Hello!
Seiiti Arata.
The motivation industry is being quite successful.
Motivational posts on Instagram, inspiring videos on YouTube, stories about personal
growth on books, movies and tv shows are being shared millions of times over the social networks.
Please allow me to ask you an honest question.
Has this motivational stuff really helped you achieve any big goals?
I’m not talking about being cheered up when you come across one of these motivational
posts.
I’m talking about getting actual results.
Have you ever been able to achieve any of your biggest goals by motivation only?
There’s a good chance you haven’t, and that has an explanation.
Motivation is not sustainable.
When you have long-term goals, you need more than simple motivation.
You need discipline.
Discipline is the foundation to any great goal.
While motivation is a spark, discipline is a log that burns for days.
Motivational materials are like a spark to your mood.
Sometimes you’re feeling down, you don’t feel like doing anything, you could even be
sad.
Then, you watch a motivational video and get lightened up and start doing something.
The problem is that this encouragement goes away quickly.
Then, you’re back to the same old pattern and you’re in the need of a new motivational
thing to get cheered up again.
This way, from spark to spark, you’re living in a boredom and encouragement cycle.
One step forward, one back, then another step forward.
And you’re constantly depending on an external source to begin doing something.
Achieving great goals this way is almost impossible.
If you want to change your body, learn another language or start your own business, you’re
going to need a more steady and lasting fuel than motivation.
That fuel is called discipline.
Discipline is the ability to master oneself.
Disciplined people achieve better results than motivated people.
Abraham Lincoln used to say that discipline is the ability to master oneself.
It is a way of showing respect to your own dreams.
Discipline is the ability to say no to yourself.
Think about any goal that you have already set your mind into achieving, but that you
were never able to achieve.
Lose weight, learn how to play an instrument, quit smoking.
It doesn’t matter.
It’s more than likely that the reason for your failure was the lack of discipline, the
inability to say no to yourself.
For example, that moment when you were motivated, you said you wanted to lose some weight.
But after seeing what they were offering for dessert, you were unable to say no to your
desire to eat the pastry.
Then, you saw an inspiring before and after photo of someone who was able to lose weight…
and this motivational photo helped you get your motivation back.
The next day, without that motivational spark, you were unable to say no to laziness and
ordered pizza and a soft drink for lunch.
What we are discussing here is very simple and easy to understand.
But even if we do understand it, why can’t we be disciplined?
Why are we not able to stay on track until we achieve our final goal?
The answer is that we usually confuse discipline with suffering.
Discipline frees us from suffering.
A disciplined person doesn’t need to be suffering constantly to figure out what to
do.
Discipline is usually seen as suffering because we think that the journey to achieve a great
goal is always very hard.
Imagine having to stay away from eating pastries or pizzas in order to achieve your weight
loss goal?
Having to be disciplined seems like a misery.
But isn’t it a bigger misery having to decide at every meal if you will or will not be able
to say no to yourself?
Isn’t it an even bigger suffering seeing your body take a shape you don’t want it
to be?
Isn’t it a bigger misery losing your health?
Instead of seeing discipline as a misery, you can think about discipline as being truly
free.
Let’s go back to our example.
Let’s say you only decided you wanted to lose weight.
You added this goal to your life plan and followed the planning with discipline.
You may even have slipped here and there, but you haven’t had to decide at every meal
if you were going to follow the plan.
In this example, discipline makes you free.
You free yourself from having to make repetitive decisions, suffering because you don’t know
if you are going to be able to say no to yourself.
Discipline may seem easy at the beginning, when your comfort zone is starting to expand
to help you achieve your new behaviour pattern.
Then, discipline becomes the freedom for you to experience results that were just dreams
described in an abstract life plan.
To have discipline every day, you need reason, environment, planning and resilience.
Now that we understand that discipline is more effective than motivation when trying
to achieve long-term goals, you need to know how to have discipline every day.
The first step is to understand why.
Why do you want to achieve that specific goal?
Most of us go straight to “what”.
For some reason, we tell ourselves that we want a nice body.
We want to read more books.
We want to learn another language.
But, have you ever asked yourself “why” you want to do all that?
When you are clear about the reason behind your decision, it becomes much easier to maintain
discipline in the long-term.
The second step is to have an environment that encourages discipline.
Physical environment greatly influences the way you behave, and it can get in the way
or even help you stay disciplined.
For example, if you want to lose weight, what does an encouraging environment mean?
It means that you shouldn’t have any sweets or pastries at home.
If you want to quit smoking, an encouraging environment is where there are no other smokers
around.
If you want to learn a new language, an encouraging environment is where you have the chance to
talk with native speakers.
The third step to become a more disciplined person is to have a clear plan.
This plan should consider where you are in the present and what your final destination
is.
The fourth and final step to be disciplined is to have resilience.
You have to accept that, no matter how disciplined you are, you’re going to make mistakes.
You are not looking for perfection.
You’re looking for the ability to move forward even when you make those mistakes, without
depending on motivational stuff.
It is not easy to have discipline every single day.
In fact, developing discipline is one of the biggest challenges you are going to face.
Your brain will always prefer to save energy and stay in its comfort zone.
That’s why we usually prefer motivational stuff that is easy to watch or read.
But this short-term motivational stuff isn’t offering you what you need.
What you need is discipline.
You need to make a single choice and act accordingly, accepting your mistakes and learning from
them.
Do this day by day, week by week, and you will soon see that your very distant dreams
will come true.
If you want to create a full plan to make those dreams come true without depending on
motivation, I invite you to watch a special class from the Planning Your Life course by
visiting https://arata.se/planningyourlife right now.