P.L.U.S Responsibility Unit Lesson One Journal

​According to research, the following things can help us build our brain’s ability to be more self-disciplined. It turns out that self-discipline is something our brain can help us do automatically if we train it. So, here is what researchers say will help us train our brain to be more self-disciplined

​Train Your Brain

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Practice Gratitude: This may not seem logical but, when our brains are constantly wanting more or wanting what someone else has, we can’t actually appreciate what we already have. And when we can’t appreciate what we have, our brains and bodies go into a state of stress and it makes it very hard to have the self-discipline we need to work toward our goals. We are too sad or too envious or too angry that we don’t have what someone else has. If we practice being grateful, though, we can allow our brains the opportunity to be more self-disciplined by reaching for a new goal rather than being mad about what we don’t have.

​Practice Forgiveness: Similar to gratitude, if we spend our time angry at or resenting someone for something, we can never move forward. We will stay stuck in the past and won’t realize that we have bigger and better things to achieve. It takes no self-disciplined to stay mad, but it takes a lot to forgive and move on. This, in turn, helps the brain carve out new neural pathways, much like with gratitude, for self-discipline.

​Learn Goal-Setting: We may not realize what we want to achieve until we actually set goals and work toward them. We also may not realize that we have to work toward what we want. Things will not magically fall out of the sky and into our laps. If we want good things to happen in our lives, we need to actively work to make them happen. Setting SMART goals can help and using self-discipline to go after those goals will really help!

​Be sure to Eat Healthy, Get Plenty of Sleep, and Exercise!: This is so basic we may not think about these things as helpful for self-discipline, but they are! If our bodies aren’t healthy, we won’t want to do other things that are good for us. In order for our brains to be motivated, we need to keep our bodies motivated, too.

​Learn to Stay Organized and Be Persistent: If you want to increase your self-discipline, you need to be organized about what you want to do and be persistent when things don’t go well or right. Just because something doesn’t work the first time does not mean it won’t work the second time. Giving up is a BIG killer of self-discipline. So is chaos. If you can’t find anything in your locker, or if you never know what day it is or what you are doing, you will feel frazzled. You will lose things, forget things, and be stressed. All of these restrict your ability to stay focused and self-disciplined.

​So, let’s review - to GROW our self-discipline skills, we need to:

1) Be grateful

2) Forgive

3) Set Goals

4) Have Healthy Bodies

5) Be Organized and Persistent; try, try again!

​I want you each to pick ONE of these things and practice them right now. On the next slide write about the area you picked and how you want to work on that throughout this Responsibility unit. Try to frame your idea as a SMART goal (one that is specific, doable in the next four weeks, and realistic). We will all need to build our self-discipline skills and this is the time to start! You may not change overnight, but knowing what area you want to work on will help you begin building your self-discipline muscles.

Open Ended

What area did you pick to work on throughout this unit? Why did you pick that area? How will you work on it? How will you know you are making progress. Your answer should be at least a paragraph long.