Hi dear, today we will be covering six important strategies for improving your level of Self-discipline. Before we get into the nitty-gritty, I will take a brief moment to define what exactly Self discipline is.
When I asked some friends to tell me about their problems with discipline, I got a lot of answers ranging from Motivation to Distractions, to Cell phone addiction, all kinds of things in between. While all these answers are legitimate problems, I don't think that all fit neatly into the category of Self-discipline. Where they do fit in is the broader category of behavior change, and that is the big goal for most of us.
We want to change our behaviors to be more aligned with our goals and our long term desires and when it comes to that general mission to change your behaviors, I see four main areas that we need to focus on, one of which is the cultivation of Self-discipline which we are going to tackle. But, also the building of new habits which can make that behavior automatic.
I will start by asking and answering two questions.
1) What exactly is Self-discipline?
2) How does it differ from motivation?
A lot of people get these two terms confused. To start, I want to share a quote from the writer- Samuel Thomas Davies because it answers both those questions in a pretty tidy way.
"Self-discipline is about leaning into resistance. Take action despite how you feel. Living a life by design not by default. But most importantly, it is acting by your thoughts, not your feelings".
Put another way, Motivation is your overall level of desire to do something, whereas Discipline is your ability to do it regardless of how you feel. And for any of you who have ever woken up thinking, I don't feel like it, which is all of you, myself included, you can see now how important self-discipline is.
It is building that baseline that allows you to act by your long-term goals, no matter how motivated you feel. So, with this being said, let's cover six important strategies for building your self-discipline.
We are going to start with the one that doesn't seem very tangible or actionable at first. But stick with me here, because this is a mindset shift that I have found more helpful than any other self-improvement technique I have tried in recent memory.
FOCUS ON IDENTITY:
To put it simply, when you are trying to change your behavior, forget about the goal you are trying to achieve, the external outcome, and instead focus on the change in identity you want to happen. This is a concept that I first read about in James Claire's book- Atomic Habits which I highly recommend by the way. There's this passage near the beginning of the book that encapsulates it well. It goes like this-
Imagine two people resisting a cigarette. When offered a smoke, the first person says, " No thanks, I'm trying to quit". It sounds like a reasonable response. But, this person still believes he is a smoker who's trying to be something else. He is hoping that his behavior will change while carrying the same belief. The second person declines by saying, "No thanks, I'm not a smoker". It's a small difference, but the statement signals a shift in identity. Smoking was a part of his former life, not his current one. He no longer identifies as someone who smokes.
The general idea here is that once you've embraced a change in your identity, you are going to find yourself acting in alignment with that change. And, if you're wondering why exactly this happens, the third chapter of Robert Cialdini's book- Influence- The Psychology of Persuasion has a great explanation for it. Essentially, humans feel this natural compulsion to act consistently with their past decisions. As he writes in the book- " Once we have made a choice or taken a stand, we will encounter personal and interpersonal pressures to behave consistently with that commitment. Those pressure will cause us to respond in ways that justify our earlier decision".
Shifting my mindset in this way has been incredibly helpful in the past couple of months.
The first way that I implemented it was by starting to think of myself as an athlete. Now, I've always been a pretty active person and I've had a laundry list of athletic goals for quite a long time but I never really took the leap and started thinking of myself as an athlete. There were some imposter syndrome reasons for this. But, after reading that passage in the book, I decided to take the leap and start thinking of myself as an athlete, not just as somebody who does active things, and that shift in mindset has done wonders for my levels of self-discipline in many areas. From going to the gym more consistently, to training harder while I'm there, to even improving my diet, which has been a lot better than it used to be for the past couple of months.
So, seriously if you take nothing else from this post, I'm putting this first for a reason. Start thinking about behavior change in terms of the identity that you want to embody rather than the goals that you want to achieve.
CREATE REMINDERS:
Alright, strategy number two is to frequently remind yourself of why you are being disciplined in the first place. At the end of the day, we have to have a strong why for our actions if we want to do them consistently. Every time I think about the concept, I'm reminded of a story about the actor, Jim Carrey and it goes like this-
After he had arrived in Hollywood and he was still kind of an impoverished actor, one day he took out a napkin and drew himself a cheque made out to himself for $10million and post-dated for ten years in the future. He put the cheque in his wallet so that every time he'd bring out his wallet, he could see it and remind himself of why he was working so hard, what he was working towards.
This is something that you might find very helpful to do as well. Try writing down your goal or the identity you want to assume and put it maybe on a sticky note next to your desk, mirror, or computer. So you can see it every single day and know that this is why I'm building my self-discipline. This is the reason for all the work I'm putting in.
EMBRACE THE SUCK:
Strategy number three is to find ways to embrace discomfort and embrace the resistance you feel towards doing something that takes hard work or that's unpleasant. Just like going to the actual gym and lifting weights makes you better at lifting weights in the future and able to lift more weight next time you go in.
Every time you embrace discomfort, you are essentially doing a rep of the exercise that is self-disciplined because it is a skill that can be learned. It is a muscle that can be built over time. This is why I'm such a proponent of taking cold showers. Because a cold shower is something that most people don't want to do especially in cold weather. It's not very comfortable standing under that stream of ice-cold water, and that's the point. Every morning that you get into the shower and you choose to turn that handle to cold instead of hot, you are embracing discomfort, you are leaning into the resistance and that makes you better at doing so in the future regardless of what the task is.
As you go through your daily life, find ways to embrace discomfort. It could be cold showers, it could be signing up for 6 am for a fitness class, it could be taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Whenever your brain throws up that "I don't feel like it excuses", that is an opportunity to build that self-discipline muscle, you should take it.
TARGET THE FUNDAMENTALS:
By the fundamentals, I mean the biological necessities of life. Your sleep, your nutrition, and your exercise habits. These are all crucial to pay attention to. Because the part of your brain that handles executive functioning, the part that regulates your desires and your impulse requires a lot of energy and regular rest to function at peak levels. Always remember that you are first and foremost a collection of biological systems all of which require the right inputs.
If you want to get the best outputs out of them, I know it's easy to picture the brain as separate from all of this. As existing in the metaphysical realm where the only needed fuel sources are motivation, determination, and wholesome memes. The brain needs rest and it needs exercise. It needs the right balance of nutrients just as the rest of your body does. So, if you are deprived which judging from the number of views on this post, you probably are or you haven't gotten enough exercise regularly or your diet is crap. That is where you should focus your discipline first.
PRACTICE MEDITATION:
The reason you might want to do this is that meditation has been shown scientifically to help people improve their levels of self-discipline. A 2013 study by Stanford University showed that people who went through compassion training which was a specific meditation program were better able to regulate their emotions afterward and this is crucial for remaining disciplined and being able to make rational decisions.
BUILD SOME HABITS:
Like I said earlier, building new habits is kind of a separate discipline in the overall pursuit of changing behavior. But the initial stages of building a new habit often require self-discipline because the behavior isn't automatic yet. So, this can be a way to not only establish a new habit but become more disciplined in the process.
Whatever habits you choose to build, start small, track your progress using an app or journals. Celebrate your wins, and also remember to not focus too much on purity or perfect streaks. Instead, focus on making sure that your trend is going in an overall positive direction. Remember, that it is doing that, and as the behavior is becoming more automatic, your self-discipline is improving in the process.