Self-control & Discipline – Secrets for happy life in 21st century

Preamble

In this article, I am going to through light on the importance of self-control & discipline in human life and how these characteristics help in nurturing the individuals for life.

Self-control & Discipline

Here, the important thing is to understand first what is self-control and discipline. In general, it is understood that Discipline is an important attribute of humans that helps in living life with certain rules and regulations. On the other hand, self-control is an attribute to imposes certain restrictions on self against deviation in implementing those rules and regulations. Now, this is pretty clear that both of these are similar or contribute to each other.

However, in my view, discipline is an attribute of having self-control to implement a certain set of rules to manage the priorities of life. Now, the question is how these attributes can be developed in the individuals and help in preparing them for life. Before exactly answering these questions, you need to understand, what are the priorities. As you all know that, every individual has certain responsibilities and every responsibility comes with certain tasks to perform.

Understanding Priorities

To understand it further, you can have the responsibility of being a mother, daughter, wife, sister, and friend being a female and the same is true in the case of males (being father, son, husband, brother, and friend) as well. Along with these, you are also having the responsibility for your ambitions. Moreover, if I will talk in broader terms, you also have responsibilities towards your society, environment, and nation as well.

Don’t worry, I am not trying to afraid you, I am just telling you the truth. So, if you have these much of responsibilities, what to do? Just think for a moment and prioritize all of them in the order of their importance. Also think about what best you can do as per the priorities so that, in the longer run it will benefit society, the environment, and the nation.

How to prioritize?

Now, I am moving you through some simple examples to understand much better.

1. While making career decisions during your school times, you are always puzzled by several choices. In that case, you are required to prioritize your choices and make a routine to give proper time to each choice based on the priorities. Now, what should be the process to prioritize these choices, see here

2. While thinking of contributing to the environment, prioritize the activities affecting the environment and contribute accordingly. Now, how you can contribute, see here

3. While thinking of your responsibilities as a leader, prioritize the activities affecting your team & teamwork and act accordingly. To know more, click here

Now, I hope, you have become much more familiar with the priorities. In simple terms, the priority is to prepare a list of your activities based on their importance in your life. The most important activity will come at the top while the least important will come at the bottom of the list.

Importance of Self-control & Discipline

Let’s take one more example with the current situation of being locked down in your own homes due to the impact of COVID–19 to clarify further. The businesses, schools, colleges, etc. are all shut down. Jobs, work, and earnings of the individual have affected much. So, what to do? How to prioritize in such situations?

1. The first and foremost priority should be to stay home. Stay safe.

2. Give time to your family and learn something new, what you wanted to learn earlier but couldn’t due to lack of time. Moreover, also learn from the learnings of each other.

3. If you are also working from home, make a routine of your activities as per the requirements and follow it strictly to avoid mess-up in your personal and professional life.

4. If it is still required to go out to follow your duties, follow the safety and social distancing norms strictly.

5. Most important is to keep yourself positive as nothing lasts forever and yes, change is the only constant in the universe. So, be ready to change.

You can also go through one of our previous articles to have some more key learnings from such situations. Moreover, such situations test the ability of one’s self-control and discipline. As life is full of uncertain situations like this, if you have not practiced these attributes in your life, you cannot proceed positively. This is how one can remain prepared for life with self-control & discipline.

How to imbibe Self-control & Discipline?

One question is still left and that is how these attributes can be developed in the individuals. As we all know “the strength lies in the roots hence the roots are nurtured from the very start of the bowing seeds”. The same case applies to the development of self-control & discipline in individuals. If we imbibe these attributes in the initial years of learning i.e. since their childhood, they will get strengthened and create a foundation for a prosperous life. Moreover, they will remain ready for life under such critical circumstances as the present one.

Conclusion

Always remember that discipline is not just to stick to some rules and regulations and follow them blindly. Moreover, Discipline is the art of self-control by understanding the priorities of time and managing them to have a better society, environment, and nation in the long run.

Thanks

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Disclaimer: The views presented in this article are the author’s own views. The views are presented here just for the purpose of information. These views are not meant to harm any one’s belief / thoughts.