It’s Not Actually Discipline…
If you’ve followed along for a while, you know the phrase:
“I just need more discipline.”
…makes my skin crawl!!!
Because often the people saying it are extremely hard-working, motivated people! And the phrase is colored with frustration and self-defeat.
It’s bothersome because there doesn’t seem to be a clear idea of what discipline actually IS or how to increase it. We can’t just go to the discipline store and stock up for the week.
Often…in an attempt to increase our discipline, we just default to yelling at ourselves.
“Just DO IT!”
“If you don’t show up today you SUCK.”
We started treating discipline as the verb (to punish)
instead of the noun (our practice/field of study).
If ‘discipline’ only looks/sounds like punishing ourselves, that’s not discipline…it’s just shame.
And, plot twist, shame creates more BAD habits than good ones.
How you talk to yourself is…a habit.
And if screaming at yourself is your only tactic for compliance…you’re actually creating the habit of negative self-talk faster than you’re creating your gym habit.
And you will very quickly associate the gym habit with negativity.
Research shows the more you beat yourself up for NOT showing up today, the LESS likely you are to show up tomorrow!
A more effective way to actually increase your discipline is to make it as easy as possible to say “yes I will today” day after day.
Ideally, we say “yes” enough times that it becomes automatic and we don’t even need discipline anymore!
So next time you catch yourself saying “I just don’t have enough discipline,” try one of these on instead:
✅“I don’t have a practice in place yet.”
✅“I don’t have it on the calendar.”
✅“I don’t have a realistic strategy in place”
✅“I don’t have accountability set up.”
✅“I don’t have the time to do it the way I want, (so I’ll start smaller)”
✅“I don’t have a strong cue in place.”
✅“I don’t have a strong enough ‘why’”
✅“I don’t have a strong reward system.”
✅“I don’t have the self-awareness I need to know what’s actually missing. Let me observe what I AM doing.”
These are all more specific, fixable, and are less personal than berating yourself for not processing a mostly intangible quality.
: )