How to Learn to Work Hard

This article will show you how to learn to work hard to earn self-worth.

If you haven't read the article on how hard work leads to self-worth, you can read it on my page titled: "How Millennials Have an Opportunity to Change the World."

I wish self-worth came from eating Cheetos on the couch all day while watching reality tv show, but it doesn't. In all honesty, we should feel self-worth from simply existing, but unfortunately we don't.

Life is a balancing act. Self worth comes from balancing rest and simplicity with working hard and earning the good that comes into our lives. Too much rest turns into laziness. Too much work turns into unnecessary stress and anxiety.

Working hard and earning self worth comes from setting goals and then achieving them. When people try and talk about goal-setting, I usually begin to yawn.

But the truth is that we have goals every moment of every day. If you find yourself scrolling mindlessly on social media, you probably had a previous goal of being entertained - or to not be bored.

Goals steer our life in the direction in the life we want it to go. When we have somewhere we want to go, we put the address into a GPS, and the GPS tells us where to go. The address is our goal, but if we set a random goal without consciously thinking about it, then we end up in a random place without ever looking up to see in which direction we were headed. Then we we wonder how we got where we are in life the way we did.

To achieve our goals and earn our self-worth, we must be able to learn the skill of discipline.

Most people think of the word discipline as negative, given its other connotations. If that’s the case for you, call it a commitment instead, because the skill of discipline in this context can dramatically improve your life in many positive ways.

Discipline is giving yourself a command and then following through. Discipline is like a muscle: the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets. You may fail sometimes. You may fall off the wagon here and there, but get back on it. Just as lifting weights is designed to make your muscles fail, so too is exercising your discipline muscle. Work out, give yourself some rest, and then go back at it to get even stronger.

Jim Rohn gives this example: “Let’s say I ask you to do as many push-ups as you can and the most you can do is five. It’s clear that you gave it your all and that’s the best you can do. But if you rested, you could do five more. Then if you rested some more, you could do ten push-ups. And if you kept going, you could end up doing fifty push-ups at one time."

This process is the same with discipline! Commit to something; give it your all. Then, if or when you fail, give yourself some rest. Give yourself some space to relax—but don’t stop too long. Rest should be a necessity, not the goal. Then go back at it vigorously! Keep trying to push yourself until you fail again. Then repeat. You’ll notice that the periods in between failures will grow longer and longer.

The key to discipline is to start off by doing something you know you can do. You can’t go to the gym and start by lifting fifty pounds of weights to get stronger—that only leads to injury, disappointment or giving up.

Start with the weights you can do and work your way up. If you want to be healthy, but only think you can dedicate three days a week to exercising, start with three days! Discipline yourself to do what you think you can do, and when you have done it consistently, up the ante if you want to and do four days! If you struggle to do three days, try two days or maybe one day. Do that consistently and keep raising the bar until you have reached your goal. Take this example and apply it to other areas of your life you want to improve - finances, relationships, your career, etc.

The beautiful thing about discipline is that more discipline in one area leads to stronger discipline in all other areas. If you discipline yourself with exercise, you’ll have more of a discipline muscle to eat healthier, and so on. The stronger your discipline muscle, the more successful you’ll be with your goals, and the more your life will positively change—guaranteed.

So go earn that self-worth. You'll be so happy you did.