Everyone makes mistakes. although they hurt, and they are unavoidable, they are necessary. Learning from one's own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others is a pivotal life skill. This is what allows us to grow and change our actions according to the mistakes we made to ensure better results in the future. In a word, mistakes are the stepping stones to success.
Understanding and Acknowledging where your character needs to improve and where you strive is very important in relation to your quality of life. Most people are ignorant to any of their weaknesses due to their huge ego which is holding them back from achieving greatness. Also, many others either don't take the time to sit and genuinely think about their life or they are aware of their weaknesses but still refuse to acknowledge them. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses allows you to build upon and improve in those which you lack as well as maintain the strong core foundations that you naturally have built throughout your life.
Having standards or baselines of effort for everything you do is very important. Standards can help you to trick your brain to work harder even when you don't feel like it. For example, if a basketball player goes into a game with the standard/ideal that he will score 5 points, he will work harder to reach that goal. If he does in fact reach it, he will gain the confidence necessary to increase the number creating a "snowball effect" and so on. As he continues to get better, he sets higher standards and improves with every game. And what was once an effort to score 5 points in a game soon becomes 10 and eventually 30 and so on. This is a simple yet very effective way to quickly build self-discipline without even realizing it.
Most people look at discipline as being a negative and painful action. As children, we are "disciplined" by adults for doing the wrong things and punished for it. But this isn't how we have to look at it. A better way to visualize self-discipline is as a challenge for ourselves. It's almost like making a bet with yourself. And instead of being punished for it, you can even reward yourself for pushing past what you thought were your limits and motivating yourself to do more next time. And rewarding yourself isn't a bad thing either. No one is perfect and rewarding yourself for your good/disciplined actions can improve your happiness and motivate you to practice self-discipline even more in the future.
