Monica Levi: This Self-Discipline Coach Says Doing The Thing Is Never About Perfection But Always About Progress

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. Well, you guys, you know those moments when you listen to an episode on someone's podcast and you are just completely floored with the information that you learn and you Send it to 20 of your friends because you got so inspired into action? Well, that's how I met my next guest is I listened to her on a podcast. It was actually Brooke Castillo's podcast called the Life Coach School, and Monica Levy was on there and she's a self discipline coach. And oh, my gosh, you guys, there was so much information and so many golden nuggets that she spilled on that podcast episode that I had to connect with her directly. And you know what happens when you reach out to someone that you find just completely incredible and just changes your life in the moment you hear them, they say yes. And she agreed to come on the do the Thing podcast. I really wanted her on because that's how you do the thing is by really reaching into your self discipline and being able to follow through with the things that you say you want to do for yourself. And the way she explains it and the way she's able to articulate, being able to be that best version of yourself through self discipline, to me is really doing the thing. So I am so excited to welcome Monica to the show. Hi, Monica.

Hi, Stacy. And hi to your audience. I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for. Thanks for reaching out to me.

Yeah, thank you so much for agreeing. It's just I'm thrilled, honestly, and I feel a little overwhelmed with the excitement just because I got to. I got so into that episode that I just. I think I've listened to it three times now. Honestly, it just got me so much. You know, when you hear something and it's the exact thing you need at the moment, you need it. That's what this was for me.

I love that. I'm excited to meet your audience and hopefully add value to them as well.

Oh, perfect. Why don't we start? Why don't you share who you are and just your story on how you even got into what you're doing now?

Yeah, okay, I'm going to. I always have a hard time knowing how much or how little to share, but I'll try to be brief. So I grew up in Bulgaria during communism and came to the US for college. I ended up doing law school in Bulgarian in the States and then getting my mba, went back to the UK to get my master's and I started out as a lawyer. I was pretty set on a predictable corporate career, but I was pretty unhappy in it early on. And after I got my master's I pivoted into professional development and learning and development, which kind of started my coaching journey. At the time I was doing a lot of coaching, even though it wasn't necessarily a standalone profession or industry. And I was really drawn to the one on one transformation that I could see fairly quickly, especially compared to law, where I could be working on a case for over two years before I could see some closure. The coaching work was very satisfying and I decided to leave the legal industry and did some work at Google and some consulting, kind of leaning heavily on the coaching side, and got a certification in leadership coaching and later on life coaching from Brooke Castillo, which podcast you refer to at the beginning. So I have my own business. I work with clients on self discipline, which is my passion. And the reason I chose this niche is that I've always been very self disciplined and people have been talking about your soul to self discipline, how do you do it? And it came easily to me. But when I launched my business this the first time, I had to be more intentional about self discipline because it wasn't easy for me to go from the structure of an employee to kind of having that same regimen with myself. And nobody needed that from me. And I dug into kind of reverse engineering. What works, what are the steps, how do I have self discipline in every other aspect of my life? What do I need to create that professionally? And created this six step framework, but also have done so much research and studying of habits and self discipline that now I just really enjoy helping my clients with creating that for themselves. Yeah.

And I love and thank you for sharing your full story because I love that idea of your life is this series of breadcrumbs that you don't know where it even starts until you're able to connect the dots backward in that way. And you having this career as a lawyer and then seeing that the one on One connection was the thing that sparked you the most joy. And then being able to take that on into another coaching type arena. I think that's. That's amazing.

Yeah. Thank you. It is so interesting for so many of us type A people. We want to see the whole path and we're so intent on planning and controlling. But my journey has taught me that if I'm listening to my internal voice, it leads me to the next step, even if I can't quite see yet the full path. And that served me well with leaving careers and industries where I didn't know what was next.

I love that you mentioned the internal voice. I'm actually doing a find your voice challenge right now and it's all about finding your voice. It's so great. Is there anything that helped you kind of listen to that? Because I think that's really hard for a lot of people where it's hard to trust yourself sometimes.

Yeah. I wouldn't say by any means. I'm an expert on my inner voice. I'm very cerebral and mostly live in my brain. But just knowing that that is another helpful indicator of what is right for me. I've just been trying to be more quiet and understand, like, is there anything that I'm not fully considering? And I'm pretty analytical about. Okay. I know that I'm unhappy in a given situation. I know that I won't necessarily know the next step until I try a couple of things. And so it's been more about risk taking and allowing myself to leap without having a lot of clarity and. And having my back along the way and knowing that things may not necessarily pan out the way I had expected. And that's not a problem. That's part of what the process is going to look like. So really embracing the unknown and knowing that I have to take that next step for me to find out what's next. And the safety of what I know is not enough to keep me in a situation that I don't like.

I love the way you verbalize that too. Because one of the things I've been working on is helping people identify almost like a risk assessment so that you can feel free to jump without knowing exactly what's there while also having some sort of safety net, but just at least knowing what that risk is. And I think the way you described it was great.

Yeah. And I think as I work with clients, it's so individual what that risk tolerance is for everyone and what's kind of safety net they need. But being able to explore that and make A decision for yourself instead of staying stuck is really, really helpful. Totally.

And I loved that idea of the way you just talked about reverse engineering, almost like these things you've done in your life and realizing it had come down to the discipline and self discipline. I'd love to talk to you more about that. And so with the do the thing concept is we have a formula that helps people do the thing, and accountability is one of the pieces. And I love the way you, you were able to talk about that external accountability, that some people really need external accountability in order to do the thing. And I think some people don't realize everything that they need to be able to make things happen. And I was just curious if we could talk about that a little bit as well.

Yeah, of course. Happy to. So the way I think about self discipline, first of all, I think of it as the bridge between your goals and your results. And it's never about perfection, it's always about progress. And I help my clients stack as many chips as they can in their favor to create the result they want. And accountability, or understanding your response to external or internal expectations is one of those chips that you get to stack in your favor. And the first step is awareness. So Gretchen Rubin is the woman who's done a lot of research in that arena, and she's come up with a very quick quiz that you can take to identify whether you are. There's four accountability types, whether you're an upholder, an obliger, a rebel, or a questioner. And it's really, really helpful to know your tendency. So the quiz is called the Four Tendencies. So once you understand your tendency, one isn't better than the other, but understanding your tendency helps you really navigate the conditions that you create in your life for follow through with your actions that enables you to succeed more so than not. So if you're an obliger, which most of us are, you respond very well to external expectations, but you don't respond to internal expectations. You're more likely to let yourself down, but you're unlikely to let others down. So knowing that about yourself really enables you to create some external expectations, even for the things that are just for you. So if you're trying to work out regularly, obviously going to the gym on your own is not going to be as successful as having a friend or a trainer wait there for you, knowing that you're not gonna let them down, or having some sort of penalty if you skip a class, if you don't show up. It's a very simple example of how you would. Knowing your tendency, how you would structure your workout regimen. Let me know if you want me to clarify or dig in deeper.

Yeah, no, this is. Oh, my. I'm just sitting here just like, totally vibing with what you're saying. So I do. I live by this. I'm a really motivated person, but I require people to help me stay there. I have a peloton, but then I even have someone virtually that has to be on the peloton at the same time with me in order for me to on it. And then I have a friend that I go hiking with on Tuesdays and it's in the morning, and there's no way I'm going to not either with her. I just had this level up a thing, though, because I worked out with my daughter the other day and the trainer's throwing us the medicine ball, and I kept dropping it, and he was like, well, if you drop it, then you're both going to have to do suicides, which are these runs that you do. And I didn't drop it anymore because I didn't want her to get the consequence for me failing. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I didn't even know I'm motivated in that way.

Yeah, that is so fun. And it's so fun because once you know your tendency, everything makes sense and things start to click and you're uncovering all these other ways in which you can use that awareness to just make things in your life easier.

Definitely. So how else do you think. I'd love to get some more information on how else someone can really identify what can get them to follow through on the things that they say they want to do. Because that's the crux of everything, right? Is whether it's starting a book or working out or losing weight or starting a podcast or whatever it is you want to do. You have to follow through on these little things in order to be able to do anything. Really.

Yeah. I mean, I can literally spend five hours talking about this alone. But I'll share some very tactical, I guess, strategies that might be helpful when we have a go and we think of the behavior we want to exhibit. We always. We are ambitious because we're motivated and excited about the goal, and we set a standard of action that we're going to take based on our best day. We think I'm going to go work out three times a week. If you've never worked out, that feels like exciting and you're all committed, I highly recommend starting small. Start with what you know you can do on your worst day. Try to have the least amount of action you can take consistently, no matter what. Because what's important is that you're building the habit. And once you build it, you can scale it, but you have to build it first before you can scale it. And by showing up consistently no matter what, because the amount of effort is so little, you're creating the identity of someone who does that behavior regularly. So you're forming the habit and you're solidifying your identity of someone who works out regularly, even if it's five minutes a week, five minutes, four times a week, something very doable for you. So don't go with what you think you can do on your best day. Start with what you know you can do on your worst day. I know a lot of people are very disappointed when they hear that because they're so impatient to get the results. But that's when they don't create sustainable long term results because they spike and can't maintain that level of activity consistently. And so they give up and they quit prematurely. So I really recommend start very small and, and build on that habit. And the other piece that I think is important is inevitably you're going to have obstacles that will prevent you from taking action. So I do recommend reduce the scope, but keep the schedule. So if you know that you can't do whatever your 30 minute workout is that you've decided on, don't just give up for that day because you know you don't have 30 minutes, reduce it to five or 10 minutes, whatever you can do that day because you're keeping the consistency. And again, you're creating that identity. So it's not as important. Most of us think of activity in black or white terms. I either do it or I don't. And if I don't have the ability to do it fully, then I may as well give up. It's like if you eat off protocol and have a cookie on Monday, you just. The whole week is out the window. And I highly recommend knowing that it's not about perfection, it's about progress. So definitely reduce the scope, keep to the schedule and try not to miss twice. The other thing that I see very many people do is when they miss one day, they put a lot of pressure on themselves to compensate or make up for that mistake the next day. So they resist it because it feels really heavy and big and they keep missing and now create a pattern of missing because they're so overwhelmed by the idea of having to make up. And I Highly recommend to drop the pressure and not have to make up anything, just show up or get back on track as soon as you can with that small line of action that you're committing to. So those are some of the strategies that are pretty tactical that I help my clients with. But I really think that there's a huge mindset component that comes into play that is that individual customized piece of the puzzle that I love working on. Because even if you have all the strategies and all the how to, you have trouble executing it, because there is a mindset piece that's probably coming into play.

And how do you then approach the mindset?

Well, that's the coaching piece. So I always say that strategy is easy or it's cheap in the sense that there's so many books out there, there are so many courses that can teach you the how. But we all know that the how isn't enough because we all know what it takes to lose weight, and yet many of us struggle because there's a mindset piece around either our capability or our self concept that prevents us from taking that sustainable action. So that's the piece of coaching that's. To me, the most fun is the kind of understanding, like, what's the thought behind the lack of action? It's not that you're not motivated enough, because motivation is not the whole nother topic that I may say for later, but there's something individual that is in your mind, in your mindset that you believe that's holding you from taking action. That's the piece that I uncover, but that's the individual piece that's different for everyone.

Yeah, I love that idea of knowing what your. I don't want to say your kryptonite, but it's kind of strong, that is. And you're able to help people identify what it is to tap in, to be able to move through it.

It. Yes. Yeah, that's the funnest part of coaching for me. But, you know, strategy is definitely a part of it, and it's helpful and it's necessary, but certainly doesn't get you the final results unless you understand the piece that's holding you back, the mindset component. So what I was saying about motivation and let me close that loop. So many of us think that, you know, when I feel motivated, I get it done, and I think that's fine. But I like to say that motivation starts to go, but doesn't finish it. It's not a sustainable driving force. You need to. With self discipline, you don't negotiate yourself with yourself, you don't wait for motivation. You know what you're going to do and you do it because you've made that decision ahead of time. If you rely on motivation, you have very inconsistent action with self discipline. You show show up no matter what, whether you're motivated, whether you're tired, whether you have self doubt or fear. And that's the beauty and that's the guarantee. Once you have self discipline, you just get your results. Motivation is amazing. It's just not something you control or you can have on call whenever you need it.

Yeah. And you mentioned don't negotiate with yourself. Is that meaning what you were saying before? If you can't do it the full time, do it at least 10 minutes. So then you're still showing up for that action that you said you wanted to do.

So when I say don't negotiate with yourself, it's, it's more about the decision ahead of time. So for example, if you are using weight loss, because it's something most people can relate to, even though I don't necessarily focus on weight loss too much in my practice. But let's just say you want to, you're going to a party and if you haven't made the decision ahead of time, if in the moment you're trying to decide, should I have another piece of cake? The desire for pleasure in the moment is too hard for you to overpower and you're probably going to have more cake than you want to. But if you've decided ahead of time, tonight I'm only having one piece of cake. Or at this party I'm going to have X, Y and Z, you have a decision. So in the moment you don't have to decide. You're just showing up, you're able to focus on the conversation or enjoying the party and the decision is pre made. But if you're waiting until the event, you're using a different part of your brain that's more concerned with immediate gratification and you're foregoing the things that you want to do that are delayed gratification. And a good example of this is brushing your teeth. So for most of us, we don't necessarily enjoy or care about brushing our teeth, but we do it, we do it twice a day. And it's a decision that is not something we negotiate on. We just know that this is what we do. We don't have to decide every morning when we get up, or should I or should I not? So it's, you're not using willpower to get yourself to brush your teeth as opposed to the decision in the moment, the having to use willpower to resist piece of cake or the second glass of wine. Does that answer your question?

Oh, totally. Yeah. It's like you're not in this decision fatigue because you, you've already made the decision ahead of time and then you're just following through on that decision.

Yes. Because if you think about it, all of these micro decisions use up your energy and you know, if you end the same with willpower. Willpower is finite and you can white knuckle your way to your goal. You can't rely on willpower to get to long term sustainable results because you only have limited amounts of willpower every day, which is why self discipline bypasses this whole process. You're not resisting, you're not using willpower. You just decide ahead of time. And of course there's a process to get you there. But if you're waiting on willpower to resist the cookie or the cake or to get yourself to work out or to stop procrastinating, you're going to succeed one day and you, you'll be exhausted by the time you get home and you're more likely to yell at your partner or your kids and you just have no willpower left. For everything else that you need, you need it in your day. And then the next day you may just not have enough willpower to resist. That's why I don't advocate using willpower to get to your goal.

Yeah, I like that. And this is actually reminding me of what I heard you say on the other episode that I really loved. And I thought we could talk about it here because it feel like it fits right here is every action is a vote for the person that you want to be. That's pretty much. I think what you're saying now is by you following through on this decision you made, you're basically voting for that person that you want to. That you follow through on the things you say.

Yeah. So that gets to the consistency of the smaller actions. So oftentimes when we are thinking, well, I just have this cookie, it's not going to matter, or let me skip this one day of working out. It really won't impact the overall outcome. You're absolutely right. That single action or inaction will not impact the outcome overall, but it is a vote for the person you are, the person you're becoming. So when you're thinking, should I go? Should I do the five minutes of walking around the block Because I want to be that person who exercises Regularly, that choice to go for the walk is a vote in the direction of the person you're becoming. So it does matter. It matters for your identity, even though it doesn't matter for the actual number of pounds on the scale. Does that make sense?

Oh, a hundred percent, yeah. Because I think people might think, oh, it doesn't matter, it's just this really small thing and it's not going to affect anything in the bigger picture. But it's. It does because it's affecting your identity of who you are.

Yes, that's it exactly. And so much of the actions that we take are coming from the identity we have. And so it's really driving your actions. It's really important to align the action you want to take with the person you are, the way you see yourself.

Yeah, I was wondering too. So with accountability, I mentioned earlier how I need it for working out and I also need it for food actually right now because I had gained weight after I got back from a trip over the holidays. But I don't need it. I don't need accountability in other areas of my life. So I'm imagining other people are like that too because if they're taking that test you mentioned and then they're seeing what their style is, how do you know what you need it in and what you don't? Was there a way to figure that out?

Yeah, I mean, I think most people, this is actually a really good point, is that you're not either fully self disciplined or lacking all self discipline. A lot of my clients are super well disciplined in many, many areas of their life, but they're just unable to apply that same skill to one or two areas that they're still struggling with. And it's the same with accountability. Like when you're at the self discipline, it doesn't matter whether or not you have the accountability measures that you need because you just show up for yourself. And the way you know is you can say, I am really good at taking care of my kids, I always show up for them. I'm a great parent, or I'm really good at my job and do the things that are hard, but when it comes to my weight loss journey, I don't have that same discipline. So you kind of know where you like it and where you don't. But knowing that there are other parts of your life where you do have self discipline is super helpful in my work with clients because there's a couple of exercises that I do that can help them lean into the areas where they do have the confidence and self discipline and apply some of that mindset to the parts that they're struggling with. And I'm oversimplifying it, obviously, but it is something that is valuable to understand.

Yeah. And I love what you said earlier with that, and this kind of feels like it belongs here too, is that least amount of action is figuring out what that least amount of action you can do. And then once you build it up, you can scale it. So I was curious, for someone that's really just been that person that is not following through on the things they say they want to do, what is their first step?

So this would be very individual. So this would be the kind of coaching that's very specific. So there's a really good case study when we're first starting to look at habit formation, there's a case study with someone who is very overweight. And he's literally his action for the first few months was just putting on his gym shoes and gym clothes on and nothing else. He wasn't going to the gym, he wasn't doing any exercise, but he was putting on. The first step was so minimum at minimal and so insignificant. But it got him to believe that he's someone who can take that step often enough that he could then progress to the next step. And so for most people, that will sound so demotivating because they're so anxious to get to the results. And for most of us, the first step will be obviously a lot more than just putting on the right gear. But that would depend on your starting point. Where is the struggle? Where is the friction point that prevents you from taking action? And that's what I determine for each client.

Oh, my gosh. I love that so much. Because you're just giving yourself permission to start where you are. If you're at the place where you just need to put your shoes on and that's all you need to do and then to go back to bed. I actually made a joke about this the other day. I'm doing this comedy. I'm trying to get into comedy right now where I'm playing around with it. And the joke is I just signed up for this WhatsApp group. It cost 20 bucks, but we message in the group saying we're up at 6am and then this was part of how I was getting back into my motivation again. So I would message at 6am but then I would go back to bed.

And so.

But now I'm waking up at 6 and I'm up. And so I didn't even realize that I was still winning because I still got up to do it. I just happened to go back to bed.

I think that's the thing. Like a bigger goal can sound so overwhelming to many. If you have a huge project at work and you just can't even get yourself to touch it, you're so overwhelmed, but you're carrying that burden in your mind and your energy and you're just worrying about it. You have to know what's the least amount of action you can take and kind of unravel. Where is the friction point to you even starting and knowing that there's always something that can get you there. There's no client that there's no hope for. But where I find the problem with most of us is that we're so impatient. We want that quick success because we live in this era of instant gratification. We can get most things with a click of a button or we have all these ads for get 6 pack abs in 2 weeks or something that triggers that desire for quick and painless results and self discipline isn't that. But the beauty of it is that once you have it, you have it for the rest of your life and you're able to rely on yourself to create any result you want. It will never be fast, but it will be so worth it. That's kind of my counter action of when people say, well, I don't want to wait six months to get this goal. I'm like, listen, what's the alternative? You may as well commit to doing it.

Definitely. And I was wondering too, I think it's really easy for people to be hard on themselves if they've created this Persona or this identity of someone that hasn't followed through on the things that they say they want to do. Or let's say they committed to walking for 30 minutes and then they only walk five minutes. How do you help them through talking better to themselves? Is there a way that you help them with that inner chatter?

Yeah, that's actually a really good point. A lot of folks are used to beating themselves up into thinking they're going to do better. And with coaching or my approach, it's all about compassion and curiosity. The regretting, guilting yourself, shooting yourself, talking negatively to yourself is super counterproductive. And I help my clients understand why. I give them some examples. But once you're able to, and I take care of this because I don't allow any of that in our sessions. And I'm truly curious. Let's get curious about what happened last week and why it didn't work out and whatever you committed to doing, why you didn't do it. And we're curious and we get feedback for all the obstacles that came up and how we're going to plan for them and overcome them the next week. And because we are curious and we don't have that shame and judgment, we're more willing, the client is more willing to explore. So again, the self talk is different with everyone, but I'm able to get into understanding what it is, what the pattern is. We create a plan for how to change that. And the journey is more enjoyable because it's all about self love, compassion, curiosity and none of the negative self talk. But you have to understand why that's counterproductive.

Yeah. And if you had just one piece of advice on that piece right here, something they could do just today after they listen to this episode, just for the self talk piece, because I'm going to ask you about the self discipline piece too. What would be that? What would be something they could do for themselves? So not beating themselves up if something has happened.

I mean, I think it's truly understanding that you beating yourself up if something has happened makes you really, really unwilling to understand what happened. The negativity is so overpowering that you just want to close your eyes to it and you just want to move away from that example instead of staying curious and truly digging into what happened. Let me just really get curious here. What was I thinking? What was I fearing that I didn't take this action? Which is the, basically the feedback you need to do it differently next time. And the one advice I would say to them is, okay, you've probably been beating yourself up and talking negatively to yourself all this time and it's not working. Why not try it differently? You can always go back to it if you fear that you're going to stay complacent without it. Because that's usually the fear. I'm going to stay too complacent if I don't beat myself up. Give it a try. Give it a try. Try something new. And you can always go back to that negative self talk if you, if you fear that that's what's keeping you to do better.

I think so many people have the all or nothing thinking and it's so freeing in the way that you do it because you're like, just give it a try. And you can always go back and then also just put on your shoes. You know, you don't need to go walk five miles, just get your shoes on.

You're so. Right. And thank you for saying that. It truly is all the work that I've done myself. So it's. I totally get it. I kind of know all the objections or the fears that clients will have initially when I offer some of these tactics. And I get it. I used to be all, you know, Taipei, beating myself up, all the things. And so thankfully I can spot them very easily and I can offer some, some comfort to alleviate those fears.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is what really helps is when you have that lived experience. So you know the feeling of what it's like to do these things and then to be able to like see the other side of it. I think it just, it's how you're able to help people in such a bigger way.

Yeah. Thank you. And because it's changed my life, I'm so passionate about just doing the same for other people.

And then I was wondering, is this a place for us to talk about that six step process specifically or would you rather.

That's something I don't typically talk about. It's something that I take my clients through, to be honest. But I've a lot of the, A lot of the nuggets that are the tactics piece is again, less important. The mindset is the very unique, specific thing that clients don't usually get with a course or a book. But a lot of the things I said, like you have to start small, you never miss twice. You reduce the scope, but keep to the schedule. You so the basic habit formation, understanding your accountability tendency, making the action easy and convenient, and putting friction between you and the thing that you don't want to do. So if you snooze your phone, make sure your alarm is in the other room so you actually are away from you. So you have to get up to snooze. Like things that make it easier for you to do the thing you want to do in the beginning, making those decisions. Actually another thing that I'm happy to share is not only you have to make decisions ahead of time, you have to decide your excuses ahead of time. And that's something that most people don't think about because they are thinking, I don't want to allow any excuses. But in reality, life is going to happen in so many unpredictable ways. So you do want to allow excuses and you want to be thoughtful and intentional about them. So when they happen, you're not thinking that you're skipping or you're being easy on yourself. You've just decided this thing happening is something that I want to allow as an excuse. So, for example, if you want to get up at 6 o' clock and meditate, whatever you were describing that you're trying to get to the excuse of you being tired or going to bed late at night or not getting enough sleep, hopefully you want to say that's not an allowable excuse. But if your child is in the emergency room and needs your immediate help, then maybe you went to bed at 5 and you want to allow to be able to sleep past 6 o'. Clock. There are things that you're just thinking through ahead of time. What are all the possible things that can come up? What excuses do I allow and what excuses do I not? And again, this is like stacking as many chips in your favor, getting you as prepared as you can for you to be able to follow through.

Oh my gosh, I love this so much. It's like you're. You're already preparing for the what ifs and then you're giving yourself, you're making it certain on how you're going to respond when it comes up. So then you're not in decision fatigue again.

Yes. And you're not caught off guard because a confused mind will always, I say will always eat the cookie. This is again a very weight loss analogy, but it applies to anything else. So you want to reduce the confusion and you want to think about everything that can happen. So when it happens, you're so at peace and in control, you're not thrown off, you're like, oh my God, this is happening. What do I do? You know exactly what to do because you've planned ahead of time for it.

You know, it's so amazing because I don't think I really thought of self discipline as a way to not burn energy, but I feel like in the way that you're, the way that you teach it, it's helping people have more energy. Not just because they're following through with the things they say they want to do, but because they're not really even having to think about it. It's just sort of happening.

Yes, you're absolutely right. It's less drama, less energy. And this actually reminds me of one or two of the more common misconceptions about self discipline. Some folks, especially if they're rebels, if you do your four tendencies quiz, you know, if you're a rebel. But folks think that self discipline is very rigid and it's not spontaneous and it's not fun. But I teach and I know that the opposite is true. Self discipline is about freedom. It is about it's a love note to your future self. You are creating more money, you are creating more health, you're creating more time, you're creating more ability to choose, but you're doing so intentionally as opposed to instinctively or impulsively.

So true. And I love that love note to your future self. Oh my gosh, that's so good. So good. And then it's making me think too because you're already deciding things ahead of time, both the person that you want to be and then following through on that with the actions you're doing. And then also you're deciding your excuses and which ones you'll allow and which ones you won't allow because you're saving that energy. You're releasing yourself for, I call it opportunity cost. I think it's a thing out there. But you're creating more opportunities for yourself because you're not burning your energy on these things in the moment. So it kind of releases you into bring yourself to doing all these other things.

Yes. Yeah, a hundred percent. But I think if you think about whatever your problem is, whether you're procrastinating, whether you're eating more than you want to, whether you're constantly trying to decide what should I, when should I work out that amount of. Even though you're not taking any physical action, the mental space this takes is very, very costly and it's exhausting and it reduces your willpower and your decision making power. So when you free your mind from all of that, you have all this free time, you can create whatever you want or you can just self care. You can do, you can go pick up a hobby because it's going to free up so much time.

Oh my gosh. So great. I would love to hear your number one piece of advice for the listeners on doing the thing.

Okay, I, I love this question. I love that you're really wanting to offer something like super tactical. I don't know that I can say there's the number one thing that applies to everyone. This is why I love the one on what work. It's not going to be the same for every person. So I'm trying to think if there's something that I can, I can think applies to everyone. But truly it's so dependent on what your starting point is, what your challenge is. Why are you resistant to taking action? I guess figure out what your resistance is and try to stack as many chips in your favor. So how can you make the taking of the action as easy as possible for you? Which will start with awareness of why you're currently resisting it. I would start there. Truly understand as much as you can about your current patterns and then try to shift them one by one with the easiest piece. Don't start with the most overwhelming thing. What's the one easy thing I can do differently? Understanding what I now know about my pattern.

And if they say that they see that pattern and there's that one piece that they want to do differently, what would be a really simple way for them to just start on that, just to get an immediate result?

Well, there is no immediate result. Understand why you want this, because if you want it really badly, it doesn't have to be immediate for you to commit to the work and to stay consistent. If your why is strong enough, which is the only way you can create some self discipline around the goal is don't rush it. Try to really enjoy the process because you're becoming the future version of you that you really want to be. And so focus on the why. Don't expect immediate. Because the thing is, if you're building the identity, the first few actions will not have that immediate impact, but will be just creating that consistent set of actions that create the person you are becoming. And the results will come after. But we do the identity work first. And I know it sounds so unappealing, I can imagine it sounds so unappealing to our audience. But it's not about the results first. It's about the habit formation, the self discipline building. And then the results follow very, very quickly and easily.

Yeah, and I love that you said this because it's funny with the, with do the thing, so many people are like, what's the thing? What's my thing? You know, and they're kind of focused on the thing. And I just realized in the last month, it's really the do. That's the thing that's more important than the thing. It's the do. And you just spoke to that so well, that process is almost the result that you want is to be able to fall in love with it. And I really, I really like how you were able to say that.

You know what's interesting, as you're speaking, this came to mind, of course people are saying, give me the thing. What's the thing? What's the five step formula? I just want to do it. And it's never about that, right? It's never about the how. And what happens is so many of us try on the new template or strategy or diet and we want it to work quickly. And when it doesn't, we decide it's the thing that doesn't work instead of us. So we swap and go to the next template in the next course and next strategy and we reset the clock for ourselves instead of knowing that it's not even about the how. If you're consistent enough with what you do, any path, any strategy will take you there because you're doing the work that's way more critically important than the how or the strategy. But because we are so obsessed with quick results and we're impatient, we're swapping the strategy and we're resetting the clock. So I like saying that extraordinary results are created by doing insignificant, simple things for extraordinary amounts of time. It's really not about the how or the strategy or the latest app or whatever you want it to be the answer.

So good. I would love you to share where people can learn about you and then also if they want to work with you after hearing this, who do you normally work with and how? How can they get connected in that way as well?

Yeah, of course, I'm happy to so I'm pretty active on Instagram as the self discipline Coach and on LinkedIn at Monica Levy L E V I and my website is monica levycoaching.com I have a number of freebies on my Instagram bio page. So you can get a self discipline framework, you can get a decision making guide, some procrastination tips for how to stop procrastinating. So that could be a good starting place. And I work with folks one on one can schedule a free call. There's plenty of ways to find the link for that on the social media platforms where we assess if we're a good fit. I work with a lot of professionals, but since self discipline to me is the core foundational skill for any goal, I work with anyone on self discipline. It just happens to to be that a lot of folks who are lawyers or doctors or other professionals come to me, but certainly that's not a requirement and I'm happy to help anyone hone in their the self discipline muscle.

Yeah, and I love that you just said the self discipline muscle because that's really what it is, you guys. It's learning how to flex the muscle over and over again so then you can follow through on it. I like that. I also was wondering what you mentioned on who you're working with. What are they? What are some of the things that people want to get more self disciplined about? Is there any kind of standard that you've been helping or is it all across the board?

So I Can help anyone with anything on self discipline related sort of patterns or questions or goals. But folks that most commonly come to me are people who want more productivity. They want to stop procrastinating, they want to lose weight, get healthy, work out, get more organized, create some sort of if they're oftentimes they're moving from an employee to some sort of entrepreneurial journey and they have no structure, no priority, no way to keep the schedule. So. So there's a time management productivity procrastination piece. There's the piece around health and weight loss and fitness. I'm trying to think what else the whole gamut comes across. But those are the things that I'd say most people say, yes, that's me. I want more of that. So that's probably what I'd say is most common.

Yeah. And I have one more question since we're talking about this. This made me think I'm in the middle of preparing for a challenge. It's a do the thing, start a book challenge. And I'm thinking this idea of self discipline would actually be good for them just to be able to get into that habit of wr reading. Is there anything that you would suggest that they do to kind of. It's just a 14 day challenge that they're going to do on starting a book pretty much.

Well, it's probably already part of your challenge, but all the things that we talked about start small. It's become someone who writes daily instead of focusing on the book per se and decide like what's the least amount of writing I can do every day that no matter what I commit to evaluate what your resistance is. It's usually going to be the goal is so overwhelming that you have to break it up. Like what's the first step? What's the outline, what's the title? Just really kind of understand why you're resisting writing or starting. Oftentimes you have to be mindful of perfectionism. You're probably waiting for it to be really pretty and perfect and flowing. Instead of just start messy, put it on the page, then edit, allow it to be imperfect and kind of understand again, understanding your patterns, what. What's currently holding you back. It's. It's probably going to be something around. I don't know where to start. It's too overwhelming. It's not good enough. All of those typical self doubt thoughts. I'm trying to think. I have a couple of writers that I'm working with and I'm just thinking through what they typically tell me. But yeah, that's where I would start.

That was amazing. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for doing this with me, Monica. You are just a joy and just amazing with the way you're able to bring things out and really set up good expectations and realistic. That's the word I'm looking for. Realistic expectations, you know, for people to be able to follow through on the things they want to do in their life.

I love that. Such a pleasure. I loved meeting your audience and meeting you, and I love what I do. So anytime hit me up anytime, I'm happy to talk about it.

So cool. That's awesome. I'm seeing a self discipline challenge coming up, you guys.

Yeah, let's do it. Yeah. Amazing.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. But even more, we hope you'll be inspired to do the Thing. Do you have a burning question on Doing the Thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message at do the thing.com or email us at. Hello, do the thing podcast dot com.