Practice Discipline in Bite-Sized Steps For Your Best Life

Make Disciplined Change In Bite-Size Steps

As we continue to discuss discipline this month today, we want to share some ideas to help you practice discipline in bite-sized steps for your best life. You see we like the idea of bite-size change or tiny steps to change. It is far less overwhelming for you and we feel there is a better opportunity to WIN with this practice. Find out more about celebrating your WINS every day here: https://wendybottrell.weebly.com/blog/daily-intentional-habits 

As we see it, one of the ways that people struggle with developing self-discipline is trying to make too many changes at once. Not just by doing more than one goal at a time, but by making those goals way too large. Either of these approaches tends to lead to failure. And we don’t believe that anyone truly wants to fail, right? 

An example of too many goals at once might be someone choosing to quit smoking, go on a diet, exercise regularly, build a successful business, and get out of debt. All of these are excellent goals that can be done. If you try to do them all at once, though, you will probably find it to be too much and quit. This is one of the reasons why resolutions rarely work out. Instead, focus on one or two of these for at least 1 to 2 months and make them consistently a new habit first, before tackling new goals. We wrote about small daily habits week after week here: https://wendybottrell.weebly.com/blog/change-your-life-with-small-daily-habits-week-after-week 

For example, take quitting smoking, you might start with that one since it has the most negative impact both on health and finances. So you might start with just quitting smoking. You could spend a couple of months getting rid of the cigarettes and using aids like the nicotine patch to help. Then once you have completely quit smoking and no longer need the patch, you can move on to the next goal or goals on your list. 

You may find changing your diet and exercising more to be really overwhelming goals because they are huge ones. So, another tactic to help you with discipline is to break them down into smaller goals. Instead of just quitting overeating, maybe you break it down into this week you cut your soda intake in half, then in week two, you cut it out completely. If you do this week by week making one SMALL change, you may find it easier to stay in control and ultimately get the WIN. 

Another way you can break it down is by intensity. So say you want to exercise more, but you have not exercised in years. If you start with something like a full workout, you may give up or get injured and then be unable to exercise at all. So instead of going full tilt, you may want to start with simply getting out for a walk or you can start by doing mini resistance workouts at a lower intensity for a few weeks, and over time add more minutes to your workout until you reach your goal of at least 20 to 30 minutes of activity. You can also over time increase the intensity of your workout as you get stronger and in better shape. 

By breaking down the goals into bite-sized steps, you can make it easier to develop the discipline you need to accomplish them. You will also improve the chances of success in changing your habits. 

Share any ideas in the comments below.

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