More Discipline Will Solve 90% of Your Problems

Ladies and gentlemen I am confident in saying this is the last article you’ll ever have to read on how to become more disciplined, and it’s the last article I’ll write on the topic.

Because within the next few minutes, I will show you the code on how to fulfil your destiny.

(1) But first lets cover what discipline actually is:

Discipline involves 4 components:

1. Clarity
2. Resolve
3. Wanting (battling temptation)
4. Daily action

At the heart of it, discipline is when you align your actions to a higher goal and steer clear of temptations which distract you from that goal.

So now let’s cover the first part of discipline: clarity.

Without highlighting what goal you’re working towards in the first place, you will struggle to be disciplined.

Because discipline is a tool we use for a purpose; to achieve something or change ourselves in some way.

So without giving ourselves a project or goal to guide our discipline towards, we’ll be like a sailor who sets out to sea with no destination. And as the saying goes “if a man knows not which port he sails, no wind is favourable.” - Seneca.

In order to highlight this higher goal you need to first introspect on what that is. And, warning, this might take some time.

Consider:

In what area would you like to be more disciplined and why?

What do you really want?

What do you want to do more of? What do you want to do less of?

In what area of your life would you like to be more consistent?

What do you want your life to look like in 5 years time?

What do you want to build/achieve/accomplish?

To illustrate this, imagine two examples.

John and Mia.

John is a 20 year old man currently living at home who wants to become an online fitness influencer. But he hasn’t posted anything to YouTube yet.

So after taking some time to introspect, he discovers that in 5 years time he wants to be living in Spain, earning £5000 a month whilst helping other young men reach their desired physique.

So now he has his clarity and where he needs to exercise his discipline: self-studying anatomy for 2 hours a day whilst posting 2 killer videos to YouTube each week over the course of a year. All the while brushing up on his Spanish.

Anything that isn’t doing that is either a distraction or relaxation time.

Mia is a 27 year old woman who’s been working in HR for the last 5 years. But her job feels lifeless and she’s always been interested in clinical psychology.

So, after reflecting on her life, she realises she wants to return to university to get an undergraduate and masters in psychology to then become a counsellor, so she can help young people with their mental health.

Now she has clarity over her disciplined pursuit; she’ll need to enact the discipline to stay committed to her path, put her ego of going back to university to one side and study with focus for 3 hours a day.

You will only struggle to be disciplined when you’re unsure of why you’re trying to be disciplined in the first place.

When you gain clarity over why you want to be disciplined, the how of being disciplined becomes a walk in the park.

But, without decreasing the feedback loop of discipline, you’ll struggle to remain consistent.

(2) Decreasing the discipline feedback loop

Steven Bartlett’s discipline equation does well to explain the discipline feedback loop.

Essentially, if you:

• Perceive something as worthwhile pursuing
• Get psychological enjoyment through pursuing it
• Decrease the effort, pain and friction required to do it

You’ll have consistent discipline.

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For example:

David is a 25 year old man who is overweight.

He wants to be more disciplined so he can get himself into shape in order to be more attractive to women and to feel better about himself (subjective importance of the goal).

So he buys a gym membership and trains 5 times a week with his 2 best friends who have been going to the gym for 5 years. During their workouts they train hard, his friends help him with his technique and they also catch up on life during their rest breaks. Not only that but his friends encourage him with support and celebration at the end of each week when they take their weight and shoot progress photos (psychological enjoyment of the pursuit of the goal).

Also, the gym is a 3 minute walk from David’s house and if he doesn’t want to go to the gym he has a workout area in his garden (low friction/psychological cost).

Take a moment to think about the area in which you’d like to be more disciplined.

Now imagine doing that thing is more enjoyable than doing anything else in your life.

Do you think you’d struggle to be disciplined if this were the case? If it were that enjoyable, you likely wouldn’t need discipline at all.

So this is the key; make doing “the thing” easier to do than anything else.

• Design your office/room so that it’s almost impossible to do anything else other than work.
• Keep the books you want to read out and reachable at all times.
• Greyscale your phone.
• Remove temptations (such as junk food) from your home.

Reduce the psychological cost of performing that action so the action is like sliding downhill rather than climbing uphill. Then write a list of all the crucial actions you want to perform throughout the day, understanding if you do anything else other than those things, it’s a distraction, you’re socialising or you’re resting.

But, without the next part of the equation, our discipline will make us miserable rather than content.

(3) Resolve

After you gain clarity on what you’re channeling your discipline towards and you’ve decreased the discipline feedback loop, you’ll realise something peculiar.

What common knowledge teaches us is that when you’re working towards something you want but don’t yet have, you must postpone your happiness until you achieve it.

- If you want to lose 10kg you’ll imagine you can only feel good about yourself until you achieve your goal.

- If you want to earn 10k per month, you’ll postpone your self-worth until that money hits your bank account.

So through this lens the equation is hard work = success = happiness.

But is this right?

No.

And the ancient yogis and modern positive psychologists teach us why.

What ancient yogic practices teach us is that the chief architect of our lives is the mind. And in order to create the life we want to live, to fulfil our destiny, we must draw into the source of our dharma, our deepest intentions and our connection to the divine within.

The way the yogis did this was by developing a Sankalpa.

Kalpa meaning vow or rule to be followed above all other rules and San meaning a connection to the highest truth.

So our Sankalpa is the commitment we make to living our highest truth.

Your sankalpa might take on two forms:

1.) A statement or mantra that instantly returns you to your purpose and a state of alignment.

2.) An introspective projection into the future to reflect on what actions you need to take in order to get to where you want to go.

Either way it should provide you with iccha (tremendous will and energy), kriya (action) and jnana (the wisdom of how to deliver that action).

For example, my Sankalpa is the 2 following mantras:

• Presence & action
• Excellence is the next 5 minutes

- Plus a notepad I keep out on my desk at all times with my 5 year plan on it.

Developing your sankalpa can be seen as a state of mind, often referred to as a mindset of abundance rather than lack.

To elaborate, the equation we mentioned a few minutes ago (hard work = success = happiness) is how we’re programmed to strive for things. We work believing we can only experience happiness until we achieve what we’re working towards.

But cultivating resolve is simply reversing this process so the equation becomes:

Happiness + a positive mindset = success.

As happiness researcher Shawn Achor says, “waiting to be happy limits our brain’s potential for success, whereas cultivating positive brains makes us more motivated, efficient, resilient, creative and productive, which drives performance upwards.”

In his book the happiness advantage, Achor continues by suggesting 5 ways we can increase our happiness levels:

• Meditation
• Having something to look forward to  
• Acts of kindness
• Exercise
• Tapping into your talents

So in the context of discipline, the aim isn’t to cultivate happiness and idly wait for success to suddenly find you. Instead you must cultivate resolve by living as contentedly as possible in between your goal and the actualisation of it, and then engage in your disciplined action from that place.

In fact, when you live from a place of abundance, as if you’ve already achieved everything you want whilst keeping your WHY behind your action close, but you still engage in disciplined action anyway, you begin to vibrate with your desired outcome, restoring yourself and your resolve in the process. All the more fuelling your disciplined action.

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Living as if nothing is lacking attracts everything.

To illustrate this, take a moment to consider:

• You already have things you said would make you happy.
• So it’s not “getting/achieving things” that makes us happy, it’s our mindset.
• Having everything and achieving everything you ever dreamed of doesn’t guarantee you’ll have a mindset of abundance. Consider the numerous people who seem to have everything, the cars, money, success, but are miserable.
• You can only be as content as you choose to be right now. And then everything you attract into your life springs from that place.

With a mindset of abundance you don’t look to the future as a means of fulfilment but as a reflection of your inner state now. Because tomorrow is made from today.

Lastly, resolve is defined as:

• To turn into a different form when seen more clearly
• Firm determination to do something

And it comes from the latin word ‘resolvere’:

• Re = expressing intensive force
• Solvere = loosen

So your resolve is your determination to act whilst experiencing the looseness your current happiness provides.

Relax and win as world class sprinting coach Lloyd Winter says.

But, along the way, no matter how determinedly we act, we will face temptations which aim to throw us off course. So this is what we will turn to next.

(3) Wanting (battling temptation)

First let’s get clear on what temptations are.

Something can only become a temptation when it either:

1.) Threatens to undermine an overriding goal

2.) Threatens to undermine the way you see yourself

For example:

• If you go to workout and you’re tempted to call it a day and scroll YouTube 5 minutes in, that would undermine your goal of getting shredded.
• If every time you check your instagram feed you feel depressed, that would undermine the way you see yourself.

Before we cover how to deal with temptations, there’s one thing I want to clarify which will be a saving grace for you on those days you feel demotivated.

At times you will convince yourself you don’t want to do something which you feel you need to do.

You might say:

• I don’t want to study
• I don’t want to work
• I don’t want to workout

But if doing that thing is in alignment with a goal you’ve previously clarified, then you do want to do it.

Now we’re clear on that, let’s go through the 5 ways to defeat these temptations.

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(1) Mentally multiply your actions (broaden your decision time frame)

Think about it…

Most smokers buy single packets of cigarettes instead of full boxes (even when doing the latter is a better financial decision).

Why?

Because this gives them the ability to excuse their behaviour.

One packet of cigarettes won’t kill them today. But a packet a day for 60 years probably will.

But the smoker doesn't zoom out to consider the long-term consequences of their actions because it poses an existential risk. And who wants to ruin their Monday morning thinking about that?

So…

When the urge to indulge a temptation arises, take a second to imagine the consequences of doing this thing every day for the rest of your life.

You’re about to drink a glass of wine?

• Imagine each night for the rest of your life you’ll get drunk.

Would you still do it? Imagine the state you’ll be in.

You’re about to get your phone out and doom scroll for 3 hours?

• Imagine if you did that every day for the rest of your life.

If you’re 20 and you’ll live to 80, 3 hours for the rest of your life = 65,700 hours.

You’re about to shout at your girlfriend for not washing up?

• Imagine shouting at her every night for the rest of your life.

Where will your relationship be in a week?

So don’t ask if its ok to smoke, cheat, drink or binge once. Ask if it’s ok to do that action everyday for the rest of your life.

“Deciding to go against your moral compass is easier when you consider just a single instance.”

• Ayelet Fishback

(2) Prepare for temptation

If you’re about to lift an object you know is heavy, you’ll approach lifting it with more caution.

So you must neither overestimate nor underestimate your temptations.

For example, if you want to quit drinking, you’ll exercise more self-control at a university house party at night than a family meal during the day, because you’ve correctly estimated the level of temptation.

Pre-commitments are a powerful tool to use here because its impossible to give in to a temptation that’s not available. You can’t eat an ice cream you don’t have.

Essentially, in mental health this is called crisis planning.

Remove all alcohol from your house. Get rid of all chocolate.

BUT!

Be warned. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from the neuroscience of addiction it’s that barriers to the temptation can become a challenge; whereby our brains release more dopamine to overcome the barrier to the behaviour. Hence app and website blockers don’t work.

For example, when I was 18 I quit eating sugar. I got rid of all sugar in my home, much to my mum’s annoyance, but I would frequently binge eat. I was chasing the release of temptation because I didn’t change my identity.

It wasn’t until I became the type of person who prioritises their health and enjoys eating vegetables and fruit that I stopped binging on sugar.

So as a rule of thumb, always prioritise identity change (which we’ll cover later).

Ask yourself:

What are my temptations?

What are some situations under which I’m most likely to succumb to temptation?

How can I protect my goals later in the day when I’m depleted?

What habit can I form?

(3) Talk in third person

There was a study conducted with two groups of university students.

Both groups had to stand in front of 3 professors and be asked why they think they’re worthy of their dream job. An anxiety provoking task for most people.

One group spoke in first person “I think. I am.” and so on.

The second group spoke in third person “Lewis thinks he would be great at…” and so on.

The results showed the group who spoke in third person controlled their anxiety better.

So the next time you feel a temptation arise, label it outloud because speaking in third person might be a great way to control your emotions.

When you notice a temptation arise, your labelling might sound something like this:

• “Oh. Lewis feels tempted to stop studying and scroll on his phone.”
• “Interesting. Lewis feels like abandoning this workout and taking a nap. What if he pushed through?”

Just don’t blame me when you get strange looks from others when they overhear you.

(4) Daily action

Lastly, no goal will come to fruition without the daily action we take to make it a reality.

So in order to ensure you act in alignment with your higher goal you must project into the future and then come back.

For example; take your time to consider, in detail what you would like your life to look like in 5 years time.

Then come back to 2 years, 12 months time, 3 months time, 2 weeks, 1 week until today.

Take your ambitious goal and chew it up until you’re able to digest it into what you need to do today.

What can you do within the next 5 minutes to make your goal a reality?

Excellence is the next 5 minutes.

Here are 3 great tips to help your daily action involve less friction.

(1) Build a deep connection with your future self

You can either feel a high or low connection to your future self.

A low connection means you see your future self as a stranger.

A high connection means you recognise how succumbing to temptations now, and not acting with discipline, would negatively effect your future self (like a friend).

You wouldn’t make sacrifices for a stranger! So make your future self more personal. Imagine you at 100 years old watching over your every action, guiding your choices. What would they want you to do right now?

You can also build a better connection with your future self by convincing yourself who you are today and who you will be in the future are fairly similar.

Studies have shown students who think graduating university will radically change them are more likely to prioritise a $120 shopping voucher now than a $240 voucher one year later.

Also people who believe marriage will drastically change them are more likely to cheat before the wedding.

Obviously don’t underestimate the amount you can and want to change. But also don’t imagine your future self as a complete stranger with entirely different traits and experiences than you have now. Treat your future self like an actual person, one you feel empathy towards and go so far as to engage in conversation with them.

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(2) Retune your identity

Your identities dictate your behaviour.

When pride is involved in habit forming, you’ll protect the behaviour as if your life depends on it.

The goal is not to read a book.

The goal is to become a reader.

The goal isn’t to get shredded in 6 months.

The goal is to become the type of person who takes care of their health.

“When temptations are identity inconsistent, they make it easier to see a problem.”

• Ayelet Fishback

So, is there an identity that stands in the way of pursuing your goals?:

- Perhaps you want to become financially free, but you’ve always seen yourself as a poor bum.

- Maybe you want to start going to the gym but you’ve never considered yourself a “gym goer”.

To change your identity first think about the type of person you want to become and then prove it to yourself every day with small wins. (Because you can’t just use wishful thinking to build an identity otherwise your brain won’t believe you. Cast the votes.)

(3) Win the micro moments

In the words of Ryan Holiday :

“The decisions we make today are always being recorded, daily, silently and not so silently, in who we are, what we look like, how we feel.”

And most of the time those decisions arise as micro moments throughout the day where we’re presented with one of two choices:

1.) To give into temptation

2.) To continue with our discipline

For example, walking home from work you might feel tempted to go to the shop on your way back and buy some reeces pieces. Halfway through studying you might get the sudden urge to check your phone. Or instead of working out without music, you might get the urge to put your earphones on and hit shuffle.

But if you can win these decisive moments, each lasting around 5 seconds, you start to train your discipline muscle. Not only that but you prove to yourself you’re the type of person who keeps their word, who lives in line with integrity.

So do not underestimate those micro moments throughout the day where you feel tempted to falter from your discipline.

Because if you win those moments, more often than not, your destiny will forever be in your hands.

(4) The discipline of rest

Lastly, an aspect of discipline which isn’t spoken about enough is the discipline to call it a day so you can turn up fresh tomorrow.

Because it’s sustainable discipline you’re after. Slow burns, not heavy lifts.

As mentioned, discipline is action that is aligned to a higher goal. And in order to achieve such a goal, we will need to turn up everyday.

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So:

• Don’t workout for 3 hours once a week, workout for 30 minutes each day
• Don’t study for 8 hours 1 day a week, study for 20 minutes each day

Enact the discipline to stop what you’re doing, decide you’ve done enough for today, pick yourself up and head to bed.

Because the consistent path you follow is much better than the perfect plan you abandon.

So, in summary:

Discipline involves 4 components:

1. Clarity
2. Resolve
3. Wanting (battling temptation)
4. Daily action

Decrease the discipline feedback loop:

• By making disciplined action easier & more enjoyable than anything else

Increase your resolve:

• By forming a mantra (sankalpa) that reminds you of your why
• Live as contentedly as possible in between the goal and actualisation of the goal

Wanting:

• If you feel like you don’t want to do something, but doing it will get you closer to your goal, then you want to do it

To battle temptations:

• (1) Mentally multiply your actions
• Don’t ask if it’s ok to do something once, ask if it’s ok to do it everyday for the rest of your life
• (2) Prepare for temptation
• Remove all temptation available
• (3) Talk in third person when experiencing temptation to label the experience

Daily action:

• (1) Build a deeper connection to your future self
• Imagine yourself at 100 years old onlooking your current decisions
• (2) Retune your identity
• Don’t do, become
• (3) Win the micro moments
• Build the muscle of micro discipline
• (4) Enact the discipline to rest
• Don’t rest when depleted, rest at halfway

To delve deeper into this topic I’d recommend you read:

Discipline is destiny by Ryan Holiday

And Get it done by Ayelet Fishback

The Upanishads

I wish you all the best in your self-discipline journey.