Studying at a distance requires a large dose of self discipline. All of us in one way or another have been born with a different level of self-demand. There are people who demand a lot of themselves and can achieve practically everything they set out to do and other people who fail in their attempt. Also, if these people belong to our close circle, we can almost predict what the result will be..
Of course, personal fortune and aptitude always count in individual achievements and failures. However, apart from luck or our natural abilities to carry out a certain task, there is a much more important component that is self-discipline. And the good news is that self-discipline can be learned.
Self-discipline is the ability to perform a specific task regardless of our emotional state. It is the ability to put yourself "in action" despite the desire or predisposition you have at that moment. Self-discipline helps us finish projects, overcome addictions, and incorporate positive habits into our lives. Self-discipline reaches its maximum expression when we accompany it with tools to optimize our time, that help us plan and prioritize. In future articles I will talk about this type of tool, which luckily is available to everyone.
My preferred way of explaining how to increase our self-discipline is to compare it to lifting weights. The more we train, the more strength we will develop and vice versa. In the same way that we all have more or less developed muscles, we also have different levels of self-discipline that we can develop as if it were a muscle.
Anyone who does weights will know that the only way to get muscles to grow is to do reps that are just right. below our maximum limit. Ideally, if we do series 4 × 10 (lift the weights 10 times in 4 different series) is not to be able to reach 11. Following this analogy, we can increase our self-discipline by establishing challenges that we can easily meet and that are within our limits every day. from today.
We want to develop our self-discipline to study 2 topics per week. The average number of pages of each topic in UNED books is over 30 pages. That supposes 60 pages per week, Or what is the same 8/9 pages per day. If we are not used to studying, possibly studying 9 pages a day is out of our limit at the moment.
Therefore the ideal would be to start with 4/5 pages per day and when we have perfectly assimilated this level, we must increase it. Self-discipline requires a progressive training. If we do not increase the degree of difficulty, it is not possible to advance
Of course, the way to study at UNED depends on the personal circumstances (work, family) of each person. The example is based on my own limits. I have a full-time job and I have enrolled in 7 subjects in First Grade.
Another example may be forcing ourselves to get up early. We want to earn an hour each day before going to work to study. We are used to getting up at 8 and we want to do it at 7. It may be too abrupt for us to get up early one hour from one day to the next and not get it half the days. We can start a week by waking up at 7:30. If we exceed the initial week, surely the second week does not cost us so much effort to get up at 7.
Steve Pavlina talks about 5 basic pillars on which self-discipline is sustained. Below I will summarize what each of them is based on:
We must know and accept our current situation. It is impossible to get anywhere without knowing your starting point. The most common mistake people make is failing to perceive and accept the current situation. Ask yourself what your limit is and accept it.
If your limit is 30 minutes of study a day you must accept it and start working from there. If you deceive yourself with your initial limit, you will hardly be able to improve it.
There are different types of self-discipline, sleep discipline, nutrition, sports, communication, work, etc. Identify in which of these areas you have a lower level of discipline and try to improve it by establishing a work plan. If your goal is to study 9 pages a day and you know that you need 2 hours to do it, you have to look for those hours, because they are not going to come looking for you.
Not accepting your situation is synonymous with ignoring or denying it. Ignoring it means not knowing where you are, not knowing what your starting point is. By means of the denial we are forming a wrong perception of reality, which can be optimistic or pessimistic. Overthinking optimistic about our current possibilities can lead us to quick failures. On the other hand think in a way pessimistic It will start us well below our actual limits, and learning and improvement will be very slow. The only solution is to accept reality as it is.
"There is a motive force more powerful than steam, electricity and atomic energy: the will" - Albert Einstein -
The will is the force that moves us to action. Making a little analogy with the subject "Psychology of motivation", the will is the energy that activates us and allows us to perform actions. However, this definition offers a clear problem for our interests: every force is born and dies. So ... How can we use willpower in an intelligent way that allows us to achieve our goals??
Willpower helps you run a sprint, but not a marathon. It allows you to start studying today, but not pass a subject. The solution consists of optimize and dose this force to last as long as possible.
It will take a great deal of willpower for a person who is overweight to reach their ideal weight. So instead of applying that force directly to the problem, you should apply it in create the foundation and planning that will help you gradually achieve your ideal weight. Learning a few basic notions about nutrition or buying a book on healthy, low-calorie recipes doesn't require much willpower.
Well, let's start there. Later we can begin to perform a series of daily exercises of very little intensity. Little by little the willpower that led us to carry out these simple actions is disappearing but our mental structure has been modified. We began to see ourselves as healthier people having used very little willpower and not having lost even one gram of fat out of necessity..
Surely you can imagine that in this situation we will have a much better chance of reaching our goal than in the initial situation. At this point we must use a new wave of willpower to increase our daily exercise and ensure that healthy meals gradually occupy our diet.
To end this point I want you to keep a mental image: Imagine a relay race. You are the witness that they carry from hand to hand, and willpower is the runners that take you to the finish line. You are present throughout the race, but each runner will cover only one section. It is useless for runner number 3 to start his career when the witness is still in the hands of runner number 1.
Hard work is anything that requires a effort for your part. Try to avoid the fast and easy paths to success, since the most important achievements that you will obtain in your life will be a consequence of hard work. Most people tend to do what is easiest by avoiding hard work..
The superficial opportunities are very easy to reach and for this reason they have a multitude of candidates. However, the real opportunities, those that can mean a major change, are only available to those who have worked hard. Of course it takes more effort to reach them, but you will have to compete with fewer rivals and the benefits will be greater. Avoid the apple that you can reach with your hand and climb the tree to catch the highest one.
Having fewer rivals means concentrating your effort within yourself. Namely, focus your effort on work instead of wasting it on competition. When you get used to working hard and putting in effort, you will see that little by little opportunities begin to arise around you that are not presented to most. It does not matter what you do as you can strive in any area of life, be it personal or professional. Hard work is universal.
I will put my personal example when devising this blog. I wanted to create something different, to offer something that is not on the market. Of course there are many good pages where you can also download notes. But limiting myself to summarizing would be to offer something that is already on the market.
For this reason I have decided to create summaries with personal comments, sometimes ironic, sometimes explanatory. But the most important thing is that they really help to retain the information. I know from experience, I already have a career following this system. It has always been my way of studying since I was a child and I think it can be a help for many people who have not touched books for a long time.
Summarizing with personal comments requires more effort than to do it the traditional way. I do not write a line without making sure that I have perfectly grasped the idea and can explain it in my own words.
I also try that my articles are not simply definitions taken from the "wikipedia" but that I read books and blogs on personal developmentl and I document myself to be able to transmit the ideas that I consider most important and useful. Of course I also receive something in return, with your comments and thanks you encourage me to continue exploring this area, which is one of my passions..
I also hope in the future to obtain income through advertising so that at least the blog can be self-sustaining, but this is something that I have not investigated in depth today and it worries me little since my main objective at the moment is generate useful and valuable content for my readers. As I said before, the benefits are after the hard work. Without hard work you do not generate value, and without value there are no benefits.
The concept of planning contrasts with that of hard work, but deep down everything is interrelated. Planning helps us to carry out those tasks that although they do not involve a great effort, we cannot leave behind. Not finding time to do these types of tasks means that sooner or later the tasks will find time on their own and get you busy while you do the "hard work".
Imagine that you are going to have an important meeting with your boss and several clients. You have to prepare a presentation on the computer and you only have 2 hours. When you have been in for 1 hour, your boss calls you to tell you that the meeting room is busy and that the meeting will take place in your office.
The problem is that your office looks like a pigsty since you never find time to tidy it up. But clients are going to come and see it that way, it would give them a terrible image of both you and the company, not to mention what your boss would think ... So you finish the presentation very quickly, practically without reviewing it or correcting errors and investing the remaining hour ordering the dispatch. Surely a week in advance you would have found a better place to put that time. However the hour has ended up setting itself alone.
Persistence is probably the most important pillar of self-discipline. At the beginning of the article we defined self-discipline as the ability to perform a specific task regardless of our emotional state.. Persistence is the ability to MAINTAIN that specific task regardless of our emotional state. If you are struggling to achieve a great goal, your emotional state will sometimes be higher and sometimes lower. Sometimes you will be more motivated and other times less.
Palmero talk about the consistency check in the second moment of the motivational process. Many times we observe that the results that we obtain from our actions are not congruent with the final result that we hope to obtain. This lack of consistency can cause our motivation to wane. However, you must keep in mind that your motivation is not what produces results, but your actions.
This does not mean that you always have to be persistent in achieving a goal. Sometimes it is necessary to throw in the towel. If we observe a total lack of consistency in all the results we are obtaining, perhaps we should rethink both our objective and the instrumental behavior What are we using to achieve it?.
Anyway, persistence is something very personal. It is up to each one to decide how far they want to strive meet your goals despite adversity. Many of humanity's great discoveries would not have seen the light of day if it weren't for people who continued their efforts despite obtaining zero results. And that's where geniuses are born.
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