Discipline: The Way Of The Greats

Introduction

If you’ve been looking at the online world for a while, you might have seen a spike in « self-improvement content » for a while, around the year 2021 and around the year 2024. These occasional spikes of self-improvement content is a reminder that we should all improve ourselves on a daily basis. We should continuously work on ourselves and keep improving in order to become the best persons we can become, in order to lead the most fulfilling and incredible life we can dream of, whilst being a great parent, husband or wife, etc.

And so, one of the main ways to achieve self-improvement is to acquire discipline. According to the Oxford Languages, the main dictionary used by Google, discipline is to « train oneself to do something in a controlled and habitual way. ».

Discipline is therefore the usage of an inner motivation, in order to work on yourself, to do an activity in a way that is habitual. But, I don’t really like this definition. To me, discipline is simple. It’s the ability to do the hard work, even when you don’t feel like doing the hard work.

It’s when you’ve been lifting weights for 30 minutes, that you don’t want to keep lifting for another 30 minutes even tho you were supposed to do it, but you still keep doing it, despite the pain that it brings.

It’s the ability to transcend pain, to keep working, in the face of adversity, to reach a goal. This is how I view discipline. The ultimate purpose of discipline, therefore, is to train you to become a super-human. The type of guy that can wake up early and go for a run immediately. And that can do this, every morning.

Now, we’re humans, we’re not robots, and we’ve all got drops and spikes of discipline and motivation throughought our lives, but our goal is to « stabilize » discipline as to exert it in our everyday life in good quantity or in major quantity, compared to motivation which is great but which we cannot control.

Because yes, motivation cannot be controlled. Discipline can. Focusing on motivation to do a task is giving your goals and your future life in the hands of fate or someone else, hoping that it’ll « go right » because you’ll suddenly have this « spike of motivation » to go for a run or to go to the gym or to make a jump in your career or to go and speak to this good-looking girl/guy out there.

Focusing on discipline is smart because it allows you to focus on what you CAN control, in its entirety. Focusing on motivation is focusing on something you cannot control totally.

Motivation is finite. Discipline can, logically, be infinite. Our goal is to really master discipline, to be able to turn discipline on and off like a light switch. But, at first, and even when you get advanced in your disciplinary skills, you might discover that discipline is much like a plane that takes off and not like a light switch. In fact, you need to start small.

Like a plane slowly taking speed until it can take off into the air and fly to a new destination (a new identity, a new salary, a new relationship, a better identity, a better salary, a better relationship, etc), discipline needs speed and consistency. It needs to keep getting faster and faster and faster until it takes off and stabilizes into the air.

So, how to build more discipline into your life?

How to build more discipline into your life

One of the main things you can do to build more discipline into your life is to do hard work everyday.

For example, every morning you could put in your daily ritual to turn the water cold at least 10-20 seconds every single morning of the week. Or, you could force yourself to go for a run every morning, for 10 minute. The goal is to instill something that is good for your mind and body, that you’re not actually doing because of laziness or excuses, and actually doing this thing every single day, be it in the morning or evening (to facilitate the habit -creation process), or throughought the day.

If you want to gain in discipline in the fitness world for example, such as going to the gym more often, make it a rule to go to the gym even on the days you don’t feel like it. At-least drive to it, and do 5 push-ups. That’s your obligation. If you can only do 5 push-ups, you’ll be able to wire your brain with « going to the gym everyday », and when you’ll be tuning to this habit, you’ll quickly start making it easier to go to the gym everyday and hit your goals. It’s a way of life.

One thing you SHOULD also do to build more discipline into your life, is not only to build good habits by forcing yourself to do the hard work when you don’t feel like it, but it’s also to break bad habits even when you don’t feel like it, by opposition. If you’ve got negative habits, such as smoking, drinking too much alcohol or eating unhealthy foods or wasting time in front of the TV, play it like a game and take it as an opportunity to grow. You’ll see, it’ll be easier eventually.

Start small, and give it time! Be consistent in your habits. Discipline, as we’ll quickly see after, is not only about building, and adding on top of another until you become superman. It’s not necessarily adding a Lego brick on top of the other all day long until you’ve built a tower. Here, we’re speaking about the HABIT of putting on bricks.

But the most important part of it all is probably to start small, as it’s a key habit in anything you want to do in life. You can’t do any activity you haven’t practiced before or in a long-time, by going level 100. Just like anything worth achieving in life, you have to start SMALL.

A plant doesn’t grow overnight. Trees don’t produce fruits overnight neither. And money doesn’t fall from the sky. It’s all in the work, AND, in the consistency. It starts small, and goes toward a coveted goal. That’s life.

You can also use means to make it easier at first to build discipline. Using music for example whilst going to the gym could motivate you to hit a better workout. Through time, if you want to train your discipline, you can try to go to the gym for weeks without listening to music, to remove « motivation » so as to work solely on your disciplinary skills.

By the way, if you believe that discipline cannot be improved, discipline is « located » in the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that makes conscious decisions. It’s self-control. And, if you didn’t know, when you’re training a part of your brain, it actually grows and become stronger. Just like muscles! Great!

The limiting paradox

« One paradox with discipline is that you can’t just improve your discipline forever. » This belief is false! « Yes but, if you keep adding bricks, one day the tower will go toward a limit, it cannot be infinitely built ». And yes, we all have mental and physical limits, I can’t be « so disciplined » that I can run 3 marathons everyday, and you and I SHOULDN’T live our lives in the only goal of « training our discipline » by spending HOURS running and doing sports and taking cold showers and all that stuff.

Yes, discipline is great, but exert it in many areas of your life, and it’ll work fine through time. No need to go for marathons everyday to train your discipline, or else your life will be hell, and you’ll fuck up your body. I love David Goggins, but rest is important too, and balance too. Now, you can chose to be extra-disciplined or live a great life. It’s your choice. If you love discipline, the might be the definition of a great life, so go for it, honestly.

The false belief is that one day you’ll stagnate tho. This belief is ultimately false because you can ALWAYS train your discipline to become better. There is no possible limit on a daily basis when you truly think about it.

By being CONSISTENT, by going for a small run everyday and doing this and that, you’re still training your discipline, because you have to force yourself to do it everyday. Now, if you stagnate on a low-level of discipline, you’ll still be a loser, but if you train it hard everyday and you make it a consistent habit, you’ll definitely become a winner, because some days you’ll want to quit sooner than other days, and this is where the magic happens and where discipline is built.

Conclusion

To conclude, discipline is important but don’t overthink it. Train hard, occasionally go for extra-hard work, work hard on your projects and goals, and be a good man or woman of character. Remember also that through time, becoming a disciplined person will slowly start to be your identity as you start to work hard more and more, and with self-affirmations, you can truly shift your identity to a totally new person.

To conclude, thank you for reading, and I’ll see you next time. Bye.

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