- Shift Your Mindset ➞
- Embrace the Pain ➞
- The 5-Minute Technique ➞
- Sleep Well ➞
- Focus on Your Identity ➞
- Know Your ‘Why’ ➞
- Create a Productive Daily Routine ➞
(Photo by Thao Le Hoang/Unsplash)
“Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.”
Jim Rohn
Remember those times when you were in school and your teachers kept telling you to be disciplined and focused? Do you also remember that they never really told you how to go about doing it?
In most cases, they probably didn’t know themselves. You can’t teach what you don’t know.
The unfortunate truth is that most people lack self-discipline. That’s why millions lead unsatisfactory lives, weighed down by the burden of untapped potential.
It’s also why the majority of people give up on their New Year’s day resolutions just 3 weeks into the year.
So, what is self-discipline?
Simply put, it’s a practice of doing what you need to do, even when you don’t feel like doing it. That’s the best way to sum it up.
Self-discipline is not about just going through motions daily. Anyone can do that. No, self-discipline is making sure you’re instilling new habits and behaviors in your daily life so that you’re in alignment with your goals.
The new daily routine you create for yourself will incorporate these positive habits, which in time will lead you to success. For example, if you watch 3 hours of television a day, one new habit you might decide to adopt would be to only watch TV on weekends.
Now, you’ll have 3 extra hours to work on your goals. That’s fantastic… but there’s a major problem you’ll find coming up.
You’ll face resistance!
All change is met with resistance… and in most cases, it will be from yourself. If we follow the example above, you will miss the dopamine hit you get from watching TV. Your life will suddenly seem dull and monotonous because of the lack of excitement.
It’ll be even more excruciating to do work during this time because the work will seem like a drag and require mental effort on your part. It’s like you’ve submerged yourself in a hell of your own making.
Here’s what happens next… MOST PEOPLE QUIT!
They can’t delay their gratification. They cave in to temptation and engage in the negative habits they were trying to avoid. They fail to realize that if they don’t suffer the pain of discipline now, they’ll have to suffer the pain of regret later.
You’ll ALWAYS pay a price.
The question is… what type of price will you pay?
One that leads you to a better life with rich rewards and successes… or one that leads you to an unfulfilled life on a barren landscape of failure?
If you choose the former, you have chosen wisely. The 7 tips below will help you to master yourself and become an exemplar of self-discipline – and you’ll attain your goals faster than you ever thought possible.
Shift Your Mindset
In order to develop self-discipline, you’ll first need to change your mindset. This one technique alone will help you more than any other. Most goals will demand immense effort and sacrifice from you.
It doesn’t matter whether you want to be a millionaire or you just wish to lose 20 pounds, it will be a struggle. Once you understand that it’s going to be an uphill struggle, you can stop expecting it to be easy… or fast.
It’s neither. This is where so many people get it wrong. They expect fast results with some ‘easy effort’. When they say, “I’ll do whatever it takes”… what they don’t realize is just how much effort it will take.
You must tone down your unrealistic expectations. If you expect results in a month, you’d be better off multiplying it by 5.
If you expect slight discomfort, you better expect strong cravings, heartache, disappointment, rejection, self-doubt, and a myriad of other negative emotions.
It’s all going to come sooner or later… but if you’re ready to take them in stride and keep going, you’ll achieve success. But first, you must expect the process to be hard.
Embrace the Pain
Now that you know it’s going to be tough, it’s time to grit your teeth and suck it up. When you’re building a business, there will be countless tasks you need to complete. Very often, you’ll discover that you dislike doing the work which matters the most.
Oh, you hate the work with a passion! So, what do you do?
You do the work anyway. This is ‘embracing the pain’. You implicitly understand that the road is hard, but you’ll walk it anyway – because this is the only route to success.
While the world procrastinates and shirks the difficult work, you’ll embrace it.
It’s not easy, but if it was, everyone would do it.
Once you’re willing to endure the pain, you’ll be much more likely to follow through.
The 5-Minute Technique
This is a very powerful technique to increase your perseverance.
Very often, we know what we need to do. If you want to be a writer, you need to write. If you want to lose weight, you need to exercise. If you want to get better at a skill, you need to practice.
We know what needs to be done… but we dislike doing what is needed. This is human nature. You must understand how your mind works.
The unfortunate truth is that work, practice, training, and all the other activities which help you improve are not usually fun. Even if you’re passionate about your work, there will be times when it’s a drag to carry on going through the motions.
When your mind views an activity as unpleasant and something that causes discomfort to you, it will go into self-preservation mode.
What does that mean?
It means your mind will conjure up a plethora of very convincing excuses for you to procrastinate on what you’re supposed to do. It’ll tell you that you can do the work tomorrow.
Or it may tell you to do other ‘less painful’ tasks so that you’re engaged in busy work but not the work that actually matters.
Your mind is keeping you in your comfort zone. But here’s the problem – all growth happens outside the comfort zone.
To publish a book, you must sit down and write. Writers often say that writing is easy but sitting down to write is difficult.
In the same vein, working out at the gym is easy, but convincing yourself not to skip the workout is a Herculean task.
Very often, we dread the activity… until we actually start doing it. Then we realize, “Hey! It’s not that bad after all.”
Your mind was deterring you for no reason. To overcome this problem, there’s a very simple technique you can employ to trick your mind – let’s call it the 5-minute technique.
Whenever you’re faced with a task or work which you’re dreading, pay attention to what your mind is telling you. Is it cooking up a ton of reasons as to why you should not do the work? Do you feel like avoiding the work?
If you’re in this situation, all you need to do is tell yourself, “I’ll just do this for 5 minutes. That’s it. Then I’m done.”
5 minutes is not overwhelming and it doesn’t send your mind into chaos. Anyone can handle 5 minutes. Your mind doesn’t need to ‘protect’ you.
It doesn’t matter if you’re sitting down to write a blog post or if it’s an exercise session, just give yourself those 5 minutes.
Once you get started, more often than not, you’ll carry on until you complete the work. Once you start working, you’ll keep working until the job is done. Once you start exercising, after 5 minutes, you’ll have the fire to keep going.
The 5-minute rule helps you overcome inertia without you having to harness a ton of self-discipline. Over time and repeated application of this technique, you’ll discover that doing what you need to do becomes much easier. Your self-discipline has improved by leaps and bounds.
Sleep Well
Different people require different amounts of sleep. Some need 8 hours, some can get by on 6 hours, and a rare minority can function well with just 4 hours. There are no right or wrong answers here and a lot of it depends on your genetics.
However, what’s important is that you get the sleep you need without short-changing yourself.
You may be wondering what sleep has to do with self-discipline. To understand the link, you need to be aware that we have a finite amount of energy every single day. When you wake up, you’re usually full of energy, and this energy will be dissipated throughout the day on all the tasks you do.
Discipline requires willpower, and willpower requires energy. That’s why you should always keep your important work for the first half of the day when you’re most energetic and alert. Towards the end of the day, you’ll be tired and it’ll be harder to concentrate and stay disciplined.
You may notice that people who are trying to lose weight can maintain their diet the whole day, but end up binge eating at night. What happened?
Simple. Their energy stores were depleted and they just didn’t have the energy to stay disciplined to their diets, and caved in to temptation. If they had gone to bed earlier, they’d have avoided this problem.
When you get enough sleep, you’ll have better moods and more inspiration and energy to do your best at work.
Front-load all your most important tasks toward the beginning of your day. In this way, you’ll have the energy to get them done faster and without delay.
Focus on Your Identity
If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you must first see yourself as one in your own mind. It doesn’t matter whether you’re currently one or not. What matters is that you see it as real now.
What that will do is to steer your thoughts and actions so that they’re in alignment with your identity. If you’re an entrepreneur in your mind, and you see yourself as focused and disciplined, you won’t be squandering your precious time on unproductive activities that undermine your daily actions.
Your mind will tell you that you’re better than that. You’ll be more focused on tasks that move the needle. As a result, you’ll be more disciplined and do what you need to, because that’s who you are.
That’s how important having a positive identity is. It’ll help to keep you disciplined much easier.
Know Your ‘Why’
Knowing why you’re doing what you’re doing will help keep your goals at the forefront of your mind. Lime motivational guru, Jim Rohn, used to say, “When the promise is clear, the price gets easy.”
When you know why you’re toiling to achieve your goals, you’ll be more likely to stay on course. You know that if you don’t sacrifice for what you want, what you want will become the sacrifice.
And yes, it’s a sacrifice.
Instead of working, you could be having fun. Instead of encountering failure, you could be doing nothing and staying ‘safe’. Instead of risking your capital to build a thriving business, you could spend it on stuff that brings you happiness in the short term.
If you don’t know your why, the opportunity cost of pursuing your goals may seem to be the fun that you could be having instead.
But if you’re constantly aware of your ‘why’, you’ll know that the opportunity cost doesn’t even come close to the promise of future rewards that await you when you do achieve your goals.
Knowing your why will help you stay on track and be disciplined. You can remind yourself of your why by rewriting your goals daily. At times when you feel like procrastinating or even quitting, you should ask yourself if you really want to give up what you want.
Create a Productive Daily Routine
Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” which highlights just how important your daily routine and habits are.
Do you face any resistance when it comes to brushing your teeth? Of course not. You do it automatically without even realizing it. Yet, if you looked at young kids, they usually tend to resist brushing their teeth. They sigh and drag their feet making it look like brushing their teeth is a marathon race.
It’s almost humorous but it brings home a very important point – they resist because it’s not a habit to them yet.
In the same vein, you could be a highly disciplined person if you ensure positive and productive habits are second nature to you.
Everything becomes easier when you’re not fighting yourself.
One of the best things you can do is to create a daily routine that you follow without fail.
Within your day, you should have mini habit-stacked routines to help you inculcate these habits in your life.
You may wish to read James Clear’s book, Atomic Habits, to fully understand how important your daily habits are.
Once you’ve created a routine, then you can track your daily habits. You can also create time blocks within your day where you do focused work, administrative work, exercise, and so on.
A balanced daily routine will not only keep you on track, but will also make you more productive. Once you know the routine like the back of your hand, you’ll be less likely to resist and fight yourself. Your mind will be geared for work when it’s supposed to be… and procrastination will no longer rear its ugly head.
In Conclusion…
Self-discipline is not something you’re born with. Anyone can train themselves to be more focused and unrelenting when it comes to striving for their goals. Treat discipline like a ‘muscle’. The more you train it, the stronger it gets.
The 7 tips above will more than suffice to help you master yourself. Ultimately, self-discipline is all about not letting your emotions dictate your actions – to do what you need to do despite how you feel. Once you can achieve that, you’ll be unstoppable.