In order for a person to become more disciplined he or she needs to make some very important (and often forced) changes to his or her life.
You need to take a solid look at your life and use common sense answers to your problems and then act on them.

Changes must be made, and steps must be taken for discipline to move into your daily life. Discipline means taking control of your life. It means you being the master of your life. It means feeling good about yourself because you have a large amount of control over your life, and you have control over your weaknesses.

Most attempts at discipline should be taken at an easy pace to start off with. It is a bit like jogging. To run right into it and jog around many streets will most likely pull some muscles and give you some serious pain, and put you off jogging. But if the attempt to learn jogging is taken slowly and is controlled (to some degree) then the person is eased into the sport while being told all the facts about the sport. This person will most likely become a happy jogger in the future. You must do the same. You must learn the new rules that you put on yourself slowly. Often there is no real rush so you can ease yourself gently into your new habits. Also by taking this slowly you can allow your family members the time to get used to the new you. Sometimes sudden change can scare family members and cause problems.

Please do not treat these new changes in the same way that you treat New Years Resolutions. What you want to achieve here is permanent results with a positive feeling of accomplishment. Remove mentally any feelings of failure and disappointment. A good way to do this is to realise that you are trying something new that has been proven to work. It will work for you as well as long as you stick to it with a good positive attitude.

One advantage to becoming more disciplined is that you will get more pleasure out of the things that you do. You will, by doing this, find different pleasures in your life. One of these pleasures is the feeling of self worth and happiness with yourself.

People who are not (generally) disciplined tend to have material (worldly – worldly meaning physical things and physical feelings) things as their main pleasures. Or these material pleasures have a big role in these peoples lives. By becoming more disciplined you will have more accomplishments, and you will have the deep happy pleasure of knowing that you can control yourself and not allow yourself to be seduced by the more worldly (so-called) pleasures.

When disciplining your children try to always be aware that the new changes that you make in the child’s life are happening because “you” want them to. And that these changes will be hard for the child to understand – they will ask themselves, why was I once allowed to do this and now I am not – is my parent being fair?

Try to explain the logic in simple turns to your children as to why you have decided to add more discipline to your home life. Prove to them fairly why they will be better off for it. Let them know that you love them, but that you will still be firm to change their ways from bad to good. Sometimes parents will feel guilt and feel that they are to blame for the child’s suffering but alas the blame lies elsewhere – we parents are just examples of the same suffering we are trying to make sure our children do not have in the future.

If your child looks at you with anger or what looks to you to be hatred remember that this is only a child who does not understand. This person is small and helpless even though sometimes children and teenagers tend to want to feel and believe that they are in total control and can do what they demand they should be allowed to do.

If the child constantly realizes that you love him and want the true good for him, he will come to the agreement table. It may take some time and there may even be a bit of harshness, but love is the winner of all. A good feeling for the child is another good thing. Keep him inspired for the good of what good can do for him. Explain that bad will do him no good, you no good, the family no good, and the world at large no good – especially if the child continues to badly behave into adulthood and beyond.

All the best from
James Martin Sandbrook.
Wednesday, ‎17 ‎September ‎2008, ‏‎8:38:05 PM.