- The difference between success and failure
is often nothing more than this,
people who have success,
also have self-discipline.
(upbeat music)
I'm Marisa Peer and today I'm going to show you
how to adopt the habits of self-discipline.
And when you adopt them, and make them your own,
success will follow.
I meet people all the time
that really struggle with self-discipline,
'cause they have this interesting belief
it's something you're born with,
and that's not true.
No baby is born with discipline,
in fact they find it very hard to do that.
Discipline is something you acquire.
It's like a muscle, if you work it, it gets better.
So I'm gonna tell you some absolute secrets
of people who appear to be naturally disciplined,
they're not.
I've worked with many, many Olympic athletes,
they don't go, "Yay it's snowing, I'm gonna get up,"
and go out and train today,
they have to keep saying, "I want that Olympic medal,"
and this is the price I'm going to pay
to get the Olympic medal.
So before you begin to adopt self-discipline,
take a minute and think what do I want,
what do I really, really, really want.
And then answer another question,
what price would I pay to get what I want?
Do you want a great relationship?
Well you have to go out, you can't sit at home,
you've got to go out and interact with people.
You want a great job, you gotta go for some interviews.
But there are some actually keys
that very, very disciplined people have.
And here is the most important one,
and this would change your life if you do it,
and I had to make myself do this,
it was not natural at all.
You must do what you don't want to do first.
People who are hugely successful do this,
they do the thing they hate first of all.
I worked with somebody who was morbidly obese,
and I said, you know, "You have to work out."
They went, "I hate working out," you know,
"I'm heavy, it's really uncomfortable."
I said, "No, not only have you got to do it,
"you've got to do it first."
And I had to do that too,
you see if you don't like going to the gym,
you go, "I'll go later."
But then something happens, the phone rings,
you eat something, you think, "Oh it's too late now."
When you go first, you think later, "Oh I've been,
"I went to the gym first, I feel like a winner."
You gotta make a very difficult call,
you've gotta ring someone who owes you money,
or confront someone, you don't wanna confront,
and you wait, and all day it's hanging over your head,
making you feel so bad.
But when you do it first, you feel like a winner,
because people who have discipline do this,
they do the thing they do not want to do first.
And I want you to start saying that.
I was giving a speech recently
and the guy who came on after me said,
"You know, I kept hearing my voice, it kept going,
"Marisa said do what you don't want to do first."
He said, "That has changed my entire business life."
And all my staff remember that too.
What do we not want to do, what's the worst job,
let's do that first and get it out of the way.
So that is secret one to having incredible self-discipline.
Tell yourself, make yourself do
what you don't want to do first.
And of course in the beginning this will be what you do,
but you know what will happen?
It starts to become who you are.
It becomes easy, it becomes seamless,
it's a bit like putting lenses in your eye,
it feels seriously odd
to suddenly jam your finger in your eye,
but if you do it every day, comes easy.
Because that's how habits are formed,
you make a habit, and then your habits make you,
so make your habits amazing.
So you've got habit one, here is habit two.
Take action every single day
in the direction of your goals,
and that doesn't mean work for 10 hours a day.
But even on a Saturday or a Sunday,
if you're building your business
then five minutes answering one email,
making one call, because that's what winners do,
they don't have a day off
when they are on their way to success.
They take action every single day
in the direction of their goals.
And here's point three,
and it possibly is the most important point of all,
delay gratification, delay the reward.
You see years ago we went to work
and our boss would go, "Hey, good job,
"you did really well today,"
but now a lot of us don't have a boss,
we work for ourselves, we work from home,
you may be a coach or a marketer,
you don't have a boss praising you.
Without praise, your praise muscle never really grows.
What happens when you work for yourself,
is halfway through you stop and you do something.
And what you have to do in the morning,
is go right, I love my cappuccino,
but I'm going to do something first,
make six calls, send out an email,
then the cappuccino is my reward.
And in the evening, you've gotta think of your dinner
and your TV as a reward, I'm going to reward myself.
And, you see, if you see it as a reward,
it makes you work better.
It's a big problem that we take the reward first,
I'm gonna eat that, have a nice dinner,
and I'll do all that other stuff later.
And you know what happens, later never comes.
So you have to now do what we naturally do as parents,
we say, "When you finish your homework,
"you can go out to play."
At school you have work, and then playtime,
a parent will say tidy up your room,
and then you might have ice cream.
So we are naturally wired to take the reward
after the work, but what's happened is
we now give ourselves the reward before the work
and then we don't feel any inspiration to do the work.
So I promise you, if you adopt these three habits,
it will change your life,
do what you don't want to do first.
Take action every day in the direction of your goals,
no matter how small the action is,
the smallness doesn't matter,
what matters is you are wiring your mind,
coding your mind, firing into your mind
the habits of natural winners,
and then you'll be a winner.
And who cares if it's unnatural, that's not important.
And point three, of course,
is delay gratification, delay your reward.
When I was writing my first book,
it was quite time consuming
and then my publisher rang me, that was,
"You know what, we're bringing the date forward
"by a whole month."
I'm like, "A whole month early?"
I was finding it really hard to finish it,
and for that month I couldn't read a paper,
I couldn't watch a movie,
my favourite series happened to be on at the time,
and I had to record it every day,
I couldn't watch it and I kept thinking,
when I've finished this, I'm gonna take the whole day off,
I'm gonna binge watch that whole series.
I had a little bag full of all the magazines
and periodicals that I couldn't read,
but I finished it, 'cause I kept thinking about that reward.
And then I did take a day
and watch everything I hadn't watched,
read everything I hadn't read.
And all my friends rang up and said,
"You must feel so great, you've finished your book."
I went, "Yeah, but you know what,
"I kind of miss it actually."
I'd really got into that discipline of getting up,
writing, working, and that brings me
to one more point I haven't mentioned.
And this is also very important,
when you're doing that work, praise yourself.
You know, when I wrote my book,
I had to keep saying this book is amazing,
this book is phenomenal,
every one is going to love this book.
That may sound incredibly arrogant,
but imagine if I'd said, "Oh my god,
"this book's not very good, in fact this bit sucks,"
and "What if nobody likes it and what if nobody buys it,
"and what if, oh my god it doesn't even get a mention."
You see the way your mind works,
is it believes everything you tell it,
your mind can't really future pace.
And if you do anything saying it probably won't work,
imagine you go on Tinder going,
"Oh I'm just gonna get ghosted,
"I know that's gonna happen, no one's gonna want me."
Or, "I'm gonna open a business,
"no one's going to buy my product.
"I'm gonna be a coach,
"but no one is gonna want to be coached by me,
"'cause I don't have enough experience."
Your mind cannot tell the difference
between fact and fiction,
what you tell your mind is real.
As far as your mind is concerned,
if you say it, it's true,
and that's why when I wrote my first book,
I said, "This is amazing, this is phenomenal,
"this is extraordinary."
And when I got it back and I read it,
I thought, "Do you know what, it's actually not."
I could really see in the first three chapters
that I'd never written a book before,
but then I could see after the first three
how it picked up,
but no one else seemed to see that,
because it was indeed a best seller.
I always imagined it in the,
I used to tell my little girl,
"One day you're gonna see mummy's book,
"in the front of this bookstore,"
and that's exactly what happened,
and we took pictures.
'Cause I could see it,
and if you can see it, you can achieve it.
So do that too when you're doing any task,
even if you're going to the gym and doing 300 sit-ups,
or the plank, don't go, "Oh my god this is painful,"
go, "I love this, my body loves it,
"my body loves every sit-up, my arms love the plank,
"my spine loves this."
When you're eating food,
tell yourself my body is digesting this.
So remember to praise yourself,
because these four things combined
will give you phenomenal, incredible self-discipline.
And self-discipline will change your life.
You know what's also amazing, when you adopt
and embrace and pick up those four habits.
At the end of every day, you'll have this great feeling,
I earned this, I deserve this, I'm worth it.
So many of us walk around with it differently,
I'm not worth it, I winged that,
I don't really deserve that, I don't deserve the praise,
I don't deserve the recognition.
I've worked with many, many, many international rock stars,
and they have a great ability
to destroy everything they've created because they say,
"Yes but, you know, I wrote that song in five minutes,
"someone said write a song about pain,
"I dashed it out, got millions of pounds,
"but I don't really feel I earned that.
"And you know what I did, I got rid of it all."
And I see that time after time after time again,
but when you feel you've earned it,
then you can keep it,
and you feel good about it,
I earned it, I deserve it, I'm worth it.
Those four habits will allow you
to begin and end every day knowing
that you are worth it.
Worth it is very different to worthless,
be worth it by embracing
those four habits of self-discipline, own them,
adopt them, if they're unnatural say,
"Well, I'll just keep doing this
"until it becomes natural," you know.
Come on, peeing in the toilet wasn't natural once,
feeding yourself wasn't natural,
but it became natural over time,
and that's exactly what self-discipline will do for you,
over time it will feel natural.
First it's what you do
and then it becomes who you are.
When it becomes who you are,
your life will be amazing,
so make your life amazing now,
make those habits your own.
So let me recap these four
life-changing habits of self-discipline.
Do what you don't want to do,
what you dislike, and do it first.
Take action every single day
on your way to success,
in the direction of your goals.
Delay gratification, reward yourself
after the event, after the task, and never before.
And massively praise yourself, big-up yourself,
build your praise muscle,
praise yourself the way you want someone else to praise you.
And I'd love you to comment,
if you already do any of those things comment now,
on which ones you do, or comment on which ones
are going to most excite you, or even challenge you.
Comment on how you feel about that,
which one is going to excite you the most.
And then look at other people's comments,
because we all learn and grow by hearing someone else,
go you know what, I've been doing that,
actually I learned that.
Key four, key one,
that's the one that's changed my life the most.
So remember you're helping other people
and they are helping you,
and again you're going to share this
with other people who'd love to have self-discipline.
You're going to like this,
because when you like it,
it helps me to provide more of this information for you.
And subscribe, and I'm gonna send you more
and more information on how you can be phenomenal,
and outstanding, and awesome.
Thanks for tuning in.