Discipline as Growth: Actionable Ways to Control Your Impulses and Achieve More
Why do some of us struggle with discipline?
It boils down to one simple definition "Self-Control". Many of us lack self-control over our own impulses, emotions, or desires. The question is, which one of those are really keeping us from doing more?
Today we have phones that bring the knowledge of the world to our literal finger tips. You can search the web, use AI apps, and can even order food to be delivered right to your door. The best part is that you don't even need to use it as a phone for all these tools and functionality.
What else do we use our phones for?
We use them to scroll social media and play games. If you really think about it, we use them almost 100% of the time as consumers. There's nothing wrong with this, assuming you don't care about building discipline.
Phones have become a crutch we use when we are bored or feel that we don't have enough time to do something else. These are the moments where you can catch yourself doom scrolling social apps like TikTok or Instagram. You may even be playing a game that seems to suck the time away.
These apps are cheap dopamine dealers.
Being aware of this, is the first step to helping you step away from them, and building discipline. I have struggled with this myself, and continue to in cycles. There have been days where I found myself looking up from my phone and realized that I just wasted over an hour playing a game, or scrolling through social media. It actually feels depressing when I consider how much time I've wasted doing essentially NOTHING…
Discipline is one of the most valuable skills to achieving long-term success. Whether it's fitness, business creativity, or personal development, it's the tool that gets you moving when you don't want to.
Building this skill takes time and effort.
It will be uncomfortable. Think about it as choosing progress over comfort and delayed gratification over instant pleasure. But how can we build it?
Define your "Why?" and be clear about it.
Think of a strong reason to push through the resistance. Why do I need to be disciplined? Is it for health, financial freedom, self-respect? I started building discipline to help me improve my health and to put more time into learning and building skills for writing and business.
Make sure to keep your "Why?" in a visible location to you.
It can be as simple as a sheet of paper on your bathroom mirror so you see it first thing every day. You can also build a vision board, pin it to the wall, take a picture, and make it the background photo of your phone or laptop.
Start small and build up.
Discipline is like a muscle. If you push too hard and go too fast, you'll burn yourself out.
I struggled with understanding this early on. I would go full on thinking that I could keep up, but eventually I'd burn out. I'd be mentally and physically exhausted.
Starting with something simple will bring more success once you move onto the larger aspects. If you want to wake up at least an hour earlier every day. Try with fifteen minutes earlier for the first week, and then thirty the next, and so on.
These small wins are the proof you'll need to show that you can follow through.
Use the "5 Second Rule."
If you feel yourself hesitating on an action, this tool can come in handy. I'm not talking about the five second food rule either. The five second rule is used to interrupt the hesitation in your mind. If you find yourself stalling, count down from five, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and then move. It's as simple as that.
Set Clear, Non-Negotiable Rules.
Discipline becomes easier once the decision is already made. If your goal is to improve your health you're rule can be to workout at 6AM every weekday, No Excuses!
These boundaries or rules can be more than just taking action at a certain time. You can have a rule that you can't scroll social media before finishing your morning routine, or no fast-food Monday thru Friday.
I personally use this myself regularly. A couple of my rules are;
Workout at least 30 minutes every week day.
No games before I've gotten at least an hour of writing and/or editing done every day.
These are just my main ones. I will create mini or more temporary ones depending on what I'm trying to achieve at the time.
Eliminate and/or Replace Temptations and Triggers.
Completely removing or replacing your temptations and triggers reduces the friction between you and the right choice. It oftentimes ends up being something environmental that we can remove or replace with a new habit.
I find this to be one of the biggest tools to stay disciplined. Circling back to social apps and games on my phone. I've now set time limits to make sure I'm not doom scrolling or playing games all day long. I used Screen Time on my iPhone to accomplish this without having to track it myself. In the case of some games, I just completely deleted them.
In the area of health, removing all junk food in your home and replacing it with healthy snacks, reduces the friction of eating healthy. If it's not available you can't eat it.
If you're trying to get up earlier, put your alarm across the room. When it goes off you're forced to get up to turn it off. It now creates more effort to try to get back to sleep than to just stay up.
Master the Art of "Just One."
The Art of "Just One" is used to get you started. If you don't feel like doing something commit to doing "Just one minute", or "Just one rep." In most cases once you're started you can keep going beyond doing just one.
This is a mental trick you play on yourself to get your task started. The reduced friction of doing something that feels smaller is what can motivate you to get started.
Make it Your Identity.
If you're able to make the change as part of your identity, it becomes much harder to not do the what you're trying to be disciplined at doing. It become who you are not in the moment, but all the time.
If you want to be a filmmaker, don't say you want to be one, say that you are a filmmaker.
As someone who has always aspired to be a writer. It didn't feel like it stuck until I changed my identity from "aspiring writer", to "I am a writer." I've always thought that using "aspiring writer" was more humble. The change to my mental reference is what has given me the discipline needed to write or edit something I've written everyday.
There is so much more we could cover that can help to build your discipline. These are just a few that have helped me over the years.
Go on and build your discipline, become the new you.
