Success has different meanings to different people. Whether you’re striving for success in your career, family, or personal life, you must exercise discipline and delayed gratification to achieve your goals.

To be successful in any area of ​​your life, you must set goals and work hard to achieve them. All goals should be written down and they should be specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound.

Success requires daily exercises in:

1. Discipline. Just as athletes must keep their bodies in peak physical condition to be competent in their sport, discipline is needed to succeed in all areas of life. To achieve any goal requires discipline.

A basketball player who wants to perfect his free throws must practice every day. By practicing daily, he develops discipline and successful free kicks become a habit. Therefore, when his team is a point behind and needs to take a free throw, the disciplined player goes to the line knowing that he can do it because he has practiced so much that he can shoot the ball in his sleep.

Discipline develops good habits and good habits give good results.

With practice, you can hone your skill, and the rewards will come after the hard work. Anyone who is very good at their job had to hone their skill first. After winning an international tennis match, Serena Williams recently said that she doesn’t like to exercise, but she is well conditioned and she is a world-class tennis player because she hones her skill by practicing long before each game. .

This clearly illustrates that not liking a part of the process has nothing to do with achieving success. You may not like math; however, if it is required in your career field, you must develop the discipline to study mathematics to achieve your goals.

2. Visualization. Athletes use visualization to see themselves scoring a touchdown, blocking a field goal, or shooting a winner. It is equally important to visualize yourself achieving your goal.

We too must learn to use visualization techniques on a daily basis. It is important that you visualize yourself achieving your goal. This will help reinforce your sense of purpose and help keep you motivated as you strive to achieve your goals.

Visualization will also help you stay on track as you learn to deal with the critical parts of the success process that you don’t like.

3. Delayed gratification. In pursuit of your goals, you must understand the importance of mastering the ability to delay your gratification. Sometimes, in the middle of completing the prerequisites for your desired degree or job title, time seems to stand still. It takes ongoing discipline to accept that delayed gratification is part of the process of being successful.

While it seems sometimes there isn’t enough time to achieve our goals, we must work to understand that success requires delayed gratification and make wise decisions. Sometimes we have to decide to pay for a class that will prepare us for a career change instead of buying our dream car. Too often, people choose to buy unnecessary material products instead of sacrificing and taking the class. However, it is important to remember that you can always buy the car of your dreams, after investing in yourself.

A doctor or lawyer cannot finish medical or law school before completing college. Similarly, a teacher must first complete their prior coursework before they can teach students. There is a process to everything, and one must acquire the discipline to delay gratification in order to complete the process and be successful.

However, each day will get you closer to reaching your goal if you continue to work on your goals daily. Rewards come to those who stay the course.

Success can become contagious. Once you achieve one goal, you will develop the discipline to work on other goals because each success will give you the confidence to work on the next goal.

Take a free throw, then the second is easier. Complete one course and completing the second is easier because you’ll have the confidence to keep going.

Start achieving success today by exercising discipline, visualization, and delayed gratification to achieve your goals.

©2012 Winifred D. Bragg, MD. All rights reserved.