ever set a long-term goal, started it with motivation and seen it through till the end?
Most of us only see halfway to that goal through motivation.
Motivation is simply a desire to get that thing done. The motivation fades with time when you get distracted by so many desires in your life.
But, motivating yourself is a significant factor in setting and starting a goal. But it can only take you so far.
And as an entrepreneur, you will never settle for a short-term goal. Your goal lies far from your present. It will be at least 1 or 5 years ahead of where you are now.
If reading motivational quotes and listening to motivational speeches are all that’s needed to become a successful entrepreneur, you will be witnessing successful brands in every corner you turn around.
So, really what fuels your motivation throughout that whole journey?
Let’s see that in this blog. But before that, I want you to understand something about motivation.
What Is Motivation?
Motivation is a desire or a need that guides you towards your goal. It is an external drive to satisfy the internal process that makes you do anything, like eating breakfast to satisfy your hungry stomach or reading a book to satisfy your hungry brain.
Image from flickr
Motivation is fuelled by the satisfaction of your needs that are essential for sustaining life, personal well-being or growth.
Why Not Depend On Motivation?
Your environment, social activities, goals, values and desires play a significant role in your emotional state that drives your motivation.
So, you cannot depend on motivation to achieve your end goal.
The effect of motivation decreases with time as you get distracted with new goals and desires.
Motivation is more of a short-term driving force that may be initially good for setting and starting a goal. But entrepreneurs can fail if they wholely depend only on motivation.
The Right Way To Success For Entrepreneurs
Rather than searching for ways to be motivated to achieve your goal, seek ways to get disciplined. Being disciplined is the only way to become a successful entrepreneur.
“Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you growing.”
-John C. Maxwell
Everyone sets goals, makes resolutions and so on. It keeps you going for now. But in the long run, people keep failing. It’s not like one loves to fail themselves all the time. But sometimes, their productivity decreases when life gets in the way.
When you face failure while being motivated, it affects your emotional state negatively and leads to setbacks.
But discipline makes you learn from your failure and helps to achieve success in your goal. It gives positivity to your emotional state even in the failures.
Motivation is your desire towards success. Discipline is your willpower and commitment towards making and keeping those promises.
Take a football game as an example, the coach or the captain gives motivation to the team before every game. But he doesn’t only give motivational speeches every day to make them win the game, but he also trains them to develop or enhance their skills and talents.
Here the training is a practice of discipline. The players must follow the training regimens even if they don’t want to. If not, they wouldn’t be selected to play in the game.
Robin Sharma calls self-discipline tough love because he believes that acting tough with yourself is a very loving gesture you can show to yourself. He says that the tougher you be on yourself, the easier life will go over you.
Benefits Of Mastering Discipline Over Motivation
Mastering the art of discipline is not an easy task. But once you develop discipline, it not only helps you achieve your long-term goals. It also builds your motivation, persistence and self-control.
Discipline has a longer lifetime in forming habits, goal setting and achieving success. We procrastinate, take frequent breaks, and also give into our emotional mindset and get sluggish. But, self-discipline influences us and pushes us to move on from our mistakes, guilt and negative emotional state.
Without discipline, you will not set clear goals, manage time productively, and have a healthy body or a stable mindset.
Ways Of Developing Discipline
As I said earlier, mastering discipline involves a lot of effort and constant focus. But it becomes a behaviour of yours over time when done continuously.
There are a few essential behaviours that you can start learning one by one to harness discipline and make it into a regular habit.
Know Your Strength and Weakness
Success comes when you step out of your comfort zone, and a powerful tool to do that is self-awareness. Knowing yourself is the most important factor to be disciplined.
We all have some weaknesses, to begin with. Whether it is the addiction to alcohol, tobacco, junk foods, social media or video games, they all have a similar effect on us. Most often, people pretend that they don’t have any weaknesses. But this fixed mindset can lead to doom.
Know your strengths but most importantly, own up to your flaws. You cannot overcome your weakness until you acknowledge them.
Set Goals And Strategise A Clear Plan
Having a clear vision of what you are going to do in the long-term and short-term helps you reach greater heights of self-discipline.
Without a final destination in mind, you will easily get lost in the path of life. Set goals and proceed accordingly.
If you have a goal, prioritise it with your regular schedule and sketch down a plan to achieve that goal. Remember that having lots of priorities equals having no plan.
Hang a note about your goal in your workstation or your desktop or mobile wallpaper, so you will be forced to work on the plan no matter what.
Avoid Temptations
Do you know about Stanford’s marshmallow experiment?
Stanford did a study on delayed gratification with children by giving them a marshmallow and said they can either eat it now if they want or wait for a certain period until they return. They told the children if they didn’t eat the marshmallow, they would get another one.
The children touched it, smelled it, licked it and some of them ate it before the instructor came back and some children waited for the second marshmallow.
After 10 years, the experimenter visited the children who were involved in the study and found out that the children who had resisted their temptations and waited for the second marshmallow were more successful in life than those who ate their first marshmallow.
Image from flickr
It may seem silly. But by removing your temptations, you will significantly improve your self-discipline. If you want to be healthier stop eating junk food. If you want to improve your productivity, manage your time by scheduling a to-do list. Avoid wasting your time on social media, and prioritise your time and execute your daily work.
The fewer distractions you have, the more focused you will become on achieving your goals.
Maintain Consistency
Adapting to new habits or learning new skills can make you exhausted, especially when you take a huge leap. To avoid those feelings, take baby steps.
Break your goal into small objectives and try fulfilling them instead of trying to change them all at once. Focus on a single thing at a time and do it continuously till you master it.
Bruce Lee once said he is not afraid of a man who has practised 10,000 kicks but is afraid of a man who has practised a single kick 10.000 times.
When you train hard putting your focus on a single thing, you will become an expert in it. That is the power of consistency. So, when doing something new, try to do it repeatedly until it comes to you with ease.
If you are hoping to start exercising regularly, start with 10 to 15 minutes of workout a day and increase it gradually. If you want to make reading books a habit, start with a chapter or a page per day. Eventually, when your schedule starts to shift as a habit. You can increase the workload.
Find The Right Mentors / Coaches
To become an expert, you need a mentor who can bring out the best in you by giving constructive and sometimes painful feedback. Real experts are highly motivated students who never stop learning new things in their domain.
Find a trusted mentor who suits you best. Everyone has a unique style and is at a different level, so know your uniqueness and develop skills in understanding when and if that mentor’s advice and practices work for you before choosing them to be your mentor.
Pick a mentor who constantly challenges and drives you to a high-performing level. Also, always fully concentrate on your work and know what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong.
Always Have Plan B
Having a backup plan to deal with difficult situations you may face when moving forward towards your goal, maintains a stable emotional mindset.
I am not asking you to make a backup plan assuming you will probably fail in plan A. Having a contingency plan means you are staying ahead in the game, and you cannot have a backup plan without accessing every situation that will or may come during the progress of your goal.
Take a team in a game or a squad in an army. They always strategise multiple plans with all the situations before them to avoid tension during the heat of the moment. According to psychologists, this technique helps to boost willpower.
Never Give-Up And Move Forward
Even with all your best and well-laid plans, sometimes you come across failures. Life is all about ups and downs.
Your plans will have great success, and some plans may fail. But the key to success is never giving up and moving towards your goal.
The people who are successful today have faced their share of failures in the journey. No one is without facing failure in life, but they keep moving forward towards their goal no matter how many defeats they face or what others tell them.
Instead of breaking down for facing failures, learn from your failures and get back into the game with what they taught you. You will be sure to reach success.
Practice these behaviours one by one and make it your regular habit. Then you will already be disciplined and closer towards your dream and success before you realise it.
I wish you all the best in your process of disciplining and becoming successful in your entrepreneurial journey.
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