Motivation is a treat, but discipline is a necessity.
I have always dreamt of becoming more productive, consistent, powerful, strong, and disciplined. I tried all methods and ways to improve myself. But I couldn’t ever stick to any of those.
I tried meditation, and to be honest I used to hate it. My brain would just wander off thinking about random bullshit. I couldn’t even focus on my breath for 1 minute. It was hard, very hard.
But, anything worthwhile in life is hard. Going to the gym takes a lot of work. Building strong relationships is hard. Earning money is hard. Office work is hard.
Everything worth doing is going to be hard. You will feel stressed. You will have to put in the work. The hard freaking work needs to be done to achieve anything worth achieving in life.
You won’t always be in a good mood. Life sucks sometimes, and the work doesn’t care. The work just needs doing. The work doesn’t care if you’re feeling good or if you had a bad day.
It’s not only about the Office work or the College Study Assignment, it is also about the gym, meditation, and diet. These things need to be done, regardless of how YOU feel.
Motivation is limited. It’s not sufficient. That is why, we need something much more powerful. And it’s something that we already have inside our arsenal. It is a weapon much more powerful than motivation.
That weapon is DISCIPLINE.
Motivation vs. Discipline
Motivation is considered a bad thing on social media nowadays. People have started to say things like — “You don’t need motivation, you just need discipline”.
But I don’t think that’s the case. In reality, motivation is important. Motivation is what leads people to take action and improve. Motivation is what gives someone hope.
I would love to be motivated all the time. It’s the best thing you can ask for. Wouldn’t you love to be motivated to go the gym, to meditate, to do all the good habits? Wouldn’t you love being motivated to work hard on your business or your job?
Motivation is not the problem, it never was. The problem is that motivation is limited, and does not last long. It is an extremely powerful weapon but with very little durability. It’s more powerful than discipline but it cannot sustain itself.
You can’t be motivated forever. And, this is where discipline takes the lead. Discipline is the act of doing the hard work especially when you don’t feel like it.
Let me repeat that for you:
Discipline is — doing the hard work especially when you don’t feel like it.
You see, motivation is doing you the hard work when you feel like it. Discipline is the opposite. It is all about doing what you’re supposed to do regardless of how you feel.
Most of the time, you won’t be motivated. Almost 90% of the days, you will want to quit, sleep in, not do the work, and not complete the tasks on your to-do list.
But, even after having the worst day, or mood, you still DO IT. No matter what life throws at you, you still DO IT.
That’s discipline, my friend. And it’s no joke.
How to become more disciplined?
Discipline is like a skill. It needs to be leveled up, just like in a video game. You need to improve in the skill of discipline. No one is just born with a shit ton of discipline. It is a skill that you hone, develop, and master.
Your discipline levels up every time you “do something hard even when you don’t feel like it”. But remember, you are not using discipline when you do something that you are motivated to do. Because you were feeling like doing it, discipline is out of the equation.
You can level up discipline only by doing the things that you hate. Let me give you a real-life example.
Let’s say that you had a very bad day. It’s 7:00 pm and you have two choices — lay on the couch and watch TV or get up and go to the gym. You are already very tired and in a bad mood, and so you want to watch TV.
But, you ignore your feelings and go to the gym anyway. You just leveled up your discipline —
If you keep making good choices and keep leveling up your discipline, you will reach a point where you will start enjoying the hard work. You will start enjoying the gym workouts, and the meditation sessions you previously hated.
This will be an indicator that you need to sacrifice more. Once you start enjoying these things, it is a sign that you need to make it tougher. Increase the time for which you meditate. Do 5 minutes of cardio before each workout. You hate these things, but you do them anyway.
Why though? Why should you make it harder if you’re already enjoying the workouts? It’s because enjoyment leads to complacency. Once you start being motivated to do these things, discipline is no longer being trained.
You need something more hard. You need to give more and sacrifice more. Sacrifice must be progressively overloaded.
Motivation is a treat, but discipline is a necessity.
