Want discipline? Then get ready for what’s coming
Sometimes I imagine that discipline is like that person we know is good to have around, but who we avoid like an insurance salesman with our address on the pad.
We like the idea of being disciplined people, just like we like the idea of having energy in the morning, a bank account full of money and the ability to say “no” to the last drink when we know we have to get up early tomorrow.
But when push comes to shove… alas, how good procrastination tastes.
You start with the intention of getting up early and eating the world, but you end up negotiating with your cell phone alarm as if it were a hostage.
And this is where the story begins.
When motivation goes, discipline pays the bill
There was a time when I thought discipline was a superpower reserved for Buddhist monks and Olympic athletes.
People with different genetics, with an iron will that would not be overcome by the temptations of the modern world.
But then I understood that no, it’s not that they are different: it’s that they have been mentally trained first to do what needs to be done, whether they feel like it or not.
Yes, it’s that crude.
If you only do things when you feel like it, you will be a slave to your moods.
Today you feel like it, fine.
Tomorrow you don’t, so nothing.
The day after tomorrow you remember that you have to do something, but you say to yourself “I’d better start well on Monday”.
And so on, in an infinite loop of justifications called excuses.
But if you train your brain with scientific self-talk to understand that doing what you have to do is non-negotiable, then things change.
Motivation is that party friend who shows up when everything is going well, but disappears when the dirty dishes need to be picked up.
Discipline is the person who stays up doing the dishes while everyone else sleeps.
And it’s the one who really makes things happen.
Excuses are stories well told
People who don’t achieve what they want are not because they can’t, but because they have told themselves a very convincing story about why they can’t.
– “I don’t have the time. I don’t have the life.”
– “I’m just more about working for inspiration.”
– “I’m not one for habits, I flow.”
Sounds like I’m reading your mind, doesn’t it?
Look, nobody has time.
Nobody likes to get up early.
No one feels like training after a long day.
But if every time an obstacle appears you use it as a justification for not doing what you have to do, the only thing you are training is your mind, yes, but in the opposite direction to postpone what is important and thus not achieve your desires or goals.
The key to discipline is not to make great heroic efforts, it is to make small daily decisions, in the form of self-talk, that prepare your mind to get you closer to where you want to be.
It is the writer who sits down to write even when she doesn’t feel like it.
They are the entrepreneurial person who keeps selling even when they are told not to.
They are athletes who train in winter when no one is watching.
Discipline is choosing the “hard” path (without the right self-talk) when no one is forcing you to do it.
how do you train discipline? With Deliberate Self Dialogue
If you go to the gym and lift 100 kilo weights the first day, you’re going to break.
If you try to be a super disciplined person all at once, too.
The key is to start with scientific self-talk, which is deliberately prepared mental chatter, so that when you do your tasks or actions, procrastination becomes that friendship, or ex, that you left years ago because it didn’t suit you.
Prepare yourself as sportsmen do, or when you get your driver’s license or when you get your studies.
First the theory of how to do it…that is to say, the right mentality, the right thoughts and then little by little do it as those thoughts settle comfortably in your brain.
Just like a squatter.
But you invite him to stay forever.
At the beginning, out of 10 attempts you make, 8 are sure to be sabotages.
That’s what has to happen.
It’s part of the process. It’s part of the plan
Then the numbers will turn around.
Out of 10 attempts, 6 will be sabotages.
Then it will be only 4.
Until day 10 of 10 arrives.
And then the months, years, etc. will come.
The habit takes away the need to depend on motivation.
Because if there is one thing we know for sure, it is that motivation comes and goes.
But discipline, when you train, is a marriage for life.
It’s that kind of “friendship” that never leaves you.
Having discipline is not boring, it’s being free.
P.S. If you want to increase your discipline and make it your love for life, click here.