The Art of Discipline
What being disciplined really means.
Discipline is a myth.
It’s not what the motivational speakers and self-help gurus are preaching.
It’s so much more than wishy-washy positive self-talk and telling yourself “I will be more disciplined!”.
What Discipline Really Is
Discipline is the same as motivation.
It’s not some separate magical trait that successful people possess!
Anyone can be disciplined by simply learning to motivate themselves.
I like to define discipline as ‘self-motivation’, because that’s what it really is at heart.
Discipline is knowing how to motivate yourself to do the things you don’t feel like doing.
The Difference Between Normal Motivation and Discipline
Normal motivation originates from an external source.
Praise, wins, opportunities. These things give you motivation. But they are external forces, meaning they aren’t 100% in your control.
Discipline originates from an internal source. It comes from you.
That’s why I define discipline as self-motivation.
The way to go about discipline is realizing that you can treat it like any other source of motivation.
Do these 5 things:
- Find something you care about.
- Dig deep and break it down.
- Find out what it is that motivates you about this thing.
- Turn that thought into something you can harness and recall anytime.
- Repeat, and turn this thought into a habit to become disciplined.
Here’s an example.
A man called John wants to start a business. He’s been poor his entire life and has people he needs to take care of financially. John will require discipline in order to build wealth from scratch.
Step 1: John cares about making money.
Let’s also imagine that John’s upbringing contained certain emotional memories. It could be anything as small as not being able to buy what he wanted as a child, to something as significant as childhood traumas like seeing his parents fight over the bills or struggle to put food on the table.
Step 2: John wants to make money because he comes from a poor upbringing and has never experienced financial freedom.
Breaking this down further, John realises, that as an adult, he doesn’t want to experience that same frustration again, let alone put his own children through it.
Step 3: John’s primary motivation is that he doesn’t want to go through that same suffering from his childhood ever again.
John recalls one vivid memory, like a time he felt immensely frustrated at being poor, or maybe a time he vowed to himself that he’s not going to keep on living like this.
Step 4: John chooses the time he swore to himself that he’d be rich someday as his source of motivation.
Everytime John faces a struggle, rejection, or failure, he reminds himself of his vow.
Step 5: John turns this memory into a habit, and draws upon it for motivation during difficult times.
In these 5 steps, John has been able to find something meaningful to him that he can take advantage of to motivate himself.
But you don’t have to be exactly like John in his example.
Maybe you were bullied about your weight growing up, so draw upon that to transform your body in the gym.
Maybe you have someone you look up to in your career, so every day strive towards following in their footsteps.
Or maybe you feel left behind compared to your peers, so you spend every waking second trying to catch up and live up to your own expectations.
The point is that everyone’s story is different. So choose something unique and special to you, something far greater than yourself, and turn that into a never-ending source of motivation that will keep you strong no matter the difficulties in your way.
That is the art of discipline.
