The Role of Self-Discipline and Motivation in Academic Success among University Students

Ziyoda Murodilova

First-year Bachelor’s student

Department of English Philology

Fergana State University, Uzbekistan

Abstract

This article explores the role of self-discipline and motivation as key psychological factors influencing academic success among university students. Academic achievement is not determined solely by intellectual ability; rather, behavioral and psychological characteristics play a crucial role in students’ learning processes. Using a qualitative research approach based on an extensive review of academic literature, this study examines how self-discipline and motivation contribute to effective learning, time management, and academic performance. The findings indicate that students who demonstrate higher levels of self-discipline and intrinsic motivation tend to achieve better academic outcomes, particularly in language-related disciplines that require continuous practice and independent learning. The study emphasizes the importance of developing self-discipline and motivation within higher education systems to enhance students’ academic success and personal development.

Keywords: self-discipline, motivation, academic success, behavioral studies, university students, language learning

 Introduction

Academic success has long been a central concern in educational research, particularly in higher education. Traditionally, academic achievement has been associated with cognitive abilities such as intelligence, memory, and problem-solving skills. However, recent studies in psychology and behavioral sciences suggest that non-cognitive factors, including self-discipline, motivation, and self-regulation, play an equally significant role in determining students’ academic performance.

Self-discipline refers to an individual’s ability to control impulses, manage time effectively, and persist in goal-directed behavior despite distractions or difficulties. Motivation, on the other hand, is the driving force that encourages individuals to engage in learning activities and sustain effort over time. For university students, especially those studying foreign languages and philology, these factors are essential due to the high demand for independent study, consistent practice, and long-term commitment.

Students of English Philology are required to develop advanced skills in reading, writing, speaking, and critical analysis. Achieving proficiency in a foreign language is a gradual process that demands sustained effort and self-directed learning. Therefore, understanding the role of self-discipline and motivation in academic success is particularly relevant for language students. This study aims to examine how these psychological factors contribute to academic achievement among university students, with a focus on behavioral and motivational aspects of learning.

 Methods

This study employs a qualitative research design based on a comprehensive literature review. Academic books, peer-reviewed journal articles, and theoretical studies related to self-discipline, motivation, self-regulated learning, and academic success were systematically analyzed. The sources were selected from reputable academic databases such as Google Scholar, ERIC, and educational psychology journals.

The inclusion criteria for the literature review focused on studies that directly examined the relationship between psychological factors and academic performance among secondary school and university students. Both classical and contemporary research works were considered to provide a balanced theoretical foundation. The collected data were analyzed using thematic analysis, allowing the identification of key patterns and recurring findings related to self-discipline and motivation in academic contexts.

This methodological approach enables a deep understanding of existing research findings without conducting primary empirical data collection. It is particularly suitable for theoretical and conceptual analysis in psychology and behavioral studies. 

Results

The analysis of the reviewed literature reveals a strong and consistent relationship between self-discipline, motivation, and academic success. Multiple studies indicate that students with high levels of self-discipline demonstrate better academic behaviors, such as effective time management, regular study habits, and consistent engagement with learning materials.

The findings also show that self-disciplined students are less likely to procrastinate and more capable of overcoming academic challenges. These students tend to set clear academic goals and take responsibility for their learning process. Furthermore, motivation—particularly intrinsic motivation—plays a critical role in sustaining long-term academic effort. Students who are internally motivated to learn are more engaged, persistent, and resilient in the face of academic difficulties.

In language learning contexts, self-discipline and motivation are especially important. Learning a foreign language requires repeated practice, exposure, and active use of language skills. Studies indicate that motivated and disciplined learners achieve higher levels of language proficiency and academic performance compared to their less motivated peers.

 Discussion

The results of this study align with previous research in psychology and education, which emphasizes the importance of behavioral and motivational factors in academic achievement. Duckworth and Seligman argue that self-discipline is a stronger predictor of academic success than intelligence quotient (IQ), highlighting its significance in educational outcomes.

From a behavioral perspective, self-discipline enables students to regulate their learning activities and maintain focus on long-term academic goals. Motivation provides the emotional and psychological energy required to sustain effort over time. Together, these factors form the foundation of self-regulated learning, which is essential for success in higher education.

For students of English Philology, the role of self-discipline and motivation becomes even more pronounced. Language learning is a cumulative process that cannot be achieved through short-term effort alone. Therefore, educational institutions should place greater emphasis on developing students’ self-discipline and motivational strategies through academic support programs, mentoring, and learner-centered teaching approaches.

 Conclusion

This study concludes that self-discipline and motivation are vital psychological factors that significantly influence academic success among university students. Students who demonstrate strong self-discipline and intrinsic motivation are better equipped to manage academic responsibilities, engage in effective learning behaviors, and achieve higher academic performance.

For students studying English Philology and other language-related disciplines, these factors are essential for mastering complex language skills and achieving long-term academic goals. Higher education institutions should recognize the importance of behavioral and psychological development alongside cognitive learning. By fostering self-discipline and motivation, universities can enhance students’ academic success and prepare them for future professional challenges.

References

Duckworth, A. L., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2005). Self-discipline outdoes IQ in predicting academic performance of adolescents. Psychological Science, 16(12), 939–944.

Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(2), 64–70.

Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: Freeman.

Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: Classic definitions and new directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1), 54–67.

Tangney, J. P., Baumeister, R. F., & Boone, A. L. (2004). High self-control predicts good adjustment, less pathology, better grades, and interpersonal success. Journal of Personality, 72(2), 271–324.

Pintrich, P. R. (2000). The role of goal orientation in self-regulated learning. In M.

Engagement and Disillusionment 

Engaged here means the engagement of the mind with the mind. In order to keep the engagement of the mind with the mind intact, it is important to be happy with your mind. Despondency is despair, grief, heartbreak.          

In the case of engagement, if the mind’s desire is fulfilled, if the mind does not get hurt, sorrow, or suffering, the mind is right. The attention is the same remains A close connection of mind with mind keeps the focus fixed. Enthusiasm increases in the mind, it remains cheerful. Therefore, there is no need to grieve, nor to suffer. You have to keep going, seeing that the cut does not open in the mind and feet. No one can be given a place to occupy the mind. You have to move forward in connection with your own existence. Therefore, the power of the mind is very important.  Flowers should be kept in care. The juice will be in the mind, let the mind move like that. Mind connection provides the juice to move forward in life.

Understanding of mind and spirit with mind. Persistence, hope, desire, self-strength, mental strength move the mind forward. From connected thoughts, one has to increase concentration and move forward in life. Sparkling, shining light keeps life in full flow. All is the result of mind freshness. Intelligence and mental connection with the mind, kinship of one’s own soul with one’s own soul can keep oneself in order, must reach the right goal.              

Despondency means to be broken, hopeless. The mind is burdened with pain – it increases the sickness of the mind. The mind breaks down, becomes useless. The distance between the mind and the mind increases. The connection between the mind is lost. There will be both engagement of the mind and disorientation in life. But if you give importance or keep alive the depression Mind will be hurt, mind power and self-power will be lost. Which is very bad for everyone. Even if you are depressed, you should do what you need to do. You should see your dreams.          

Symptoms of depression or anxiety:

1. First understand yourself – I have suffered, I am suffering. 2. Loss of enthusiasm for work or creative work. 3. No way forward. Signs of getting out of depression: 1. To identify the pain of the mind, find out the cause. 2. To find a way to shake off or erase the pain of the mind. 3. Staying away from those people who have caused grief. 4.Walk and talk in such a way that no one gets hurt. 5. Talking and discussing the matter with a close person if necessary. 6. Dancing-reciting-pictures-art- listening to music, creative work including yoga and joining social service work.

7. Persistence, strength, patience and courage to make new plans and move forward, to overcome adversity. 8. Mental preparation is always necessary. I will be fine. I will be strong in any situation, my actions I will take it forward. 9. I will not let injustice happen to me. I have to protest for injustice. Sometimes I have to fight silently. 10. Even if you are disappointed, you have to give yourself hope. Must go to work. 11. Stay away from negative thoughts and activities. 12. It is one’s duty and duty to mend one’s broken heart. 13. Have confidence and trust in yourself.              

Both good and bad are in our hands there is self-view, self-action, consideration, self-perception, Dreaming, thinking, choosing direction, staying positive is all is in good standing.   

Amb. Dr. Priyanka Neogi is from Coochbehar. She is an administrative controller of United Nations’ PAF, a librarian, a CEO of Lio Messi International Property & Land Consultancy, international literacy worker, sports & peace promoter, dancer, singer, reciter, live telecaster, writer, editor, researcher, literary journalist, host, beauty queen, international co-ordinator of the Vijay Mission of Community Welfare Foundation of India.

THEY DIDN’T COME BACK

The truth of life is 

To live with pains 

So many people came 

So many people passed 

From this life 

Some people went before from us 

And They never came back again 

They didn’t inform 

From the future 

They went 

And they didn’t come back.

Türkan Ergör, Sociologist, Philosopher, Writer, Poet, Art Photography Model. Türkan Ergör was born 19 March 1975 in the city of Çanakkale, Türkiye. She was selected International “Best Poet 2020”. She was selected International “Best Poet, Author/Writer 2021”. She was selected International “Best Poet, Writer/Author 2022”. She was awarded the FIRST PRIZE FOR THE OUTSTANDING AUTHOR IN 2022. She was awarded the 2023 “Zheng Nian Cup” “National Literary First Prize” by Beijing Awareness Literature Museum. She was awarded the “Certificate of Honor and Appreciation” and “Crimean Badge” by İSMAİL GASPRİNSKİY SCIENCE AND ART ACADEMY. She was awarded the “14k Gold Pen Award” by ESCRITORES SIN FRONTERAS ORGANIZACIÓN INTERNACIONAL.

Beyond the Stars 

The stars are but holes in the sky’s cloak, 

where whispers of nameless worlds seep through. 

I search for your shadow in every crevice, 

like a river seeking the sea in the desert. 

Your voice is an echo trapped in the crystal of years, 

shattering into a thousand flashes with every breath. 

I gather it with hands of dampness and salt, 

like one who collects fragments of the moon on the edge of night. 

Time is a tapestry of invisible threads, 

stitching our lives to bodies of stone. 

But we are the thread that escapes the loom,

twisting around the heart of the universe. 

Beyond the stars, there is no darkness: 

there is a sea of ​​light where 

weightless memories swim. 

There, your smile is an island of cold fire, 

and I am the wind that caresses it 

without touching it. 

Our love is a silence that takes shape, 

like the space between the notes of a song never sung. 

It lives in the place where dreams end 

and things that don’t need to be said begin… 

GRACIELA NOEMI VILLAVERDE is a writer and poet from Concepción del Uruguay (Entre Rios) Argentina, based in Buenos Aires She graduated in letters and is the author of seven books of poetry, awarded several times worldwide. She works as the World Manager of Educational and Social Projects of the Hispanic World Union of Writers and is the UHE World Honorary President of the same institution’s Activa de la Sade, Argentine Society of Writers. She is the Commissioner of Honor in the executive cabinet in the Educational and Social Relations Division of the UNACCC South America – Argentina Chapter.

To You, O God 

Your reflection dwells in the eyes of the spiritual. 

I seek You, O God — 

tirelessly, in the silence of morning, in a drop of dew, 

in the breath that awakens with the dawn. 

I search for You 

in the touch of the wind, 

in the bird that sings unseen, 

in thoughts that fall silent 

while the heart speaks. 

I know, 

You are everywhere — 

in the gaze of the beggar, 

in the smile of the wise, 

in the hush of the temple, 

and in the clamor of life. 

When I kneel, 

it is not before the world, 

but before Your eternal goodness. 

When I weep, 

I do not fear sorrow — 

for I know You are in every tear. 

To You, O God, 

I offer this verse, 

let it be a bridge 

between my being 

and Your eternity.

Maja Milojković was born in Zaječar and divides her life between Serbia and Denmark. In Serbia, she serves as the deputy editor-in-chief at the publishing house Sfairos in Belgrade. She is also the founder and vice president of the Rtanj and Mesečev Poets’ Circle, which counts 800 members, and the editor-in-chief of the international e-magazine Area Felix, a bilingual Serbian-English publication. She writes literary reviews, and as a poet, she is represented in numerous domestic and international literary magazines, anthologies, and electronic media. Some of her poems are also available on the YouTube platform.

Maja Milojković has won many international awards. She is an active member of various associations and organizations advocating for peace in the world, animal protection, and the fight against racism. She is the author of two books: Mesečev krug (Moon Circle) and Drveće Želje (Trees of Desire). She is one of the founders of the first mixed-gender club Area Felix from Zaječar, Serbia, and is currently a member of the same club. She is a member of the literary club Zlatno Pero from Knjaževac, and the association of writers and artists Gorski Vidici from Podgorica, Montenegro.

What has happened to the Earth?

With the rise of human unrest, everything around feels breathless.

Distrust and rashness spread in every direction
Like unleashed waves of overflowing waters outside
They devour our shelter, devour our lives
Nature itself is losing its own rhythm.

Rivers are drying, settlements are burning
Cities and ports drift away
The game of justice and injustice goes on
While elsewhere piles of bodies keep rising.

As if from behind, someone pulls the strings,
Drunk on the intoxication of the dead—
Someone, keeps pulling the strings.

Just as history’s pages reveal:
Seeking one’s own heroism
In exchange for human corpses.

Yet we grew up knowing
We learned it from the pages of books—
Human beings exist for one another.

As if in some mythic war
The might of the powerful is being put on display
Oil for oil’s own sorcery
Gold mines and strings of pearls—

Searching and searching
One day the earth will give up
All its glittering treasures from within.

And that day,
Powerful and powerless alike
Will blur into one voice and ask together:
What has happened to the Earth?

Md. Mahbubul Alam is from Bangladesh. His writer name is Mahbub John in Bangladesh. He is a Senior Teacher (English) of Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Chapainawabganj is a district town of Bangladesh. He is an MA in English Literature from Rajshahi College under National University. He has published three books of poems in Bangla. He writes mainly poems but other branches of literature such as prose, article, essay etc. also have been published in national and local newspapers, magazines, little magazines. He has achieved three times the Best Teacher Certificate and Crest in National Education Week in the District Wise Competition in Chapainawabganj District. He has gained many literary awards from home and abroad. His English writings have been published in Synchronized Chaos for seven years.

Once when he was in grade ten in 1990, his Bangla letter was selected as the best one from Deutsche Welle, Germany Radio that broadcast Bangla news for the Banglalee people. And he was given 50 Dutch Mark as his award. They would ask letters from the listeners to the news in Bangla and select one letter for the best one in every month.     

From 17 to 30 September, in 2018 he received a higher training in teaching English language in Kasetsart University of Thailand for secondary level students through a government order from education ministry. 

On 06 November 2015 he achieved Amjad Ali Mondal Medal for his contribution in education field by a development organization in the conference and felicitation function for the honorable personalities at Rajshahi College Auditorium. 

On 30 December 2017 from West Bengal in India he was declared a ‘Literary Charioteer’ in Bangobandhu Literary and World Bango Conference and they awarded him with a Gold Medal in their International Literary Conference and Prize Giving Ceremony.

In 2018, he achieved Prodipto Lirerary Award in Prodipto Literary Conference at Kesorhat, Rajshahi for poems in Bangla literature. He received honorary crest from the administration of Chapainawabganj District Literary Conference and Cultural Function in 2021 and 2022 consecutively. 

His poems have been published in many international online magazines such as Juntos Por las L Raven Cage Zine, and Area Felix.  His poems have been translated and published in Argentine and Serbian, and he participated in many international online cultural meetings. 

THE MYTHIC TRANSREALISM MANIFESTO

Founded by Alex S. Johnson

1. We reject the false divide between the real and the unreal

Reality is not a fixed surface. It is porous, symbolic, wounded, ecstatic. Myth is not ancient — it is happening now, in the body, in the psyche, in the street, in the underworld of memory. Mythic Transrealism treats the surreal as truth and the truth as a doorway.

2. We honor the wounded, the misread, and the erased

Our stories rise from the margins — not as victims, but as architects. We write from pain without fetishizing it, from survival without sanitizing it. We build sanctuary for those denied one.

3. We fuse mythic structure with lived experience

Archetypes are not abstractions. They are the shapes our lives take when we are pushed to the edge. Descent, transformation, return — these are not literary devices. They are the map of the human underworld.

4. We embrace surrealism as emotional truth

The grotesque, the dreamlike, the ecstatic, the impossible — these are not decorations. They are the language of the psyche speaking in its native tongue. We do not explain the surreal. We inhabit it.

5. We reject institutional gatekeeping

No academy, award committee, or self‑appointed authority defines our worth. Our lineage comes from punk clubs, metal bars, spoken‑word stages, underground presses, and the people who survived what should have broken them. We answer to craft, community, and truth — not to institutions.

6. We write with punk ethos and mythic intent

Punk gives us the refusal. Myth gives us the structure. Transrealism gives us the lens. We combine them to create a literature that is raw, visionary, and ungovernable.

7. We treat editing as ritual and publishing as sanctuary

To edit is to witness. To publish is to protect. To curate is to build lineage. A press is not a business — it is an altar.

8. We honor our lineage openly and fiercely

Our movement stands in conversation with punk priestesses, dark fantasists, weird‑fiction innovators, metal icons, surrealist painters, spoken‑word prophets, and the wounded visionaries who came before us. We name our ancestors. We extend their work.

9. We refuse the binary of high and low art

We claim the sacred in the profane, the poetic in the grotesque, the mythic in the mundane. We write for the page, the stage, the alley, the dream, the wound, the ritual. We do not apologize for where we come from.

10. We create worlds that are emotionally real, spiritually charged, and formally free

Mythic Transrealism is not a style. It is a way of seeing. A way of surviving. A way of transforming the unbearable into the mythic.

11. We build community through reciprocity, not hierarchy

We lift each other. We protect each other. We recognize each other. Our movement grows through kinship, not competition.

12. We write to transform — not to escape

Our work is a descent into the underworld and a return with something true. We do not flee reality. We reforge it.

 THE CLOSING VOW

Mythic Transrealism is a literature of survival, vision, and sovereignty. It is a movement born from pain, shaped by punk, sharpened by surrealism, and consecrated by myth. We write because the world is not enough — and because the world is too much. We write to build the sanctuary we were denied. We write to give others a map out of the dark.

This is our lineage. This is our movement. This is Mythic Transrealism.