Discipline: Definition, Examples, & Quotes​

By Charlie Huntington, M.A., Ph.D. Candidate
​Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.
Discipline is controlling behavior – whether your own or someone else’s – to try to achieve important goals. Let’s see what effective discipline looks like.​
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Growing up, I was not a child that required much discipline. I was very sensitive to the emotions of the adults around me and I was eager to please, so I generally did my best to follow the rules. In fact, I got so good at being well-behaved for others that in some ways I stopped prioritizing my own needs in important ways. In adulthood, I realized I had become a people-pleaser who was not good at recognizing his own needs and taking care of himself.​
So now I needed discipline of a different sort: the self-discipline to establish and follow through on new expectations for myself, expectations that would truly promote better mental and physical well-being. Eating more snacks and desserts had been a great way to self-medicate when my needs conflicted with other people’s needs, but this wasn’t a healthy or sustainable solution. I now acknowledged that keeping my feelings to myself would result in me handling them poorly, so I needed discipline around getting help and having my voice heard.

While I won’t be sharing too much about the results of these efforts, I do think my story provides a nice example of how discipline comes from both within ourselves and outside ourselves. When I don’t take care of myself, using self-discipline, eventually the people around me will hold me accountable for my behavior – discipline from others. Let’s look at how these twin forces – self-discipline and discipline from others – work to keep people and communities functioning well.​
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What Is Discipline? (A Definition)​

Psychologists have offered many definitions of discipline, and they seem to cluster around the idea that discipline means altering behaviors to meet goals or to be aligned with personally or socially held values and expectations (Baumeister et al., 2007). When the efforts to alter behaviors come from people outside the person being disciplined, we can think of that as discipline from others. When we work to change our own behaviors, drawing on our own strengths and motivation, we are engaged in self-discipline.

I think of discipline as involving both meaningful action and meaningful inaction. In other words, sometimes discipline means doing things we may not want to do, and sometimes it means refraining from doing things we know won’t help us. To take my earlier example, when I am feeling strong emotions, I must engage in self-discipline to cope with the feelings effectively. This means choosing to call a friend whom I know will give me a friendly ear, but it also means not picking up a box of cookies or a bag of potato chips.

The same pattern applies to discipline from others. Imagine a parent cooking dinner as their six-year-old daughter plays in the next room over with her friend. The parent hears their daughter call the friend a mean name and start to impose rules that sound unfair on their imaginary play. What is effective discipline in this situation? The parent must refrain from being judgmental of their daughter, while also establishing for the children that name-calling is not okay. This might look like saying, “I understand that you got upset and you didn’t like what was happening. It's okay to get upset, but not okay to call your friend a mean name when it happens. What else could you do next time this happens when you’re playing?”​

Opposite of Discipline

The opposite of discipline is a lack of discipline: an environment where there is no control or oversight, where chaos reigns. A clear example of this kind of discipline (or lack thereof) emerges in what is called permissive parenting – a parenting approach in which behavioral standards are not enforced, children experience little monitoring of their behavior, and parents ask very little of their children (Baumrind, 1971). Children raised by permissive parents often develop a sense of entitlement and lack of self-discipline and are at risk for many negative outcomes later in life (Baumrind, 1991). Later in this article, I will touch more on parenting styles, including the approach that seems to be associated with the best outcomes for children.

Benefits of Discipline

There are massive benefits to effective self-discipline and being effectively disciplined by others. People who exercise effective self-discipline experience better academic and professional outcomes, more stable relationships, and better overall well-being, while those that do not are more likely to experience issues with substance use and involvement with the criminal justice system (Duckworth & Seligman, 2005; Tangney et al., 2004). This pattern appears very early in life: our ability to self-discipline, as measured even in early childhood, is associated with important life outcomes in adulthood (Daly et al., 2015). Simply put, people with strong skills of self-discipline engage in more of the behaviors they want and know are good for them, and less of the behaviors they know are unhelpful (De Ridder et al., 2012). They are better able to regulate their emotions, change their thoughts, and refrain from acting impulsively (Baumeister et al., 1998).

There are also many benefits to effective discipline from others. Generally speaking, discipline practices that are unpleasant or punitive are known to be less effective, while those that are delivered with care and with an eye toward helping the person become more self-disciplined tend to be associated with better well-being in the person being disciplined (Lodi et al., 2022; Nieman et al., 2004). For example, restorative justice efforts appear to help many young people, who would otherwise be subject to the punitive criminal justice system, to develop better relationships and engage in more prosocial behaviors (Hobson et al., 2022; Lodi et al., 2022).

Examples of Discipline

Since we often think of discipline in terms of parents disciplining their children, here are a few examples of discipline that I have observed among adults. In my housing co-op, there is an accountability system for the completion of house chores. We have systems of proactive discipline for both helping people remember their chores, as well as systems of accountability for when chores go undone (such as bringing up the incomplete chores in a house meeting). 

Discipline also looks like systems of accountability and punishment in workplaces. For example, employees who fail to meet performance expectations may be placed on probation. This can come with increased discipline from others that takes many forms, from more regular meetings with a supervisor, to monitoring of one’s computer, to expectations of daily, self-generated reports of one’s activities.

Ideally, in all of these instances, there are efforts to help people convert experiences of discipline from others into skills of self-discipline. For example, when I struggled with timely completion of the paperwork related to my therapy sessions, my supervisors established the expectation that I would complete it immediately after each session. Although I no longer work with those supervisors, I have come to recognize the benefits of such a disciplined approach, and through self-discipline, I continue to write my notes promptly after my sessions.

Discipline vs Motivation

Motivation is the desire to do something, while discipline is taking action to move toward a goal. In this way, they are closely related aspects of our lives, central to our success in domains such as schoolwork (Waschull, 2005). If we cannot find the motivation to do so, we are unlikely to use self-discipline or respond well to discipline from others. This is why all forms of discipline seem to work better when there is a “why” behind them that clearly benefits us (De Ridder et al., 2012).

How to Discipline Yourself​

Self-discipline is a limited resource – it is effortful to control ourselves, restrain our impulses, and make choices that will benefit us in the long term more than the short term (Baumeister et al., 2007). Also, while training ourselves to exercise more self-control may help a little (Friese et al., 2017), it is not a sufficient solution to building self-discipline. For these reasons, I will make the case that there are two main steps to effective self-discipline:
 
  1. Stay resourced. It becomes much harder to exercise self-discipline if you are tired or emotionally distressed (Baumeister et al., 2007). Therefore, good self-discipline requires good self-care. Eating well and sleeping enough, scheduling time for activities you enjoy, and seeing enough of your friends are all key supports for being able to use self-discipline when it’s truly needed.
  2. Know why discipline matters. Staying connected to your motivations, the reasons that self-discipline will be beneficial in this moment, can help you push through times when you are otherwise under-resourced (Baumeister et al., 2007). When we clearly know why the effort is worth it, we are more likely to keep trying.

Discipline for Students

Schools are tasked with both managing student behavior and teaching students how to manage themselves (Bear, 1998). To that end, effective discipline of students seems to involve managing inappropriate behavior in ways that reduce its immediate short-term consequences for the student or the classroom, while also teaching the student problem-solving strategies for better dealing with such circumstances in the future.
 
Students can increase their self-discipline through at least a couple of strategies. Duckworth and colleagues (2011) found that planning ahead by identifying present-day obstacles to future goals, as well as identifying strategies to implement when goal-related opportunities arise, was related to better academic outcomes. Implementation of strategies like these should pay serious dividends, as some studies have found that self-discipline predicts academic success even better than intelligence (e.g., Duckworth & Seligman, 2005).

Discipline at Work

In most any workplace, disciplining employees is an unfortunate but necessary element of ensuring productivity and compliance with company and regulatory standards (Franklin & Pagan, 2006). As with other instances of discipline by others, there seem to be two common approaches: the punitive or “progressive sanctions” approach, and the positive approach. A sanctions approach might involve increased supervision, suspensions, and verbal reprimands, while a positive approach might involve intensive coaching or the collaborative development of a specialized contract between the employee and their supervisor.

Discipline for ADHD

Children with ADHD often receive more punitive, harsher parenting than children who do not have ADHD (Lange et al., 2005; Miranda et al., 2007). While unfortunate and ineffective, this makes sense, because children with ADHD require more supervision and redirection than most children, leading parents to become exasperated, impatient, and less caring in their parenting (Lange et al., 2005). This may have the opposite of the intended effect, as children without ADHD, because they are given fewer restrictions and more independence, may get more chances to develop self-discipline (Alizadeh & Andries, 2002). If you are curious about how to effectively discipline a child with ADHD, I recommend watching the following video:​

Video: How To Discipline A Kid With ADHD – YouTube

Adults with ADHD experience the same executive functioning, inattention, and impulsivity challenges that children with ADHD do, although typically to a lesser degree (Willcutt et al., 2005). Many adults with ADHD benefit from leaning on outside resources, such as therapy or coaching, to establish and maintain helpful self-discipline techniques (Kubik, 2010).

Discipline in Parenting

The goal of discipline in parenting is to promote more adaptive behaviors and discourage unhelpful behaviors, but parents often veer into punishing their children (Nieman et al., 2004). Different parenting styles lead to slightly different types of discipline. 

As noted above, a permissive parenting style can promote a lack of self-discipline in children. The optimal parenting style is called authoritative parenting (Baumrind, 1971; Larzelere et al., 2013). It combines high expectations and discipline with a high degree of parental warmth. Research suggests that this combination allows children to understand how discipline is meant to support them and ultimately make their lives easier (Nieman et al., 2004).

Research is also clear that punishment is not a particularly effective form of promoting self-discipline and changing behaviors (Nieman et al., 2004). In particular, spanking has been repeatedly shown to be ineffective beyond immediately stopping a behavior and is often harmful in the long term (McKee et al., 2007). There is a simple reason for this: punishment tells a child what they did wrong but often offers little guidance about what they should do instead. It also offers little in the way of incentives to try behaving in a more adaptive way.​

Quotes on Discipline

  • “Success isn’t measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace.” – Mike Ditka
  • “Self-discipline is when your conscience tells you to do something and you don’t talk back.” – W.K. Hope
  • “Don’t expect to be motivated every day to get out there and make things happen. You won’t be. Don’t count on motivation, count on discipline.” – Jocko Willink
  • “Mastering others is strength.  Mastering yourself is true power.” – Lao Tzu
  • “Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time.” – John C. Maxwell
  • “You have power over your mind, not outside events.  Realize this, and you will find strength.” – Marcus Aurelius

Articles Related to Discipline

​Want to learn more? Check out these articles:

Books Related to Discipline

If you’d like to keep learning more, here are a few books that you might be interested in.

Final Thoughts on Discipline​

Discipline is a necessary component of moving toward any meaningful goal. We are human beings – distractible, excitable, limited in our attention spans, sometimes easily discouraged – and it takes discipline to keep our eyes on the prize, and sometimes just to stay out of trouble. I encourage you to be gentle with yourself and with others when discipline is required – blame and shame will not help us make any meaningful changes.​

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