“The one human quality that must be developed is self discipline for success. The will power to force yourself to do what you know you should do when you should do it, whether you like it or not, whether you feel like it or not. Success is tons of discipline.” — Brian Tracy

I believe that waking up early in the morning is one of the better habits one can have, but to develop this habit, or any habit for that matter, takes self discipline.

I remember back in high school waking up everyday at 6am to get to school on time. Even on weekends and holidays when I worked at my cousin’s shop I would wake up early. I in fact found it difficult to sleep passed 6:30am, I woke up naturally at that time.
However, since leaving high school, and the part-time work I was doing at that time, to go study IT at College full-time, I started to lapse. Things were much more relaxed on College campus. The lecturers didn’t nag you to come to class, as long as you didn’t pitch up mid-way into the lecture, and after the first few lectures you got a feel for which lessons you had to attend and which ones you could skip. Especially in 1st year, there was a lot of free time padded in between classes. And so I started to slip from the discipline of waking up early I had developed in high school.

I’ve come to realize now that high school taught me discipline, but it never taught me self discipline.

The difference? Discipline is, as Brian Tracy said it best, “The will power to force yourself to do what you know you should do when you should do it, whether you like it or not, whether you feel like it or not”.
Self discipline, in my opinion, is doing this for yourself rather than in general. This means loving and valuing yourself as much as you value others.

This is a huge deal for me, as I’ve always put other’s needs before my own, which deeper down means I didn’t value myself as much as other people. This is where my self discipline is lacking.
I have discipline to do what needs to be done, regardless of whether I like to or not, when I comes to things that need to be done for other people, but I often lack the self discipline to do for myself what needs to be done regardless of what I want.