When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

I like to say that self-discipline is a powerful force, but only as long as you apply it deliberately in the right circumstances.

Blindly exerting self-control when your efforts are fruitless and unlikely to lead to positive results is dangerous because it’s not only a waste of time, but may also lead to bitterness.

“I was so self-disciplined and yet I failed! Self-discipline is overrated, I’m done with it!”, a person might exclaim upon realizing that their efforts were for naught, but failing to notice that their self-discipline wasn’t to be blamed — it was their wrong use of it that resulted in wasting time.

For example, I once worked in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry. I helped clients build backlinks to their websites so that they could rank higher on Google.

In addition to client work, I built my own sites. At one point, I had 40 sites, each targeting different keywords and covering a different topic. I was extremely self-disciplined about this business, as I was building new sites every week and constantly writing new articles for them.

When my revenue had finally shot up to around $1000 a month, Google introduced an update to their algorithm and my most successful sites dropped in rankings. My income fell by over 50% overnight. I discovered that it wasn’t anything new in the SEO industry. Google periodically introduced new updates and people like me regularly had to rebuild their businesses according to the new rules.

Upon realizing that my business would forever stand on wobbly legs, I stopped working on new sites and retreated from the industry. Choosing to stay self-disciplined would have been the wrong choice, because it would probably never lead me to building the lucrative, stable business I was seeking to achieve.

From time to time, revise your goals to factor in any new information you have recently acquired. Does it solidify your reasons to keep going, or is it a sign that perhaps you should alter your conclusions and refocus your efforts on something else?

If we choose to see the obstacles in our path as barriers, we stop trying. If we choose to see the obstacles as hurdles, we can leap over them. Successful people don’t have fewer problems. They have determined that nothing will stop them from going forward.

One might argue that it’s mere semantics — barriers or hurdles; both make it difficult to reach success. However, thinking of a problem as a hurdle means approaching it as something that you can possibly walk around or leap over, but a barrier sounds like something that is impermeable and a fixed limitation.

Nobody likes to face obstacles, but it’s thanks to the obstacles you face today that you gain the ability to overcome other hardships in the future — ones that would possibly crush you if it weren’t for the experience you’re having today.

Problem-solving skills are exactly that — skills. The more often you encounter problems and resolve them, the better you’ll get at dealing with them.

For this reason, as a great exercise for building self-discipline and mental resilience, I strongly suggest exposing yourself to difficult tasks. Embrace problems in your life and look at dealing with difficulties as training yourself to see problems as hurdles instead of barriers.

Exert willpower to deal with the hard problems, instead of looking for the easiest way out. Consider several ways to tackle the issue and try to visualize how each solution can help you leap over the hurdle. You don’t necessarily have to throw problems at yourself from every direction; you can also practice by helping your friends solve their problems or by imagining you’re facing the problems you’re reading about in a book or seeing in a TV show.

Just for practice, imagine that you were about to launch your business when a key investor backed out, leaving you $20,000 short of the budget necessary to produce the first line of your product. To make matters worse, you’ve already accepted payments from your first clients and need to deliver within two months. Most people would consider it an impermeable barrier. Game over, say goodbye to your dreams. You, as a mentally resilient and self-disciplined person will look at it as a hurdle. What can you do to leap over it and keep going, despite such a difficulty being thrown in your way?