4 Ways to Become More Disciplined
14 Jan 2016 · 8 min
In this concise podcast episode, Brendon Burchard explains why many people blame a lack of discipline for failing to achieve goals and offers four concrete strategies to cultivate true discipline. He begins by urging listeners to identify a specific, meaningful dream or ambition they want to pursue. The first strategy is to emotionally engage with that vision each morning through a brief visualization practice, creating a strong emotional attachment that fuels motivation. The second strategy is to handle daily chaos by completing personal, high‑impact work before responding to external demands—essentially “do your work first” to protect disciplined time. The third strategy introduces “block time,” a scheduled, uninterrupted period each day dedicated solely to the chosen goal, eliminating randomness and reliance on willpower. The fourth strategy emphasizes the importance of social rewards: celebrating small wins with friends, family, or colleagues to reinforce the brain’s reward system and make discipline feel joyful rather than punitive. Burchard wraps up by encouraging listeners to apply these steps, subscribe, and access further high‑performance resources.
Chapters
Welcome to the charged life. This is Brendan Burchard. Have you ever struggled to be more disciplined? You know, you got that paper due next week, but you don't do anything all week even though you know it's coming, or you set up a brand new habit that you're so excited about that you know, can improve your life, your relationships or your work, but you don't stick to it. Or you started that workout routine, you got really pumped up, fired up into it, you lost a couple pounds, but then, you know, three weeks later it was gone. And what did you blame? You blamed your discipline. You said, ah, I wish I was more disciplined and everything would be great. And the reality is, it's true. You know, discipline is one of the most important things we can develop in our lives because without that ability to be sort of self reliant and willful to get things done on a continual basis, we never get that great amount of momentum and progress towards what we really want. And I bet there's a lot of areas of your life that could really benefit from being more disciplined. Whether you're eating healthier or working out more often, or being more disciplined about doing your art on a consistent basis, or contributing or even being more disciplined about just speaking up for yourself when you know that you should. So how can we help you find a goal and be more disciplined? That's the topic of this video. Now I'm going to assume a little bit that because it's going to be a short video, I want to make sure that you have something in mind that you want to be more disciplined to. So think about a major dream or a major ambition that for some reason you're like, gosh, I wish I really stuck with my sort of actions and routines more often. If you can have that in mind, then this is going to really serve you. I have four ideas for you today. The first idea is to emotionally engage with that dream each morning of your life. See, a lot of people don't actually struggle with the discipline part in terms of the doing the thing. It's that they are not getting revved up to do the thing. In other words, we got a problem with motivation, not necessarily just discipline. We have a problem with that. Once in a while you hit it, you do it, you do the work. But a lot of times you fall off because you're not emotionally engaged in it. It's like if you want a lot of discipline, you need a high level of emotional connection and focus on that thing that you want to work towards. So every morning What I want you to do is just start a new visualization practice. When you wake up in the morning, close your eyes, think about the dream, the aspiration, the thing that you're really after in life, and just visualize it and really get yourself emotionally attached, emotionally engaged with it. Think about how great it will feel for you to have that thing or be that thing or contribute that thing to make that difference. Just think about it, allow it to well up in your heart a little bit. Get excited about it, remember the dream. That's why we get away from discipline. Because we're so busy with the chaos of the world that we emotionally are no longer attached in a way that our brain says, hey, man, focus on this. It's important to you, remember. So if your heart is disengaged, it's difficult to stay disciplined. So every morning, make it a practice to actually just imagine the payoff, the benefit, the contribution, the art, the thing that you do and are doing and do contribute. If you can do that more often, you'll be more fired up and you'll stay back on track. The second thing is we gotta handle that chaos that we talked about. So I need you to do your work before you respond to the world. It's the number one thing I'm always telling people in High Performance Academy and all my other training sessions is if you are constantly waking up in the morning and all you do is just reply to everybody and you reply to their texts, you're replying to their needs, you're replying to their emails, all of a sudden the day is ripped away and you find yourself out of your own routine. But if you set up your morning to win, or you set up blocks of time to win, as we'll talk about, and you do that first, do your work first, it's easier to stay disciplined. If you're saying, you know what, this year I want to. These next couple months, I want to be more healthy. Great. Get your health stuff out of the way in the morning. You know, create your shake, do your workout, create a healthy lunch to take to work, and you're off and going to a good start. But if you wait for the remainder of the day for discipline to strike, it never will. The third thing is what we call block time. You need to have scheduled blocks of time where that discipline happens every day. And that's the only thing that happens. Look, you can always do something every day towards your dreams. And if you believe that you could be just something small, it could be doing a little bit of research Journaling, taking that action, creating that presentation, making that call, whatever it is for you, you can do something every day. And if you believe that, then you need time to do that. And that time, what we call block time, you say, okay, today from 1 o' clock to 3 o', clock, I'm only doing this thing that I need more discipline towards. And during that time, you don't check your email, you don't do your Facebook, you don't browse the Internet. All that happens during that time is what you're supposed to be doing. The reason a lot of people don't have discipline in their life is they're letting their day be ruled by randomness. They don't have blocks of time that have actually been scheduled to do the thing they're supposed to do. So they're counting on sudden will. Oh, you know, I'll get to that today, or I'll get to that someday. And of course, someday turns into never. And then they start blaming their discipline. It's not their discipline, it's the lack of a calendar that says, do this now. So schedule what you must make happen and you'll suddenly find yourself, wow, I'm so disciplined. And then the last piece is, you got to set up some social rewards. You know, it's hard to say disciplined at something if you're never getting any payoff from it. You know, we can take that first step I told you about, about visualizing something, but if you get some small wins along the way and you're never celebrating with other people, then your brain says, ah, this isn't benefiting me. And I really mean that. You have to do with other people. You have to have that connection with others to celebrate, to keep your will intact, to keep doing the thing you're supposed to be doing. It's so important for you to do this. You know, if you're a writer and, you know, you finish a chapter, call up a friend, say, hey, you know what? I finished the chapter I was supposed to finish today. Let's go out for a drink. If you've accomplished something at work you said you were going to do, get everybody together, say, hey, you know what? Lunch is on me today. Let me take care of you guys for lunch. If you finally achieved something that you've been working towards for so long, you need to take some time to go out with friends and family and just talk about the process, talk about them, how it felt to finally complete this thing. See, if we're never celebrating, we're never going to develop real discipline. And it's funny, because too many people think those are opposite things. They think discipline can't be fun, that discipline can't be joyful. But the masters of this life have proven that doing things in a disciplined way can also be doing things in a joyful way. And if you think discipline has to be this hard, awful, terrible thing, maybe you're never going to have discipline because you're constantly trying to fool yourself into doing things you don't want to do. And it's time to find the things that you do want to do do. It's time to connect to those emotionally and to visualize those. To get other people to the party with you, to celebrate, to do the things that really matter, which is block the time to make the dang thing happen. If you'll do these things, you'll start to find yourself much more disciplined and on your way to living what we call the charged life. Hey everyone, it's Brendan. Did you like this episode? Be sure to subscribe to the next one and tell a friend about us. If you want free books and world class training on motivation and high performance, visit me@Brendan Burchard.com and enter your name and email for our newsletter list. Until next time, stay charged and go out there every day of your life and live fully, love openly and make your difference today.