How to Improve Self Discipline and Destroy Laziness

Jonathan Phillips
5 min readMay 2, 2024

--

Do you struggle to achieve the goals that you set for yourself because of your lack of self discipline?

Have you ever decided that enough is enough and that you’re going to stop hitting the snooze button, only to find yourself being lazy all over again?

You, my friend, have not learned how to improve self discipline the correct way.

Powerful self discipline is like a recipe. If you use the same psychological ingredients that successful people use in their lives, you’ll get the same results.

Just because your methods for building an incredible work ethic haven’t worked so far, that doesn’t mean that you’re doomed to be lazy for life.

In this blog post, I’ve compiled the most powerful strategies that have helped me in my own life for building incredible self discipline.

What is Self Discipline?

Self discipline is the art of getting yourself to take massive action, even if the activity comes into conflict with your brain. Think of self discipline as your insurance to use for whenever you run out of motivation.

In an ideal world, you would always feel like taking action 100% of the time. But that just isn’t how it works. As human beings, we love comfort and face an army of distractions that wage war against us every day.

I probably don’t need to explain the importance of self discipline, but I do know that you have goals and dreams in your life. The quality of your life will change based on the amount of self discipline that you have.

5 Ironclad Strategies for Building Unstoppable Self Discipline

Every since I was 18 or so, I’ve had an obsession with uncovering the habits and secrets of the world’s most successful people.

One thing that I’ve noticed time and time again is that many of the world’s most successful people (and perhaps most) started out as lazy people!

But they were like you; they did their research until they cracked the code on how to improve self discipline.

You can do the same! It doesn’t matter how lazy you’ve been in the past because today is a brand new day. Here are 10 strategies for immediately improving your self discipline starting today.

1. Have a Strong Enough ‘Why”

I’m almost embarrassed to mention this advice because it’s so common on every self-help guru’s blog or social media. But I can’t leave it out because it’s the most important one.

Without having a ‘why’ for improving your self discipline, you wouldn’t have landed on this blog post.

Our desire to reach certain outcomes in our lives is what is constantly driving us. If you can increase that drive and make it even more powerful then you can’t tap into an internal reservoir of unstoppable self discipline.

One of the best strategies for building a stronger ‘Why’ is to come up with reasons that are so compelling to achieve what you want that you’ll take action no matter what.

I recommend writing out a list of at least 100 reasons for achieving whatever goal it is that you have for yourself.

2. Hire An Accountability Coach

I’ve found that hiring an accountability coach is one of the best ways for me to stay on track with my goals.

In the past, I was reluctant to this because I thought that needing a coach to follow through on my goals was a sign of weakness. However, that was simply my ego talking.

When I finally humbled myself and got a coach, I couldn’t believe how powerful my drive was to achieve my goals.

Where do you find an accountability coach? Check out coach.me. You can instantly hire a generalized accountability coach, or a coach for a more specific area of your life, such as health and fitness.

3. Focus On Your Health & Fitness

I believe that the reason why a lot of us have such a difficult time getting ourselves to take massive action on our goals is because of a lack of energy.

This might sound like complete common sense, but are you actually taking good care of your health? If not, I urge you to stop and really ponder on the relationship between your health and your ability to take action.

If you wake up sluggish and have no energy because you consume an unhealthy diet, how easy is it going to be to jump out of bed and do your homework or go to the gym?

Of course, you can still do it, but you’ll have that much more resistance towards taking action.

Imagine right now how good it would feel to wake up early in the morning and instantly being surging with energy.

How amazing would it feel to have explosive energy that lasts the whole day?

That is what an optimized healthy lifestyle does for you.

4. Set Up a Reward System

One strategy that I learned from Tony Robbins that is a game changer is rewarding yourself for any positive behavior.

If you’ve been constantly researching how to improve self discipline and it seems like nothing is working, you may be starting to cultivate the habit self discipline, but not giving yourself positive reinforcement.

Think about it. You most likely give yourself a huge dose of pain every time that you fall short of the standards that you’ve set for yourself.

A dose of pain that wakes you up and stimulates action is a healthy thing to do. In contrast, you also need to give yourself pleasure every time you’re

How do you reward yourself for taking action? It could be something small, such as giving yourself a pat on the back or taking a relaxing Epsom salt bath.

Remember, success breeds success and you don’t become more self disciplined and more successful by beating yourself up by not being perfect.

5. Visualization

One of the most powerful techniques that I’ve come across for changing any behavior is by using your brain’s reticular activation system (visualization).

I first learned about the power of mental imagery from Brian Tracy. Afterward, I dove even deeper into the subject by reading the book Psychocybernetics by Maxwell Maltz.

Really stop and think about the way that you see yourself.

The power of visualization is absolutely incredible and has been repeatedly proven by science to produce incredible results in any person’s life.

Add mental imagery as part of your morning routine or do it right before going to sleep.

Over to You

Just like learning to how to ride a bike, anybody can learn how to improve self discipline with the right strategies. As my mentor, Tony Robbins says, “If you have a strong enough why, the how will take care of itself.”

The secret to lasting change and overcoming laziness once and for all is to study the world’s most successful people and model their behaviors and mindsets.

Let me know in the comments below what strategies you are going to commit to for building an insane self discipline.

--

--

Jonathan Phillips

I love writing about my passions: health, traveling, and business! When I'm not writing, I enjoy the great outdoors, chess, and martial arts.