So last night,
I was walking through the streets here of Prague and
talking to my friend about
how I used to be so much more disciplined
and comfortable with being uncomfortable.
The example I used is, back home in Vancouver,
I would get up and didn't matter if it was dark,
rainy, cold outside,
I would get up for a morning run and run you know,
five kilometers in the rain, it didn't matter.
And how I had much more of that kind of discipline
to follow through on things. Now, on the flip side,
I was a lot stupider in terms of
how I spent at discipline,
and not being as strategic in that.
But regardless, in this video,
what I want to go through is
some of the ways that you can build your discipline
and how to basically be more disciplined,
and these are things that I've done in the past
and I'm starting to do again
to rebuild that discipline that I used to have more of.
The first thing to understand is that
discipline is a muscle,
and so we have a limited amount of it.
There was a study done about, I don't know,
some years ago, I don't remember,
I'm not a details guy, you know that,
there's a study done where they had people come in
to solve an unsolvable math problem.
So the whole point of the test was just to see
how long people would try before they give up,
basically testing their determination or discipline.
In the waiting room, you had two different setups.
In one group, there was a table of radishes
and they were told, "Hey,
don't eat those radishes while you're waiting,"
not a very hard task right?
You don't use a lot of discipline to not eat radishes.
The other group, they had freshly baked cookies
put out in front of them.
You know that cookie smell and they were told,
"Don't eat the cookies no matter what."
So you have these people
sitting in a waiting room for 20 minutes,
well there's these freshly baked cookies
in front of them that they can't eat.
Guess what this does. It uses discipline.
Basically, every second you're kind of telling yourself,
"Don't eat that, don't eat that, don't eat that."
And so when they took the test, the theory was,
is that they would have less discipline and
this is what happened.
So the people who were in the cookies waiting room
actually spent about half the time if I remember right,
it was about 12 minutes
they would spend on the problem,
whereas the people who were in the radishes group
spent 20 minutes on the problem.
That's a significant drop in discipline
just based on resisting cookies.
So what this study basically told us
and it's since been duplicated again, is that
we have a limited amount of willpower or discipline.
So you want to keep this in mind always,
in terms of being strategic with it
and how you use it.
This is my first tip around it, is to
not have a lot of small decisions in your day.
No, don't wake up and have to think everyday about,
"What should I eat for breakfast?"
Don't have unhealthy breakfast in your house,
and, healthy breakfast, right?
Because in every day, you have a decision to make of,
"Do I eat the unhealthy food or the healthy food?"
where if you only kept the healthy food,
then you don't have to make that decision
and you actually save that discipline.
So the more you can remove little decisions
from your day in terms of,
especially decisions around temptations,
eliminate the temptation from your life
and you'll save that discipline.
Now, the other thing to keep in mind is that
you can build this and basically,
the more you are disciplined,
basically, and the way I define this is
following through on what you say you will do.
Your word with yourself.
So the more you trust yourself to follow through,
I believe, the easier it becomes
to keep following through.
So when you build up a strong word,
you know, your word is your bond,
and you have this with yourself, so you say,
"Tomorrow I'm going to wake up at 8:00am
and I'm going to go for a run."
If you do that time and time again,
that word strengthens and it means a lot for you.
So, building up your word
to mean something for yourself
can be a really positive way to build your discipline.
I suggest starting really small with this.
Start with things you know you can do. Little things.
I should give you an example here, right?
So you could do it where,
it would drain your discipline
but it would be building that muscle,
is you could get a candy or a treat or something
that you really like and have it sitting
on your kitchen table, and just commit to not eating it.
"I will not eat this", and kind of practice
actually doing what you will say, right?"
Building up that willpower.
You could also do it in small things like,
committing to go for a walk for 15 minutes
every day at a certain time, or whatever that is,
but something where you know
it will be a little bit of a challenge
but you can follow through.
And then, you can gradually grow this
and do more and more and more, and
this is a really good way to build up
basically your word, and your follow-through
which is building up your discipline.
There's another thing here
that I've written on this paper:
'extremes and must', that's what it is.
So what I have found personally is that,
having an extreme clear black and white rule
is quite easy for me to follow,
to be disciplined if you will.
Whereas if you give yourself, if I give myself gray area,
things get bad pretty quick.
I've never ever been able to follow sort of a
count your calories, try to eat healthy
that sort of thing diet, but I've been able to
just quit eating wheat entirely or
take a year and a half off drinking,
but send me out on a Friday night and say, "Hey,
just have three drinks,"
good luck at stopping at three,
so luckily I'm in Prague, there's no need to drive here,
beer's cheap, but this is the thing.
I think a lot of people find this
where if you have a very clear goal,
you don't have to use any discipline or willpower
to deal with it. If you're going to the bar
and you say, "I do not drink.
I'm out with my friends but I do not drink."
You're not really using any willpower.
This is my experience, is that
when I set this clear rule,
I didn't have to think about it.
I just didn't drink, and it made it really easy
to keep that, whereas if you're saying I'm going to
try to drink less or you know, something like that,
I'm going to try to eat healthier,
I'm going to try to wake up earlier,
there's so much leeway there that
not only are you unlikely to follow through,
but you're going to burn all your willpower
kind of fighting this urge to break the rule.
Whereas if the rule is set, there is no breaking it,
there's no changing it,
then it's pretty easy to follow through I would say,
because there isn't a debate.
There is either, "Does my word means something?"
or "Does it not?"
If you follow the advice of
making your word count with yourself,
only saying things you plan to do,
and this is a process of building that up,
but then your word will mean something
and you can set a clear rule for yourself,
and then follow through. I found that
kind of the best way to be disciplined
and to follow through on things you want to do.
So to recap and give you some steps to follow,
first, eliminate day-to-day willpower draining decisions
that are unnecessary. If you love chocolate
like I might, don't keep chocolate in your house
that you don't want to eat,
or if you are going to keep it, keep it somewhere hidden
so you're not staring at it everyday,
trying to not eat it.
Number two, take small steps to build up your word
to mean something, which is essentially
building up your discipline. So find a way day-to-day
to do little things, to say you'll do it,
and then to do it. Along the same line,
I didn't mention this one in the video actually,
but stop saying you'll do things you know you won't do
because you just watered down your word
and make it meaningless. So if you know
that you're not going to go to the gym,
don't say, "I'm going to go to the gym,"
because it will water down your word,
it will become meaningless not only to you,
but to the people in your life. So start saying things
that you know you're going to do and stop saying things
that you know you're probably not going to do
and leave it open. If you want to go to the gym,
but you're not sure if you will, don't say,
"I'm going to the gym," just kind of leave it there
until you're ready to commit to actually going and say,
"I am going to do this. I'm going to be on time.
I'm going to eat healthy," whatever.
Okay, so number two again,
build your word to mean something by
saying things you're going to do and
stop saying things you're not going to do.
The third thing is try using extreme.
So doing bigger, clear black & white rules for yourself.
They don't always have to be extreme,
the most important thing is that they're clear.
Extremes, for me, work well
because they're kind of motivating, it's a challenge,
but you don't have to be extreme,
it can just be a very clear rule.
I don't do this, I do do this,
and don't give yourself any room,
any margins to play with,
any debate because that drains your willpower
and it makes it much less likely going to succeed.
Cool? Ready to be more disciplined? Good.
I suggest your first task right now,
is to use that discipline, subscribe to my channel,
and hopefully I'll see you in some other videos.
Thanks again for watching and
I hope this video has been helpful in
figuring up some ways to become more disciplined
and get more done.