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Delayed gratification? That's one way to put it. Another way is "different gratification". Instead of eating chocolate you are eating a dream of future chocolate.

So becoming disciplined could be called developing a taste for dreams.

When the glow of accomplishing a step in your 12 step plan towards chocolate-accquirement is actually more satisfying than eating the chocolate, a shift in taste has occurred. And they call you "disciplined".

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That's something totally different. Delay of gratification, the act of resisting an impulse to take an immediately available reward in the hope of obtaining a more-valued reward in the future. The ability to delay gratification is essential to self-regulation, or self-control, aka discipline.

What's the difference? In either case you are preferring the dream of future chocolate over actual immediate chocolate.

Discipline has nothing to do with whether you think chocolate is good or not, or if you should eat it or not.

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