Discipline Yourself Quotes & Sayings

In real estate, discipline translates into fully understanding your investment goals and surrounding yourself with the right tools and skills to successfully achieve those goals. — Kassandra Taggart

It's absolutely true that unless you can instill discipline upon yourself, you will never be able to lead others. — Zig Ziglar

You are your own master, you make your own future. Therefore discipline yourself as a horse-dealer trains a thoroughbred — Gautama Buddha

Make yourself a slave to good habits — Dan John

To rise above the crowd, you must discipline yourself unceasingly to the strict demand and realities of your ambition. — Arturo Sandoval

Make a list of goals for every year, tick them off & reward yourself when you achieve each one. Will give much discipline in your life. — Ziad K. Abdelnour

Your past experiences are past indeed; those strains and emotions of sensuous life are gone and what has remained is the temple of your own building, that edifice not built by hands. The reality of you is in the invisible, the intangible. In retrospect your spiritual milestones stand stronger to you in their fixed position than any outward experience. Having arrived at this understanding try now, quietly, gently, without too much effort of self-discipline, to keep to the invisible, train yourself to keep immaterial. Watching and praying are essential. When hard pressed by old habits and you are under the heavy blanketings of times and events, you, as it were, disappear. This is the moment to step back into the invisible, for then the invisible will enfold you and give you great power in the visible world. — Mary Strong

Being an actor is about having the courage to follow your instincts, and also having the discipline and dedication to sacrifice the things in your life that you need to sacrifice to get the best out of yourself artistically. — Matt Smith

Each day look into your conscience and amend your faults; if you fail in this duty you will be untrue to the Knowledge and Reason that are within you. Keep a watchful eye over yourself as if you were your own enemy; for you cannot learn to govern yourself, unless you first learn to govern your own passions and obey the dictates of your conscience. — Khalil Gibran

There is nothing like having to change your physical form to put you in contact with every weak part of yourself, to train yourself in discipline. Put somebody on a treadmill and I'll tell you how good they are at any other thing they do in life. — Will Smith

Do you have to discipline yourself to have breakfast, lunch or dinner? Of course not; and so discipline - the usual concept of it - doesn't apply here. I had to discipline myself to learn English, but never to train. — Arnold Schwarzenegger

If you have control over yourself, you have no desire to control others. — Miya Yamanouchi

Forget the resolutions. Forget control and discipline ... too much work. Instead try experimenting. Go in search of something to fall in love with ... something about yourself, your career, your spouse — Dale Dauten

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself-and be lenient to everybody else. — Henry Ward Beecher

Begin your bodybuilding lifestyle with an open mind, an open heart, a lot of patience and understanding. With the right discipline and right approach, it could be the sport that teaches you the most about yourself. It's not a team sport. There is nobody else to count on, and you rely heavily on your own will and your ability to gather up the courage to take it on and excel. It's up to you. Is it in you? — Robert Cheeke

Discipline yourself and others won't need to. — John Wooden

I'm a triathlete. Running is when I do my best living and my best thinking. I love the discipline, pushing yourself to suffer as much as you can, because it leads to a form of redemption. — Naomi Benaron

Remember that an artist's life is an intense search for truth. This search takes many forms. Everyone of these forms demands its own disciplines. I learned and adapted to my search. I expect nothing from you. Question the truth of anything you confront. How does it apply to yourself and the trail you are pursuing? — Brice Marden

You're not going to be a writer someday. You're a writer today. Discipline yourself to write and take time to enjoy writing. Do it a lot. Have fun with it. Begin now. — Jack Heffron

Direction determines destination. So the question you must ask yourself; 'Are all the disciplines that I'm currently engaged in taking me where I want to go?' — Jim Rohn

When you discipline yourself to do what is hard, you gain access to a realm of results that are denied everyone else. The willingness to do what is difficult is like having a key to a special private treasure room. — Steve Pavlina

Read some good, heavy, serious books just for discipline: Take yourself in hand and master yourself. — W.E.B. Du Bois

Respect your efforts, respect yourself. Self-respect leads to
self-discipline. When you have both firmly under your belt,
that's real power. — Clint Eastwood

You want to surround yourself with people who are as dedicated to their discipline as you are to yours and let them do what they do. — Victor Levin

But even though disciplining yourself is sometimes diffcult and involves struggle, self-discipline is not self-punishment. It is instead an attempt to do what, prompted by the Spirit, you actually want in your heart to do. — Donald S. Whitney

Being strong-willed is not enough, however. You also have to be hard on yourself. Someone who was strong-willed but self-indulgent would not be called determined. Determination implies your willfulness is balanced by discipline. — Paul Graham

You don't discipline yourself to attain the feeling of love. You attain the feeling of love and then you want to discipline yourself because you love the discipline, because it brings more love. — Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

You live recklessly when you do not take God's law seriously or respond to the gospel properly. Reckless living can look like laziness and apathy. When you simply aren't motivated and tell yourself that God has forgiven you in Jesus, so you're not going to fight temptation and sin - that is reckless living, and it's far more dangerous than you realize. — Joe Thorn

Be ruthless in one important area: Yourself. Be ruthless about your commitment to Christ. Be ruthless about your intellectual growth. Be ruthless about finishing well. One of the biggest areas we should be ruthless about is our time. How much time do you spend complaining about your problems to people who can't help you solve them? How much time do you talk when you should be doing? When it comes to others, be gracious. But when it comes to you and your time, be ruthless. — Phil Cooke

Your job is to control yourself. Your job is to discipline yourself. Your job is to deal with everything in life with affection, love and kindness. — Harbhajan Singh Yogi

To be great at whatever it is that you do, it's going to take some discipline to separate yourself from the average. — Andy Andrews

As a Cambion, balance is paramount.
Never lose control, never allow emotions to run wild, and never, ever forget who you are and what lives within you. Such discipline requires a sound mind, a thick skin, and a high tolerance for all things weird, because one wrong move and it's over. No matter how tempting it is at first, in the end, there's nothing more tragic, more excruciating than losing yourself.
Well, except maybe high school. — S.A.M.

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

So you wish to conquer in the Olympic Games, my friend? And I, too ... But first mark the conditions and the consequences. You will have to put yourself under discipline; to eat by rule, to avoid cakes and sweetmeats; to take exercise at the appointed hour whether you like it or not, in cold and heat; to abstain from cold drinks and wine at your will. Then, in the conflict itself you are likely enough to dislocate your wrist or twist your ankle, to swallow a great deal of dust, to be severely thrashed, and after all of these things, to be defeated. — Epictetus

Success = Wisdom + Courage + Discipline. KNOW what to do, be BRAVE enough to do it, and LEAD YOURSELF to doing it again and again. — Ryan Lilly

Every night, you fight for that standing ovation at the end of the night. And if you do something wrong, the domino effect is chaotic. And you must not allow yourself to make mistakes whatsoever. So in that case, theater, it's fascinating because of the discipline that you need. — Ricky Martin

There is one prevailing key to success. Do what you resolve to do. Then you'll be a success. If you can discipline yourself to follow through on your promises to yourself, your self-esteem goes up. Persistence is self-discipline in action. Self-discipline is the foundation of self-confidence . — Brian Tracy

If you set goals for yourself, and you're like a lot of other people, you probably realize it's not that your goals are physically impossible that's keeping you from achieving them; it's that you lack the self-discipline to stick to them. It's physically possible to lose weight. It's physically possible to exercise more. — Daniel Goldstein

Beyond a wholesome discipline,
be gentle with yourself.
You are a child of the universe
no less than the trees and the stars;
you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
Therefore, be at peace with God,
whatever you conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations,
in the noisy confusion of life,
keep peace in your soul.
With all its sham,
drudgery, and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world.
Be cheerful.
Strive to be happy.
Desiderata of Happiness — Max Ehrmann

All your life, you have heard yourself denounced, not for your faults, but for your greatest virtues. You have been hated, not for your mistakes, but for your achievements. You have been scorned for all those qualities of character which are your highest pride. You have been called selfish for the courage of acting on your own judgment and bearing sole responsibility for your own life. You have been called arrogant for your independent mind. You have been called cruel for your unyielding integrity. You have been called anti-social for the vision that made you venture upon undiscovered roads. You have been called ruthless for the strength and self-discipline of your drive to your purpose. You have been called greedy for the magnificence of your power to create wealth. — Ayn Rand

To participate requires self-discipline and trust and courage, because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, as my friend Dale puts it, How alive am I willing to be? — Anne Lamott

You don't get a chance to adjust and finagle, and decide that you really didn't intend to do that anyway, and readjust your objectives to make yourself look better. You never just focus on what you've accomplished for the year; you focus on what you've accomplished relative to exactly what you said you were going to accomplish - no matter how tough the measure. That was a discipline learned at Abbott, and that we carried into Amgen.3 — James C. Collins

You should be proud of what you're doing, but not conceited. If you can't be proud of yourself, you're a failure. And discipline. To do anything in life you have to have discipline. To accomplish anything, you have a goal, challenge yourself, and work until you accomplish that goal. Practice what you preach. — Jack LaLanne

For the kind of places I've written for and the kind of writing that I've done, the general way to think about your audience is to think about somebody who's like yourself, but in a completely different discipline. — Louis Menand

Discipline yourself to boil down your story/new business/philanthropic enterprise to a single page. — Steven Pressfield

Our task is to announce in deed and word that the exile is over, to enact the symbols that speak of healing and forgiveness, to act body in God's world in the power of the Spirit. Luther's definition of sin was homo incurvatus in se, "humans turned in on themselves." Does the industry in which you find yourself foster or challenge that? You may not be able to change the way your discipline currently works, but that isn't necessarily your vocation. Your task is to find the symbolic ways of doing things differently, planting flags in hostile soil, setting up signposts that say there is a different way to be human. And when people are puzzled at what you are doing, find ways - fresh ways - of telling the story of the return of the human race from its exile, and use those stories as your explanation. — N. T. Wright

Relaxing with something as familiar as loneliness is good discipline for realizing the profundity of the unresolved moments of our lives. We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness ... Rather than persecuting yourself or feeling that something terribly wrong is happening, right there in the moment of sadness and longing, could you relax and touch the limitless space of the human heart? — Pema Chodron

Happiness was the responsibility you dreaded, it required the kind of rational discipline you did not value yourself enough to assume - and the anxious staleness of your days is the monument to your evasion of the knowledge that there is no moral substitute for happiness, that there is no more despicable coward than the man who deserted the battle for his joy, fearing to assert his right to existence, lacking the courage and the loyalty to life of a bird or a flower reaching for the sun. Discard the protective rags of that vice which you called a virtue: humility - learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness - and when you learn that pride is the sum of all virtues, you will learn to live like a man. — Ayn Rand

My basic profession is as an actor, and I have learnt much about life through working as an actor. Working as an actor is really a spiritual profession, since it means to create life on the stage. It means to play a role totally, while at the same time you know deep down inside yourself that you are not the role that you are playing. Working as an actor gave me early a spiritual discipline, which taught me a lot about awareness and meditation. Life is also about learning to play different roles, and learning to change between different roles with the same easiness that you change shirt. — Swami Dhyan Giten

The divine within you is stronger than anything that is without you. Therefore, be not afraid of anything. Rely on your own Inner Self, the Divinity within you. Tap the source through looking within. Improve yourself. Build your character. Purify the heart. Develop the divine virtues. Eradicate evil traits. Conquer all that is base in you. Endeavor to attain all that is worthy and noble. Make the lower nature the servant of the higher through discipline, Tapas, self-restraint and meditation. This is the beginning of your freedom. — Sivananda

Ninety-nine percent talent ... ninety-nine percent discipline ... ninety-nine percent work. He must never be satisfied with what he does. It is never as good as it can be done. Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself. An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why. He is completely amoral in that he will rob, borrow, beg, or steal from anybody and everybody to get the work done. — William Faulkner

If you are willing to discipline yourself, the physical universe won't need to discipline you. — Leonard Orr

I learned in my Ph.D. the discipline I needed to be successful. Most boxers are not that disciplined. They have talent, but the self-organization - the ability to schedule yourself and your priorities - is lacking. My studies were about the control of training on both the psychological and the physical side. — Wladimir Klitschko

The trick is not to learn to trust your gut feelings, but rather to discipline yourself to ignore them. Stand by your stocks as long as the fundamental story of the company hasn't changed. — Peter Lynch

Restrict yourself to choice and refusal; and exercise them carefully, with discipline and detachment. — Epictetus

Get to know yourself. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all ... Knowing yourself and knowing the facts, you can judge whether you can change the situation so it is more to your liking. If you cannot
or if you do not know how to improve on things
then discipline yourself to the adjustments that will be necessary. — Bernard Baruch

Discipline to me is sacrifice; it's willingness to give up something you want to do, so you can better yourself. — Bobby Bowden

Everything big, once started little. Discipline yourself and work to become an excellent person at what you want. Stretch yourself daily and go a little further than yesterday. Growth is the key to winning success. — Mark LaMoure

TV is a completely different discipline, which I think I am still learning about. You just have to learn how to work fast and pace yourself. — Rose Byrne

Read! Read something every day. Discipline yourself to a regular schedule of reading. In fifteen minutes a day you can read twenty books a year. — Wilferd Peterson

The value of work, and of always learning something new, and what it takes to achieve excellence. I really believe in those things that you have to dedicate yourself and spend time, that excellence is elusive. It's a little maddening, to try to have that level of discipline in your life, and I don't succeed all the time. But I do try. — Ben Affleck

Discipline yourself so others won't have to. — John Wooden

I back up all my rules with discipline. So you'd be giving yourself over to me. Mine to punish. Mine to pleasure — Renee Rose

If you can discipline yourself to read, you can free up two years of your life for the good stuff!) — Seth Godin

If complex organisms demand an explanation, so does a complex designer. And it's no solution to raise the theologian's plea that God (or the Intelligent Designer) is simply immune to the normal demands of scientific explanation. To do so would be to shoot yourself in the foot. You cannot have it both ways. Either ID belongs in the science classroom, in which case it must submit to the discipline required of a scientific hypothesis. Or it does not, in which case, get it out of the science classroom and send it back to church, where it belongs. — Richard Dawkins

Today's action for success: To be a success, you must have discipline. Discipline separates the dreamers from the doers, the wannabees from the winners. Discipline creates the structure, the container for your thoughts to take shape and progress toward an outcome. Without discipline your dreams remain an amorphous mass that never solidify into success. How are you disciplining yourself for your advancement? — Judith Williamson

It's all about self-discipline. Like, self-obsession is connected completely with self-loathing, and it's the same with, if you've got a weight problem. It's all about ... finding some worth in yourself, knowing that you've got the discipline to do it, and knowing that other people maybe can't do it. And it's also, I think, really connected to the fact that you almost feel, like, silent, you have no voice, you're mute, there's just no, you've got no option. Even if you could express yourself nobody would listen anyway. Things that go on inside you, there's no other way to get rid of them. — Richey Edwards

The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term, is the indispensable prerequisite for success. — Brian Tracy

Being in the studio is okay but sitting in a room by yourself composing is a discipline that takes a certain type of mind set and Tommy has a great gift for that as did the previous guy. — James Young

One does not "find oneself" by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through discipline or routine ... who one is and wants to be. — May Sarton

The most important thing you can learn as CEO- one of the hardest things to do is, you have to discipline yourself to see your company ... through the eyes of the people that you're working through. Through the eyes of the employees, through the eyes of your partners ... through the eyes of the people who you're not talking to and who are not in the room. — Ben Horowitz

You have to discipline yourself and not carry the character with you. You need to switch it off and take time to re-energize. — Charlize Theron

It's just a matter of understanding what's necessary and discipline yourself to do it. — Arthur Lydiard

Judo is the way to the most effective use of both physical and spiritual strength. By training you in attacks and defenses it refines your body and your soul and helps you make the spiritual essence of Judo a part of your very being. In this way you are able to perfect yourself and contribute something of value to the world. This is the final goal of Judo discipline. — Kano Jigoro

Whatever work you undertake, do it seriously, thoroughly and well; never leave it half-done or undone, never feel yourself satisfied unless and until you have given it your very best. Cultivate the habits of discipline and toleration. Surrender not the convictions you hold dear but learn to appreciate the points of view of your opponents. — Syama Prasad Mukherjee

The stage has a certain discipline. But the ultimate standard is more exacting in film, because you have to see yourself and you are your own toughest critic. — Jack Nicholson

It takes tremendous discipline, takes tremendous courage, to think for yourself, to examine yourself. — Cornel West

Invest in yourself. Invest in self-discipline. Invest in self-satisfaction. Have complete control over your own thoughts and convictions, and never stop aiming to outdo yourself. — Lionel Suggs

People talk about discipline, but to me, there's discipline and there's self-discipline. Discipline is listening to people tell you what to do, where to be, and how to do something. Self-discipline is knowing that you are responsible for everything that happens in your life; you are the only one who can take yourself to the desired heights. — Mike Shanahan

You can never conquer the mountain. You can only conquer yourself. — Jim Whittaker

Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do, when you should do it, whether you feel like it or not. — Elbert Hubbard

If you were to fault yourself in one of three areas, which would it be: (1) the inability to prioritize; (2) the inability or desire to organize around those priorities; or (3) the lack of discipline to execute around them? ... Most people say their main fault is a lack of discipline. On deeper thought, I believe that is not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their hearts and minds. They haven't really internalized Habit 2 [Begin with the end in mind]. — Stephen Covey

If you wish to live in peace and harmony with others, you must learn to discipline yourself in many ways. — Thomas A Kempis

If you wouldn't follow yourself, why should anyone else? — John C. Maxwell

Discipline yourself to be a disciple of great works and to do that excellently, you have to wave "bye-bye" to some things and then switch off your inner person not to go near them again! — Israelmore Ayivor

Discipline yourself to start each day identifying something to be grateful about. The world opens to those who approach it with a grateful heart. — Michael Josephson

Take a different route to the coffee shop to see what you can see and hear. When we get in a routine, we can become zombie-like and shut down. It's about discipline. You have to push yourself. — Tori Amos

If you have self-respect, you will take satisfaction in being well groomed and will not allow yourself to perform shabbily. You will continue to work toward high standards and goals to serve others, to continue and to practice self-discipline. You will not compromise your standards or beliefs. — Marvin J. Ashton

Your ability to get along with others flows naturally from how well you are getting along with yourself from your own internal peace and harmony which is itself a function of your peace and harmony with God and your family. — Stephen Covey

You really need to have that discipline. It's not even discipline. I just put down these rules. It's not like a vague, 'Motivate yourself!' and do something. It's specific hours set aside every day for certain things. — Kumail Nanjiani

Discipline yourself, so no one else has to. — Pat Summitt

Why am I impatient I am unsure for what is patience? And why should I ultimately feel that I am lacking in it.
Is it timing? Waiting?
Abstaining?
Obligation?
Longing?
Torture?
Perseverance?
Discipline?
Wanting?
Someone recently referred to it as a staring contest between yourself, fate, god and chance. He also referred to it as a tease, a flirt. It's staring at her image when you want to hear her voice, feel her breath, taste her skin. Patience is the recovery from a really hot dream interrupted by the damn alarm clock. Patience is a hard cock with bound hands. — LEONORA MORRISON

As a dancer, I'd dance with broken toes. Just like acting, you compete with yourself and drive forward. That discipline helped in Hollywood. — Jaime Pressly

Ballet is pure and demands that you serve something larger than yourself, whether it be beauty or art, or a combination of both. It requires discipline, taking care of yourself, taking care of your own body first. Then it allows you to give of that beauty, the beauty that you acquire by sculpting your own body all your life. — Peter Martins

Discipline yourself - so others don't have to. — John Wooden

Acting requires a lot of discipline to go with the obsession. It's a path of knowledge, and of self-knowledge. Sometimes you get lost on the path. And then you find yourself again. — Toni Servillo

Inner peace - you need to know who you are, what you want out of life. You have to do your own thinking, and for that you better know who you are, and not just know but be secure in it, comfortable with yourself. Plus you gotta have discipline. Stamina. And luck sure helps. A little luck counts for a lot, including our great good luck of being born into the greatest economic system ever devised. It's not a perfect system by any means, but overall it's responsible for tremendous human progress. In just the past century alone, we've seen something like a seven-to-one improvement in the standard of living. I'm not saying we don't have problems, we've got a helluva lot of problems, but that's where the genius of the free market comes in, all the drive and talent and energy that goes into solving those problems. — Ben Fountain

The kids say golf taught them this and that. I get it with the military: A guy joins the military because he needs discipline and has to find himself. But don't tell me, 'Golf helps you find yourself.' I've been playing my whole life, and I'm still looking for myself. — Lewis Black

With me, meditation is the only essential religion. And everything that follows it is virtue, because it comes of its own accord. You don't have to drag it, you don't have to discipline yourself for it. I have nothing to do with vegetarianism, but I know that if you meditate you are going to grow new perceptivity, new sensitivity, and you cannot kill animals. — Rajneesh

Every act of self-discipline increases your confidence, trust, and belief in yourself and your abilities. — Brian Tracy