How Self Discipline and Subconscious Mind can Boost Career Growth

At the center of bringing any dream into fruition lies self-discipline
Will Smith

Do you think what the subconscious mind has to do with career growth? Also, you must be wondering for sure why are we giving a sermon on self-discipline? We have all heard about the importance of being disciplined countless times from our teachers and parents. We felt that the elders were too harsh on us, and they should just let us be. While we will be reiterating the words of our teachers today, we would be doing that in a less intimidating, or actually in a more fun way. Also, we will not just preach the benefits of self-discipline but also give a workable approach to help you teach productive personal practices.

27% of the respondents believed that it was the lack of will power that was responsible for their personal and professional failures.
Stress in America

Read on to know about:

The Importance of Self-Discipline
How to Tap into the Potential of Your Subconscious Mind
Career Experts on the Power of Discipline and Subconscious
Related Movie and Book Recommendations

Discipline pays back

It is the age of the internet, and nearly everyone has access to almost the same set of learning resources and professional tools. What will then decide the level of professional success one enjoys? The ability to properly structure the vast amount of knowledge into modules and then mastering it. This is where self-discipline comes handy.

What is Self-Discipline?

Might sound obvious, but let’s deconstruct its essence. It is the process of regulating one’s actions and emotions to achieve certain set targets. Let us now focus on the three keywords here. Regulation. Action. Emotion.

Regulation is important because otherwise, we will drown in the sea of information and opportunities. Only when we put a filter on what we should consume and what we shouldn’t; we can actually learn what’s important and grow.

ITM Suggests: Rather than trying to learn a lot of skills simultaneously, start with one and practice it for 20 hours. You will get initial expertise.

Action: You can have hundreds of gym equipment at your home, but your muscles will only develop when you actually lift the weights. The same applies to professional skills too. You can have subscriptions to the best magazines and access to groundbreaking ideas, but they won’t manifest unless you actually work on them.

ITM Suggests: Set daily targets for learning a skill and reward yourself on completion. Punish yourself if you can’t meet the benchmark.

Emotion: You can have a well-structured plan in place. You might even act on it diligently. However, just a small emotional glitch, and you won’t get the career results you set out for yourself. Emotional discipline is an integral part of self-discipline. It means that you are in the driving seat when it comes to your state of mind, and external situations don’t affect you uncontrollably.

ITM Suggests: Keep a daily journal of your emotions. At the end of a week figure out things that affect you the most and work on them one by one.

It’s All in Your Mind:

Discipline can also be seen as the act of consciously practising something until it becomes auto-pilot or subconscious mode. Now the question arises,

What exactly is the subconscious mind?

A major part of our lives is not guided by conscious decisions but by subconscious beliefs and thought processes. The subconscious mind is a reservoir of our likes, dislikes, beliefs, and skills. It lies in oblivion but the conscious mind can pull information from it when needed.

How can it help in my career growth?

Just as the body tries to maintain a balance of physical equilibrium, the subconscious mind tries to maintain mental equilibrium. Thus, the only way to explore new ideas and challenge our biases is by training our subconscious. Also called ‘confirmation bias’, our minds create a reality that syncs with the ideas that we are most exposed to. Thus, to reprogram your mind into a one with a growth mindset, it is essential to surround yourself with ideas that nurture growth and boost confidence.

ITM Suggests: Write down your vision and different ways you can achieve it in detail for the next week.

Still Not Sure? Let’s See What the Experts Say

Roy Baumeister, a psychologist at Florida State University, says that will power is the ability to resist immediate temptations to meet long term goals.
University of Pennsylvania psychologists, Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman, based on their research on self-control said that self-discipline was a more important factor than IQ level for predicting success.