2 Reasons Self-Discipline Makes You Miserable

Being more disciplined can make you miserable if:

1.) You’re trying to be more disciplined to overcompensate for unmet psychological needs.

2.) You’re forcing discipline on yourself from a place of self-hatred instead of self-love.

Now we’ve just lost half the audience by saying the words self-love.

So let’s unpack exactly what these 2 points mean so you can be more disciplined but in a healthy and sustainable way.

1.) You’re trying to be more disciplined to overcompensate for unmet needs.

Over the past few months I haven't been my normal disciplined self.

I've woken up later than I'd have liked to, "bad days" have become more frequent and some days I haven't wanted to wake up at all.

I'd spend most of the days working from morning to the afternoon but when the evening came I'd find myself scrolling youtube and giving in to my bad habits.

As I'd scroll youtube I'd see videos of other young men my age, fit as a fiddle, seizing life by the horns with their daily discipline and seemingly perfect lives whilst I'd think: "what's wrong with me? Why can't I just be disciplined and actually sort my life out?"

Eager to find a solution, I concluded I just need to be more disciplined.

So in order to "replace" my bad habits I tried to get myself to:

• Work more in the evenings
• Do an extra workout
• Spend my whole evenings meditating

‍

But nothing worked.

In fact, trying to be more disciplined just made me feel more miserable and want to do my bad habits more.

So feeling fed up, I went on a walk the other day to finally get to the bottom of this and what I discovered surprised me. ‍

I realised I've been overcompensating for unmet social needs with discipline.

Because no matter how much discipline I try to cram into my evenings to replace my bad habits, the reality is: my bad habits offer me a distraction from the fact that I feel lonely in the evenings.

And I feel lonely because there are social needs of mine I'm not meeting.

The needs of: friendship. Connection. Adventure. Bonding.

Trying to solve the problem of unmet needs with more discipline is like trying to fix a burst pipe by increasing the water flow.

Dude... just fix the bloody pipe.

So my question to you is...

• In those areas in which you think you're undisciplined, is that truly the case?
• Or are there needs of yours going unmet that you're overcompensating for with more discipline?

But in order to answer these questions, you need to do something known as unpacking.

Take the bad habits you’d like to be more disciplined towards, and then interrogate them with curiosity:

• What is it about this habit that keeps me coming back?
• What does it offer me?
• What need is this habit meeting?

Here you’ll need self-compassion to prevent beating yourself up for falling into this habit.

Realise: no matter how many times you’ve relapsed, each time you’ve engaged in this bad habit, it was an attempt to serve life. You’re already on your side. You’ve just been trying to meet your needs.

Then find that unmet need.

For example:

• Do you scroll to help you unwind of an evening? Need = relaxation.
• Do you drink to help you stop feeling anxious? Need = stress management.
• Do you eat junk food to help soothe your emotions? Need = emotional regulation.

Then ask yourself:

• Would me trying to be more disciplined to not do this habit really make it go away?
• Or would meeting the underlying need the habit is soothing me from break this bad habit?

If you’re unsure what needs of yours are below the habit, consider:

• If you stopped this habit right now, but didn’t replace it with anything, what problems might arise in your life?

For example:

• If you stopped scrolling of an evening, you’d feel very bored. What might that boredom motivate you to do? Meet new people? Speak to others? Go outside? Potential needs = social connection, novelty, adventure

As Dan Koe says; the answers you’re looking for are in the silence you’re avoiding.

In other words, the solution to your bad habits is found in the boredom you feel in their absence.

But to make sure you're fully equipped with the understanding of all the most common human needs, take a look at the screenshot below for some inspiration:

Unpack the need before you try to force more discipline on yourself.

Moment to consider: the times in your life when you weren’t doing this bad habit, what was different?

And you’ll realise; your needs were being met.

Fix the bloody pipe.

2.) Forcing yourself to be disciplined from self-hatred instead of self-love.

There are two sources of discipline: hatred or love.

To be disciplined out of hatred is to act like a tyrant; whipping yourself into submission which makes your discipline become a chore, burden and a heavy weight to carry as you force yourself to tick more off your to-do list, workout or meditate because if you don’t you’ll only have more reasons to hate yourself.

But no matter how disciplined or consistent you are, it’ll never be enough if the source fuelling it is hatred. Because by definition, the eyes of hatred are set to search for what is lacking and what isn’t enough.

Look, you don’t set out with the intention to hate yourself.

You simply develop a negative relationship with yourself as a consequence of one or many of the following sources of hatred…

‍

The source of hatred comes from:

• Desperation (“I have to do this or else.”)
• Scarcity thinking (focusing on what you lack)
• Feeling constricted by your efforts and choices
• Doing something as a means to an end: "I'll do this so I can get this..."
• A conditional relationship with yourself: "I'll only feel worthy if I do this..."
• Competition: “I have to do this because everyone else is doing it.”

‍

But to be disciplined out of love is to act like a best friend; cheering yourself into excellence because you always have your best interests in mind.

Look, let’s address the elephant in the room.

I know you might be cringing at the word love and be expecting me to get the crystals out and start giving you a lecture on loving yourself more.

But I’m here to tell you I’ve been disciplined from both self-love and self-hatred and I can guarantee you the latter made me feel miserable every single time.

When I was 21 I was the most disciplined I’ve ever been but the most miserable.

My sleep was great, I never skipped a workout, I meditated, journaled and didn’t eat junk food. But deep down, I was forcing discipline on myself because I didn’t like who I was.

Each act of discipline was motivated by guilt and shame. I felt guilty whenever I wasn’t using all of my time for self improvement and I felt shameful of how I wasn’t as fit or efficient as I wanted to be.

But that changed as soon as I was listening to a book from Jason Wilson where he spoke about disciplining his children. He used to discipline them like a marine sergeant until he realised; discipline without love is useless.

Then it clicked.

Discipling yourself is no different from how a parent ought to discipline a child. Through guidance and wanting the best for them, not through force.

So I started to cultivate discipline from a place of self-celebration and love.

I went on a walk and began reflecting, for the first time ever in my life, on all the things I was proud of myself for. Everything I appreciated about myself.

And a strange thing happened.

I felt more motivated to be disciplined because I now cared for myself more.

With the source of love fuelling everything you do, discipline isn’t a chore but a gift you give to yourself in every moment. Because you realise; the act of discipline is self-fulfilling; that is; to fulfil the self.

By being disciplined, you fill yourself up with more of source that’s fuelling it.

If the source is self-hatred, your discipline will result in more self hatred.

If the source is self-love, your discipline will result in more self love.

‍

The source of love comes from:

- A feeling of abundance

- Feeling expanded by your efforts and choices rather than constricted

- Doing something because you "want to" rather than "have to"

- An unconditional view towards yourself: "doing this won't change my view towards myself. Doing it is just a bonus."

- Non competition with others; even if everyone else wasn’t doing what you’re doing, you’d still do it

‍

But look, I know the word “love” might be rubbing you the wrong way and hearing “love yourself” is about as unhelpful as a spoon with no handle.

So look at it this way…

By choosing discipline for yourself from love instead of hatred, you’re cultivating a relationship with yourself like you would with another person.

So if the phrase “self love” doesn’t work for you, consider “self relationship”.

Cultivating a better relationship with yourself involves adopting a “fly on the wall perspective” of your actions and a keen understanding of a principle.

1.) The fly on the wall perspective…

Here’s something for you to consider…

You likely want to be more disciplined to avoid doing some bad habits.

So reflect back to the last time you did one of your bad habits, and imagine you’re watching yourself do it as if you’re a fly on the wall.

Were you smiling while doing that bad habit? Were you having fun?

No, you likely weren’t.

For me personally, whenever I scroll, eat junk food or stay up late, I’m not having fun. There’s no sign of a smile on my face.

So cultivating a better relationship with yourself involves an awareness of these moments and a warmhearted conversation with yourself where you say: hey man, I notice even when you do these bad habits you’re not happy. Which means we don’t need these bad habits anymore. It’s discipline that’s going to make you happy. Here, I can help with this.

That’s the voice of self love.

The voice of self hatred would argue:

“You piece of shit, you’ve wasted your evening again. Why do you always do this? No wonder no one likes you. Tomorrow we’re going to do double the amount of discipline just to recover even a bit from this embarrassment.”

2.) The principle

The principle the self-cultivated person keeps close at hand is…

“Every ordinary moment is a chance to make the future easier or harder.”

And they then turn that principle into a question…

“Will this action make the future or harder?”

Nor do they differentiate between their present self and their future self.

And when at a cross roads, they never make a choice that would make the future harder.

Lastly, I’m not going to leave you with the unhelpful advice of “just love yourself more”.

So to be practical, treat it as if you’re building a new identity.

The identity of: “I’m the type of person who takes great care of themselves.”

And to do so, in the same way as someone who wants to lose weight might ask: what would a healthy person do right now?, ask “what would be the ultimate act of self-love to myself right now?”

And you’ll realise, with the awareness that your bad habits don’t even make you happy with your fly on the wall perspective, and the easy or hard future close at hand, the answer in each moment is discipline.

Discipline; from the latin discipulus (pupil) = and the topic of our study is how to become better friends to ourselves.