motivation doesn't last forever it's natural to feel motivated and inspired for days weeks
or even months but eventually you're going to experience some dips and slumps in that motivation
and that's completely normal and i experienced the same thing over the last five years or so i've
noticed a pattern where i'm super motivated usually for about 11 months of the year
and then one month of the year i'll lose that motivation and honestly it's usually triggered by
some kind of personal problem maybe a death in the family or something like that and that event
triggers me to be demotivated for a good few weeks and after a few weeks i'll get back to my normal
level of motivation so what happens when you're lacking in motivation that's when self-discipline
takes over but you're probably struggling with self-discipline which is why you've clicked on
this video and it's unsurprising because in a 2011 stress in america survey 27 of people believe a
lack of self-discipline is the biggest barrier to improving their life and in this video i'm
going to go through 13 ways that you can master self-discipline specifically if you're a student
most methods in which i've not mentioned on this channel before and a quick disclaimer i'm always
saying this your mental and physical health come first so if you're feeling unmotivated because
of depression or ptsd or medical illnesses like that then this video probably isn't for you but
if you're just feeling a bit uninspired or you're regularly having problems with procrastination
then hopefully this video will help you out the five second rule our brains are wired to keep
us alive and that's why we often have a fight or flight response in dangerous situations we usually
have a small window to react to something that makes us uncomfortable before our brain registers
what is actually happening and starts to convince us that we should move away from the danger
and giving us a reason why we shouldn't do it so for example when you need to study you might find
yourself overthinking it and putting it off and the more you put your studying off the more your
brain can convince you that you shouldn't study whereas when you needed to study if you followed
the five second rule and counted to five and straight away sat down at your desk to study just
that one action of counting to five could save you hours of procrastination mel robbins talks
quite a lot about the five second rule and how you implement it if i didn't move within five seconds
my brain would step in and talk me out of it every human being has a five second window
might even be shorter for you you have about a five second window in which you can move
from idea to action before your brain kicks into full gear and sabotages any change in behavior
because remember your brain is wired to stop you from doing things that are uncomfortable
or uncertain or scary start small when you first start to work on improving your self-discipline
it's often best to start small with one small habit at a time trying to do too much at once can
be overwhelming and you're less likely to stick to a new habit in the long term it's like when people
make their new year's resolutions if you set five new year's resolutions it's unlikely you'll be
able to stick to all five until the end of the year but if you only set one then your chance of
keeping it at the end of the year is far greater so one of the habits that i had in the last year
was when my alarm went off i would lie in bed for 30 minutes usually reading the news going through
social media checking emails that kind of thing so to make my day that bit more productive i reduced
that time from 30 minutes to 15 minutes therefore as soon as my alarm went off within 15 minutes of
it going off i will be out of bed and be getting ready to leave the house it's just a small change
but it's a change that makes every day that bit more productive and those 15 minutes add up
the power of free rule write down three of the most important tasks that you need to accomplish
that day they should be the three things that if you completed them they would have the biggest
positive impact on your life while free tasks may not seem like a lot they'll be far more attainable
than having a long task list with dozens of tasks to do and once you've finished your three most
important tasks you'll have built up a momentum throughout the day and you'll feel more motivated
to keep going it's a really simple idea but it's so easy to get sidetracked on other things that
need doing that might not be as important we often assume productivity means getting as much done as
possible in one day but actually productivity is about getting the important things done on
a consistent basis it's about maintaining a steady average speed on a few things not maximizing speed
on everything delayed gratification being patient is one of the most important ways
to build self-discipline especially in a world where we expect things to happen immediately
for example if i order something online on amazon i can receive it on the same day the problem with
living like this is that we expect immediate changes to happen instantly we want our grades
to improve right now we want success right now and when that doesn't happen we want to abandon it
this is also known as the instant gratification trap and is extremely destructive when you're
trying to build your self-discipline it's tempting to log into social media while you're studying and
you'll eventually no doubt end up procrastinating but it's important to remember the bigger picture
and the reason why you're studying instant gratification is when you sacrifice your
long-term goals for short-term pleasure and the more you're aware of this the stronger your
self-discipline will be you've probably heard of the marshmallow experiment where a group of
children are individually given a marshmallow and the researcher tells them if they can leave
the marshmallow alone for one minute then after that one minute they will receive two marshmallows
but if they eat the marshmallow straight away then they won't receive another theoretical physicist
michio kaku realized that delayed gratification is one of the biggest determinants of whether or not
someone will be successful in the future you say to yourself well that's a test for kids but then
you track them decade by decade by decade and then you find out oh my god these are the ones who go
to college the ones who hold out for that advanced degree that don't want that simple payoff now but
are going to delay gratification into the future and so i realized that that's the key to success
in life not just science visualization imagine how it will feel when it comes to results day and you
open up your grades and you see you've achieved well over what you're expecting imagine how it
will feel on graduation day or after you graduate and you land that scholarship or you're accepted
into one of the most prestigious universities in the country a good way of actively practicing this
is to grab a pen and paper and write down a list of all the things you gain when you stick to your
goals and the next time you're feeling vulnerable to procrastination spend a few minutes reading
over the list and if you want to take this one step further on the other side of the paper
you can write down the results if you continue to procrastinate failed exams failing the year
and having to retake it or not being accepted into your chosen university recover from your mistakes
we all give into procrastination every now and then but it's important that if you do have a
particularly unproductive day then you don't dwell on it too much move on quickly remember that the
next day is a completely fresh start and create an action plan so that you don't have another
unproductive day progress doesn't usually come in a straight line and just because you had an
unproductive day it doesn't mean that you're a failure making mistakes is all part of the
process to become a better and stronger person the way you recover from those unproductive days
is what matters the most as american football coach hermann edwards once said
stay focused your start does not determine how you're going to finish learn from your mistakes
and do better next time and eventually as you keep learning from your mistakes and you keep making
incremental improvements over the long run your self-discipline over the course of the year will
greatly improve schedule relaxation time we often end up procrastinating because we have more fun
and interesting things to do like scrolling through youtube or social media or watching
another series on netflix or playing video games at the same time we also need that relaxation
and downtime instead of taking this down time when you should be studying schedule it either in the
middle of the day or even better at the end of the day when all your studying has been done it
will give you something to look forward to once you have completed all your studying you'll feel
far more motivated to study when you realize that by the end of it you'll be rewarded manage your
thoughts on a typical day you might have hundreds of thoughts bouncing around your mind and some of
them might be negative self-critical dismissive or focus on your insecurities it's important
that you keep these negative and potentially destructive thoughts in check and that goes
the same for those thoughts that can eventually lead you down the rabbit hole of procrastination
we tend to function far better and are able to build self-discipline when we feel that we are
in control when we feel that we are in control of our thoughts and our actions and if you believe
that things are beyond your control then they probably will be but if you believe that you can
fend off daydreaming and distractions when you're studying then you probably can too and if you wake
up in the morning and you have the feeling of wanting to hit the snooze button firstly it's
important to realize that what you're actually doing and that hitting the snooze button can be
destructive to your overall productivity that day and stop that thought before it becomes an action
because once you realize that you are much bigger than your thoughts it's an incredibly powerful
mindset to have make discipline automatic as many temptations as possible to make your discipline
automatic if you struggle to wake up and go to the gym in the morning then lay your gym clothes
out next to your bed the night before the idea being that there are few barriers as possible
between you waking up and arriving at the gym and the same goes for studying i often hide my phone
behind my laptop when i'm working so it's less likely to distract me especially when i get a
notification pop-up out of sight out of mind when you remove all temptations from your environment
it's far easier to become more disciplined and more sustainable the key to becoming more
disciplined is to set up your life in a way where discipline isn't required as much become super
organized by becoming super organized you're far less likely to give in to decision fatigue
when your desk space around you is organized your mind becomes more relaxed and you're able to focus
better as a result which as a result makes it much more likely that you're able to stay disciplined
throughout the day because discipline is a finite resource it starts off high but slowly decreases
throughout the day at some point during the day our minds are simply far less likely to make the
right choices as we become more and more tired and mark zuckerberg is a great example of this he
wears the same t-shirt every day meaning there's one less decision that is needed to make and one
less problem draining his mental resource enjoy what you do if you find yourself struggling with
discipline when it comes to studying then make your studying more fun so that you don't need
discipline to study anymore this could involve studying with a friend or a small group of people
turning your study notes into a song snacking on brain food while you're studying or changing your
study environment to a library or coffee shop in fact i made a video recently on this exact topic
13 ways to make studying more fun you can click on the pop-up banner above to watch it
daily journal tony robbins has said that he has journaled for over 40 years and still continues
to write in his journal to this day he's mentioned a few times where it's during his journal sessions
where he finally found out his vision and made the changes to become the success he is today
so journaling can help you to stay consistent by keeping track of what has worked and what
you need to spend more time improving it's a way of measuring your performance and measuring your
self-discipline and it's really easy for us to decrease in productivity but not actually realize
it and like peter drucker said what gets measured gets managed eliminates but from your vocabulary
the one thing that's holding many people back from having incredibly strong self-discipline
is their buds it's easy to make up excuses and come up with reasons why we shouldn't do something
if we don't have a strong enough desire within ourselves to do it author and business consultant
ken blenchard wrote there's a difference between interest and commitment when you're interested in
doing something you do it when it's convenient when you're committed to something you accept
no excuses only results so commit yourself to studying make it a priority in your life because
once you do that your self-discipline will automatically increase recently i uploaded a video
on 50 powerful study tips in under 15 minutes you can click on the video on the screen to watch that
because if you are struggling with self-discipline when it comes to studying those 50 study tips
every single one of them can help you build your self-discipline and allow you to study harder
for longer if you like this video i think you're going to love that one so i'll see you over there