3 Strategies to Improve at Self-Discipline

Discipline is funny because it is a very simple concept, yet it can be absurdly challenging to put into practice.

Discipline is really just doing what you say you are going to do.

Easy, right?

• Step 1: You audit your life and assess the difference between where you are and where you would like to be.

• Step 2: You create a list of actions and behaviors that will help you bridge that gap, and build a schedule that incorporates these actions and behaviors.

• Step 3: You complete said actions and adopt said behaviors.

• Step 4: Your life is drastically improved.

Yet it’s not really quite this easy, is it?

For many of us, things fall apart somewhere along this path. It’s Step 3, the “doing of the actions” that poses a problem.

To improve at discipline, we have to identify the causes for why we don’t do the things that we know we should be doing.

It’s these causes that are the problem; remove them and discipline can become as easy as it is in theory.

Unfortunately, removing these causes isn’t easy, which is why it is rare to encounter someone who has truly mastered self-discipline.

But it starts with having enough self-awareness to identify these causes.

Let's dig into them.

Impulsivity

An impulse is a strong, sudden desire to do something.

When we fail to stick to the plan we’ve made for ourselves, it is due to these strong desires.

• You want to lose 10 pounds, but then you get an impulse for a piece of cheesecake.

• You want to finish that article when you get home from work, but you get an impulse to crash on the couch and watch Netflix instead.

• You want to get up and go for a run, but you get the impulse to get back under the covers and hit snooze 2 dozen times.

These impulses are the building blocks of failure. They are what you need to guard against.

There are a couple of tricks to avoiding impulses:

Firstly, you have to make sure that you are taking care of your emotional needs and allowing yourself time to rest.

If you schedule your life with no downtime, the impulse to break from your schedule will become too strong to resist and you will deviate, but it will be accompanied by a sense of shame from not following through.

This is why you need to plan accordingly, and ensure that when establishing your actions and behaviors that will be the bridge to your better life, you need to account for having time to rest, recharge, and have fun.

Secondly, you need to build the habit of being able to identify your impulsive behavior.

Get into the habit of recognizing these sudden desires that don’t align with your goals and see them for what they are.

This alone does not make it easy, but at least you will be self-aware.

When you become aware of these impulses, you see them for the destructive forces that they are and it will help strengthen your resolve to not give into them.

Learn to recognize your impulsive behavior.

Your Inner Lawyer

Impulses are automatic and emotionally driven — they come from your amygdala.

But often when these desires appear, they are bolstered by our prefrontal cortex (our rational mind) attempting to justify that this desire is legitimate and in fact a good idea.

In his excellent book “The Happiness Hypothesis”, Jonathan Haidt brilliantly refers to this process as The Lawyer.

The Lawyer attempts to rationalize and make a case for the whims of our baser instincts.

Here is an example:

You’re on a diet, and you get a sudden strong desire (an impulse) from your amygdala for a tasty doughnut. You remember that you are on a diet, and attempt to refrain from delicious deep-fried batter drenched in oil and sugar.

But then The Lawyer comes in and delivers their case:

“You’ve had a long week!”

“You just had a salad for lunch, so you actually need these extra calories.”

“You performed so well at work today — you deserve a treat!”

When you go through the process of rationalizing deviations from the actions that align with your goals, you are acting as your inner Lawyer.

The Lawyer is dangerous because it is your rational mind — so you actually can convince yourself that these decisions aren’t harmful.

It is crucial to be able to spot your Lawyer at work.

Learn to be able to catch yourself rationalizing your way into bad decisions.

Discipline can only occur in the present

Discipline cannot be outsourced to your future self.

It cannot be practiced tomorrow or next week, or after any situation where you tell yourself “but after that, I’m going to be good. I’m going to….”

Deviating from your schedule, continuously pushing back the diet you’ve been saying you’re going to start, going to the gym tomorrow (when you’re supposed to go today), are all examples of outsourcing your discipline.

Life happens, and sometimes we have genuine reasons for needing to deviate from our plans.

But if you’re honest with yourself, you’ll be able to distinguish between these moments and the moments that you are using your Lawyer to justify.

• Learn to recognize impulsive behavior.

• Learn to recognize the rationality of unhelpful impulsive behavior.

• Learn to recognize when you are outsourcing what you should be doing now to your future self.

It will never be easy, but with self-awareness of these tendencies, the journey towards mastering self-discipline will hopefully be a little bit easier.