How to Be Disciplined

The essential difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful people can muster up the discipline to pursue long term projects and unsuccessful people cannot. Unsuccessful people kind of float through life jumping from thing to thing, never committing to any one project, constantly getting distracted, changing their mind, and making excuses as to why they didn’t follow through.  

Unfortunately, like most animals, humans did not evolve to pursue long term goals. We evolved to seek short-term prizes, which is why we prefer to jack off or play video games instead of building a skill that only pays off after months or years. Lions in the savannah hunt the first zebra they see; they do not make five year plans to build sustainable zebra farms so they will zebras to eat in retirement. For this reason, most people only remain focused and disciplined on long-term projects if somebody is forcing them: a parent, a teacher, a boss, a coach, etc… Very few people have the self discipline to stick to a long term project without outside pressure, but people who do commit to such long term projects are disproportionately successful. Pretty much anything that brings money, status, or anything else valuable requires success at a long-term project. Anybody can watch a YouTube video and get excited to start lifting, start a business, or learn some skill, but the challenge is to gut it out through the daily grind.

To be disciplined, you must view your subconscious mind like a three year old child that you must bribe, trick, and scare into remaining focused and working hard. Your subconscious mind evolved to only feel motivated to pursue a goal if it sees a clear path to the goal with no uncertainty and no obstacles on the way. Therefore, you must have a plan that convinces your inner three old that if it works hard it will get prizes, and quickly.

My steps to building discipline:

1- Have a huge goal

Being "pretty good" at weightlifting is not enough of a goal to motivate yourself. You need to want to be Arnold Schwarzenegger. You will probably never be Schwarzenegger, Michael Jordan, or Bill Gates, but the only way to motivate yourself to work your ass off is by shooting for the moon. Humans did not evolve to be motivated to do something "pretty important" - we evolved to be motivated to do THE MOST IMPORTANT THING. And the only way you can feel like the thing you are doing is the MOST IMPORTANT THING is by setting for yourself a gigantic goal. Your goal should preferably be one that brings some benefit to you and others, and raises your esteem in the eyes of people who matter.

Having a huge goal also means setting high standards for yourself. Do everything like you were training for the world championship (within reason).

2- Believe you can achieve that huge goal

This is the hard part. It basically takes delusion, spirituality, and magical thinking because there is no logical reason to believe you can become Michael Jordan or Bill Gates, so you need to tell yourself some story that you believe as to why you can achieve it. It helps if you have achieved big goals in the past, or seen others in your family/friends/close circle achieve them, but otherwise you need to generate that feeling on your own. In the 60s a psychic told Eddie Murphy’s grandmother that somebody in her family would be world famous so everybody in the Murphy family took dancing classes because they thought the psychic might be right. I can’t prove it, but I would bet $100 that this magical belief that he was destined for greatness probably influenced Eddie Murphy on his path to success. When other people ran into obstacles or challenges

3- Have a definite, clear routine that gives you little wins

If you say to your inner three year old "if you work hard in five years you will look like Arnold Schwarzenegger" the kid will tell you to fuck off. You need to reward yourself with little wins that add up to bigger wins that eventually add up to your huge goal. Saying “we are going to lift weights and get buff” is too much uncertainty to your subconscious mind, but if you say “we are going to lift 3 times a week and make steady gains” your inner three old will get excited.

4- Cut out the bullshit

Cut out all distractions, negative people, temptations, and other obstacles to achieving the goal. You need to keep all your focus on the goal and you can't do that with bullshit in your life.

5- Scare yourself

Having wins is great, but it is a fact about human nature that we are more motivated by fear of bad things happening than the prospect of good things happening. In other words, fear is more powerful than hope so you need to "scare" yourself into working when you are not motivated by the prospect of wins. It is hard to scare yourself because you know you will not actually punish yourself if you do not stack up, but you can tell yourself "if I do not achieve X thing by Y date have failed and I will feel shitty if I fail." That is all the fear you need. When you are doing something shitty and unpleasant that will take a while and there are no wins in sight, fear is your only motivator.

6- Transcend yourself

The only way you can tough out doing shitty, unpleasant things is my removing your "self" from your emotions. This one is kind of hard to explain, but think of it like this: mopping a McDonald's floor is miserable, but if you were listening to a good podcast you would be able to do it no problem because your emotions are fixated on something more fun and engaging than the actual mopping. Now imagine you could transcend yourself like this for every shitty thing: when lifting, instead of thinking about how much it sucks to lift weight, think about some higher goal or thought or idea that transcends the emotions of lifting weight in that moment.