Why You Have No Self Discipline

You promise to get an early night, wake up early and go for a jog. But what actually happens is you've scrolled in your phone, missed your bedtime, feel groggy in the morning and say nah, not today. Yep, we're talking about your arch nemesis, self discipline. Nearly every successful person has mastered the skill of self discipline to get to where they are. Yet you don't have any. If you really want to achieve your goals, this is a skill you will need to learn. The good news is that it can be learnt. The bad news is that the advice you've probably heard is often ineffective or impractical. So it's so in this video I'm going to go over the real reason why you have no self discipline and a simple and practical system to help you build it. You will learn a truly lifelong skill and at the end I'll walk you through a step by step way to use it that will improve your sleep within 30 days. We all need better sleep, right? But first we need to understand why you don't have any self discipline. There are two key problems to address. One, dealing with the feeling of discomfort. Two, the lack of progressive structure to keep you motivated. By solving these two key problems. Your ability to be self disciplined will drastically improve and is something I see with clients every day. So let's go over the first one. The feeling of discomfort. The problem is when we encounter something difficult, we tend to stop. It feels uncomfortable. Your body starts firing these discomfort signals all over giving you sensations of tightness, anxiousness and it's all telling you this is not a good idea. Your mind is trying to keep you away from something. It's trying to keep you away from pain. Our minds are more advanced than that. Just the anticipation of pain the can trigger these feelings. It's as if you are experiencing it. Just try imagining something you have been putting off. Right now you'll feel that tightness somewhere often in your chest. It's a survival instinct. Your mind has spent years evolving a trait to keep you away from any threat or danger, but more importantly any anticipated danger. But in the modern world this translates to anything that feels difficult or we anticipate to be difficult. The problem gets worse each time you anticipate future discomfort and avoid it. Your brain says well done, you kept us safe. That was a good idea, let's keep it that way. And it reinforces the behavior. It makes you feel more discomfort the next time, which leads to more and more avoidance. Over time you become an expert at staying away from pain and this makes you less tolerant to any sort of pain, you become weaker and less resilient. Now the second key problem, the lack of progressive structure to keep you motivated. When we set out to be disciplined, we can immediately be hit with a sense of hopelessness. Soon after making our first attempt at the goal, we realize it's way more difficult than we thought. We use up all of our initial burst of motivation and the goal suddenly appears so far away, it's like trying to get from one island to another. We thought we could just swim it, but after jumping in and realizing how exhausting it is, nearly drowning, we can't possibly imagine how we could get to the other side. We're maxed out, it's painful and we feel no closer to the goal. You're not improving, only gasping for air. It's at this point our brain whispers to us, there's no chance, no hope. You'll be safer if you give up. As a result, our brains down regulate any desire to do the thing because it can't see a realistic way of making it work. And concludes, your only approach is really a threat to your survival. Now, if you combine the first point, your intolerance to pain or any analogy, and your lack of any swimming, with the second problem of jumping in with no plan and nearly drowning, you can see why it fails. And our brains have had years and years of ingraining this unconscious mental process to ultimately try and keep us safe. So how can we break the cycle and become a self disciplined master? And not only that, but rewire your brain to learn to like discomfort. It's simpler than you think. To be successfully self disciplined in the long term, we have to find a way to take action. Despite the initial pain response, our brain fires back in the process. We can also rethink, train it at an unconscious level. That being disciplined reduces your threat to survival by making you stronger. If done at this unconscious level, your brain starts rewiring everything it knows and associates with discomfort with growth and becoming stronger. And eventually it will want to seek it out. And you see this with the most successful people in the world. Look at anyone you're inspired by. They can often do insanely uncomfortable things and they can even appear to enjoy it. So how can you do it? The answer comes in two parts. One, become self aware of your feelings and lean into them. Two, building a customized progressive system for you and you alone. Okay, so the first part one, Self awareness. The trick is to understand and completely accept that your body's initial response is normal and work with it. When you Feel it happen. Zoom into the feeling and lean into it. Realize that this is an old system trying to protect you, but is no longer serving you right now. As nothing will actually harm you, Your body will want to move away, and at that moment, you lean in. Imagine your body is a puppet and you're a puppet master, and you don't have to go where your body immediately wants you to go. Remind yourself that this discomfort will make you stronger and more resilient. Be the master to your body as the puppet. Each time this happens, zoom in and go through this mental process. Be the puppet master. You will start rewiring your brain so it sees the discomfort not as a threat, but now as a sign of progress. 2. Build a progressive system customized to you. Discipline is like a muscle, and muscles can be trained. Just like training your body in the gym, you can progressively overload your brain to become more disciplined. So no matter how little you have right now, it can be developed. Now. The vast majority of people have underdeveloped discipline centers in the brain, and they're largely undertrained. It's like having hands that have never touched or picked up anything. They'll be soft and sensitive. They'll also be prone to tearing early on. When you do pick something heavy up, your brain is like this with discipline. In reality, the majority of people have these soft, sensitive brains like those hands, and this is your chance to get ahead if you start training now. So how do we train our discipline? So here's a challenge for you. Just like working out at the gym, we can use a mini program to develop your discipline, and I'll describe it in two phases. Phase one, a foundation daily practice. This will be like slowly getting exposure to your hands so they start to get tougher every day. Do one thing that makes you feel uncomfortable. Treat this like you're training. Identify something you know that triggers that discomfort feeling and intentionally lean into it. Choose something that is just beyond your comfort zone. It should feel a little uncomfortable, but not overwhelming, and that's key. This is the sweet spot. If you struggle with this. I've included a quick cheat sheet of example challenges. At the end of this video challenge, the discomfort in the knowledge that this one drill will be making you stronger. To start, only do one thing. Be intentional and focused on it. When you're done, leave it until your next challenge. Tomorrow, you'll start building a chain of these kind of uncomfortable tasks. The trick to scaling this is progressively making challenges incrementally more difficult at a rate just outside your comfort zone. Be specific with it. Just like those soft and sensitive hands, you don't want to pick up anything too heavy as they will be more prone to tearing. You gain exposure. You watch your hands toughen up and you'll be able to pick up heavier things. Follow the similar process with your brain. Over time, you'll be able to do harder things. As your body and mind grows, you become more resilient to the discomfort. You will also be able to train more frequently. Okay, so you want to advance even faster. Let's walk you through how to build a simple progressive program and this one will improve your sleep within 30 days. This has worked with a number of clients I've worked with Phase 2, a progression program to improve your sleep in 30 days. One of the biggest problems with poor sleep is going to bed too late. I hear 1am 2am we lack a robust system or any system at all. Just an unrealistic bedtime goal, say 9pm or 10pm which we never meet. So here's how you can apply this system. First, look at what time you actually go to sleep. Let's say it is 1:00am Note your ideal sleep time. It could be 10:30pm Create five levels to get you to your target. Level 1 12:30. Level 2, 12:00am Level 3 11:30pm Level 4 11:00pm And Level 5, 10:30pm Now Level 1 should feel completely achievable, even laughable. It will probably have a hint of discomfort when you actually try it, but that's the perfect start. Start with level one, treat it like a video game and slowly work your way up. Try and hit each level at least say five times before moving on to the next level. This will build up that resilience. Think about your skin toughness on your hands now. You can miss a day, but don't miss two days on a trot. That's a nice simple rule to follow. Now if you struggle with higher levels, you just retreat back to the previous level you were on. When you start seeing yourself tick off these levels, chances are you will feel a sense of self control you may have never felt before. And this often acts as a catalyst of belief which can permanently rewire your brain. Each time you lean into the next level, your brain starts sensing this new sense of control and power and sees how this is better for you and you won't look back. Okay, now for the cheat sheet. In a moment, pause the video and you'll see a list of possible challenges you can do on a daily basis. If you want to take some inspiration, go ahead. Hope this video was helpful and see you in the next one.