If you have to force yourself to do it, you will lose.
That's what most people get wrong about discipline. They hear that word… discipline… and a montage of grueling workouts with David Goggins running and screaming starts playing in their mind. They think they need to lash themselves to do the work that leads to something good in their life.
"The pain of discipline must outweigh the pain of laziness" has a lot of truth to it, as does struggle being the part of a story worth telling, but most successful people didn't hate the entire journey. In fact, it was fun to them. They wanted to do the hard thing. And that points to a massive insight:
You are already disciplined toward the exact goals you are supposed to be.
That's how the mind works.
> Goals are conditioned into your mind by your environment
> Your goals become your filter for reality, shaping what you focus on and what you forget
> Your brain helps you notice and remember information that helps achieve those goals
> Naturally, you act toward those goals and your identity solidifies
Discipline is a feature of identity
Someone who deeply identifies as a good student (after an entire childhood of their parents telling them they should pursue that goal) doesn't have to force themselves to study for 12 hours a day. It's just who they are.
A bodybuilder who went through a breakup and was tired of having low self-confidence doesn't struggle to eat healthy or show up to the gym every day. In fact, it is painful if they don't. Because if they don't, they aren't any closer to their goal, and since that goal is so intertwined with who they are, they feel as if their survival is at stake, because it is. Humans survive on both the physical and conceptual level (genetics and memetics, we feel threatened if something important to us is threatened, no matter if it's our pet dog or pet belief).
This is where it gets interesting.
A gamer doesn't have to force themselves to stare at the computer and perform for multiple hours at a time. Someone who loves a TV show will lie down and binge-watch the entire series. Someone who procrastinates their work – because that goal doesn't align with them – will endlessly scroll their phone because their goal is to not achieve their goal.
These people aren't "lazy," they're arguably self-disciplined, just toward a goal that results in immediate reward. That's what discipline is, no? Persistent effort toward a goal. And boy is the average person persistent toward a mediocre life. Yes, most people are simply unconscious of the fact that their desire for comfort outweighs their desire for change. It is, in fact, their goal.
"But Dan! Those are easy and comfortable! They don’t take effort to do!"
Sure, and writing every day is comfortable for me. It’s more painful for me not to go to the gym than it is to go to the gym. I try to play video games like I did when I was younger and I just can't. They're boring and overstimulating. I have better things to do.
Human behavior is teleological. Cybernetic. The mind is a goal-achieving machine. We interpret the world with our identity as the lens, and the goals conditioned into our minds shape the behavior that forges who we are.
If we can understand this process, or reverse engineer it, we can leverage it to achieve nearly impossible goals.
You're reading this because you are trying to force yourself to be disciplined. But that will never work. Whether you're trying to make more money or study for your exams, if you follow this process, you won't have to worry about distractions or procrastination.
Limbo is the laboratory
The reason you want to be disciplined is that you've exhausted your current stage of life.
You're starting to notice that you've stalled out.
You're starting to notice that every day is the same as the last.
You're starting to notice that if you keep doing the same things, you won't achieve the life you want.
You're in limbo, and you don't want to be there anymore.
It's painful. But you misinterpret that pain and think of the first solution that comes to mind: be more disciplined. This is where most people get stuck in a loop of forcing themselves to do something they don't want to do, just to quit two weeks later and go back to the life they swore against.
Pain is the signal that change is happening.
The way out is to lean in. To become aware of how painful your current life is. Because once the pain of where you are outweighs the pain of where you want to be, discipline is no longer painful, because you don't have to force yourself to do it.
Step one is to write out:
- Everything you hate about your current life (I don't want to hear about positive thinking right now, you're wrong).
- Exactly what kind of life you will have if you don't change those things.
Then, sit with it for a week. Contemplate it. Go on a walk and let your mind dance with those ideas. After some time, and if you don't hide from the pain, you will start the next chapter of your life.
If that doesn't work, there's a bit more we can do.
Discipline isn't built, it's discovered
I've been training in the gym for about 12 years now.
I've been writing every day for about 5.
I've walked 10k steps every day for about 4.
For all of the above, the first time I tried to form the habit, I fell off multiple times. I remember being invited on a walk and thinking it was for senile old people. I was confirming the thoughts that helped me achieve the goal of staying the same. I didn't want to do those things but felt like I had to. When I finally formed the habit, it was different than the other times I when I tried to force it. They weren't "hard" to do. They were the byproduct of experimentation and discovery.
All of those habits became a part of my life for 3 specific reasons:
- I was deeply aware of a painful problem in my life
- I searched for evidence to support a desirable future version of myself
- I changed my physical and digital environments to solidify my new identity
- I blocked out time during the week to do those things as if I were going to be doing them for the rest of my life
In middle school, my self-confidence was abysmal. I was extremely tall and lanky. I felt awkward in my own skin, so I wanted to change that. I used that pain as motivation to educate myself on fitness and nutrition. I even remember reading "Nutrient Timing For Peak Performance" on my bus rides to school. I started doing push-ups in my room, started going to after-school weights, and my love for the gym picked up from there.
To change my environment, every day after I got home from school, I would go straight to the computer and watch 2-3 of my favorite fitness vloggers on YouTube. They'd give me programs, exercises, and diet tips to try. They were my role models as a teenager, and they shaped most of what I do today. Don't neglect the positive power of social media.
This entire time, I didn't pick a random diet or training routine while forcing myself to stick with it because someone told me it was good to do. The common theme with people who are dissatisfied with their life is that they allow the confident advice of others to shape the majority of it.
I treated this as a period of discovery and experimentation.
I was collecting vision. I was test-driving pieces of my future self.
I read the nutrition book because it sounded interesting. I couldn't help but be curious. It could solve my problem. As I read it, I wanted to try certain novel tactics I was learning, like eating 50g of simple carbs and 25g of protein before exercise like some Olympic athletes do. (This is how I read most books by the way. I don't force myself to read anything, and I don't read consistently. I read books that I can't help but read, and I'm okay with going long periods without reading a thing.)
As I watched fitness vlogs, I found new exercises to try, and I was always excited to try them. This wasn't difficult. It didn't require force. It was fun to try things that could change my life. With time, all of the little things I learned morphed into a deep understanding of fitness and nutrition.
I became my own teacher and trainer.
The problem here is that (1) most people aren't hyper aware of a painful problem in their life, so their mind doesn't release dopamine at the sight of a potential solution and (2) they learn without experimentation, so they never make the progress necessary to act as a feedback loop that keeps them motivated.
How to engineer an identity
Step one is recognition. Who you are determines what you consider important. You must first recognize that you are pursuing a series of goals whether you are conscious of them or not. Those goals frame how you interpret reality, and you usually notice things that confirm your current way of life.
The goals your mind operates on stem from conditioning, and conditioning stems from your environment. Your parents, teachers, and culture have put you on a path that is heading toward a dead end.
Step two is strategic dissonance. To avoid getting trapped in a state of feeling lost – limbo – you let the divide between who you are and who you want to be grow wider. You cultivate dissatisfaction with your current lifestyle by noticing where you will end up if you don't change.
By becoming aware of the problems in your life, you prime your mind for pattern recognition. Your brain starts to confirm that change is the right thing to do and helps you notice the information that can aid in that.
Step three is environment engineering. Unfollow people who don't put out information that helps you achieve a better life. Throw away the food that you allow yourself to eat at 3am. Pull out a paper and map out exactly what you are going to do that week down to the hour. Review and iterate every week. You need that feedback loop.
Immerse yourself in the people, places, and things that provide you with things to try. Follow new accounts even if you disagree with them. Scroll through Amazon until you find a book that sounds interesting, even if you only end up reading the first few pages. Intention is what matters. Intention is you giving a direction for your mind to rewire itself toward.
Step four is self-experimentation. Because problems that aren't solved through experimentation aren't solved for good. Rather than being assigned another goal, you try everything until you find the one thing that you can't pull yourself away from. Then, you repeat that process until it becomes who you are.
Thank you for reading.
– Dan