Bella, my 13 month old Chocolate Lab cross Australian Cattle Dog, will be staying behind when I travel abroad. Finding her a foster home has been a challenge. She is a high energy and very intelligent dog (which I am sure we all say that about our dogs) so gets bored easily. Putting her into a kennel isn’t my first choice. Sadly her feisty nature and high energy combination is not winning over the potential foster families.

One of which kindly advised me that Bella needs more discipline. She is brilliant at doing tasks round the house and is able to identify 10 colours in a variety of objects. Despite her training, it was a bit of a reality check in terms of her discipline.

Discipline, boundaries and consistency is something we could all benefit from, not just Bella.

It helps focus on your goal and encourages you to complete your action steps even when you do not feel like it. With consistently completing small tasks, you will eventually achieve your goal.

Discipline requires future focus, as it is the link between your goals and achievement.

This probably not new to you. But how do you focus and remain disciplined? We all have 24 hours in a day but somehow other people seem to get more done than others. Why is that? It’s about focus and discipline.

How to be more disciplined:

The sources of your motivation

Work out what motivates you. What gets you going? Why are you doing what you are doing? Quite often we do things out of habit rather than with a purpose or it’s a simple case of the good old procrastination. It may be helpful to ask yourself a couple of questions to clarify your motivation for doing tasks:

• What will be the outcome after I have completed this task?
• If I don’t finish this task, what will be the consequences?

Setting Proper Goals

Goals without action are just dreams. Setting proper goals that include a timeline not only make it easier to focus on as there is pressure to achieve them, but also gives you something to work towards.

Switch off, Ignore or Delete Time Wasters.

Where does time go? You just have a ‘quick look’ at facebook or some form of social media and next thing you realise that 30min have passed. Or you get distracted by checking your emails several times per day.

• Unsubscribe from mailing lists that are no longer important or useful to you. It only takes a minute but will save time in the long run.
• If you have to use social media, set yourself an allocated time (no more than an hour) per day, set an alarm and stick to it.
• If you don’t need it, delete the app to prevent future distraction.
• Check your emails at set times during the day, no more than three times daily.
• Switch off your notifications so you are not interrupted as you focus.

Being aware and paying attention is how to achieve self-discipline. If you refuse to be distracted by technology or other people’s demands (but don’t neglect your children or pets), you will soon be on your way to achieving your goals!

Go ahead, try it! Cut out three things that will give you an hour to focus on what is important to you.