5 Traits Of Self-Disciplined People
Whether you’re looking for a metric of how self-disciplined you are or you’re looking for some habits that you should form to be more self-disciplined, you should know that self-disciplined people have certain traits in common.
Not all self-disciplined people are the same and there are other traits that it wouldn’t hurt you to develop as you work toward your own self-discipline. Still, here are five of the most important traits of self-disciplined people.
- They Respect And Chase Their Passions
Self-discipline can be, well, a discipline. It doesn’t have to be, however. If you have something that you’re truly passionate about, you won’t have to push yourself to do it because you’ll want to do it and do it well.
If you have trouble keeping yourself working, it could just be that you aren’t truly passionate about what you’re doing. It could help to take a second look at what you’re doing. It must be important to someone, so maybe it can be important to you. Alternatively, it may just be time to keep your eyes open for opportunities to do something that you care more about.
- They Power Through
Even if you do something that you are passionate about, sometimes you just don’t feel productive. This is when better self-discipline can come in handy.
Another trait of self-disciplined people is that they are able to remain at work when they don’t feel productive. This may sound like all of self-discipline but it’s really just one aspect of it.
If you can’t work when you don’t feel productive, it can be hard to train yourself to it. Try to find things that make time more bearable for you, like focusing on what you’re doing instead of how long you’ve been doing it or have left to do it. Or, look at time in smaller blocks like working from now until your next break instead of from now until the end of the day. Having a cup of tea is a healthy snack or listening to music while you work can also help the time go by more pleasantly.
- They Manage Their Emotions
Self-discipline isn’t just about working, it’s also about how you carry yourself around others. If you think of someone who has no self-discipline, perhaps a spoiled child or an unruly rock star, you don’t think about how little they work, you think about how they behave.
Self-discipline is very much about not “acting out” your emotions. This can be important to prevent you from snapping at people you are mad at, but it can also prevent you from snapping out at people you aren’t mad at just because you’re mad.
Doing this can mean learning how to calm yourself down, learning how to vent your emotions in healthy ways, or at least learning how to communicate to people when you are in a bad mood so that they understand that you aren’t mad at them.
- They Understand Their Emotions
On that note, self-discipline is also very much about self-knowledge and self-control. In order to maintain your self-discipline, you need to understand how you act when you aren’t watching – so to speak.
For this reason, mindfulness meditation can be very helpful for self-disciplined people because it increases self-awareness by helping you to understand your feelings and thought processes.
- They Understand Their Environment
Finally, self-disciplined people are usually also very aware of those around them. Self-discipline is a very personal thing, but it is also very much about the way in which you interact with your environment. As a result, understanding and appreciating your environment can help you to practice self-discipline. If you don’t understand or care about your environment, why should you bother monitoring how you impact it?
Self-discipline is a scary term because we think of “discipline” as punishment. This is unfortunate because self-discipline doesn’t have to be painful and is more about awareness than it is about austerity. It’s also about developing your passion so that you are more excited to do your part.