6 Easy Steps on How To Be Disciplined

Do you want to know how to be disciplined so you can crush your goals with an iron fist?

If so, read on because I am going to show you how you can use self-discipline to do just that starting today.

Now, let me make an important disclaimer before we get into the content:

You are going to have to put in a great effort to make this work.

Let me say that one more time:

You are going to have to put in a great effort to make this work.

Discipline requires work.

This means work consistently over time to achieve what you want to achieve.

So, this means that if you love using your smartphone often, you are going to have to put it away for some time while you do something important.

If not, this program will not work.

With that said, let’s get right into the content.

What Is Self-Discipline

Self-discipline is defined as the ability to direct your daily actions towards achieving a goal you have regardless of whether or not you want to do the required work on that day or not.

I encourage you to read that sentence again because it is extremely critical that you understand that definition so the rest of this post falls into place.

Let’s face it.

There will be days when you simply don’t want to get out of bed and you just want to do nothing all day.

That’s natural.

However, let’s also see this from the other side of the table.

The world doesn’t care about whether you want to sleep in or not.

In the vast majority of cases, they simply won’t pay for that.

Therefore, you MUST be willing to push through the temptation to succumb to the easy path and persevere through the times when you don’t want to do the work.

This is where self-discipline comes into play.

Self-discipline allows you to push through these barriers of not wanting to work since you don’t feel like it.

Therefore, you must develop it if you want to thrive in your field, let alone keep up with the pace of what is going on.

With that explanation out of the way, let me show you the procedure for being disciplined.

Step 1: Commit to Being Self-Disciplined

Commitment is the first step to getting anything done.

Why?

Because without commitment, you don’t have your actions directed towards a goal.

You put a half effort into it when you don’t truly commit to what you are doing.

This is why most people fall shorter than what they are capable of. They just don’t take the extra step they could’ve taken to reach their desired goals.

On top of this, committing to the concept of being self-disciplined allows you to hold yourself accountable for reaching your goals.

Accountability is what drives you to take action in anything that you do.

Take a job for instance. If you are at a job and the boss wants you to follow instructions and punishes you for not following the instructions, would you follow them?

Exactly.

The same thing with self-discipline.

Committing to self-discipline means committing to following every single instruction to achieve the desired outcome you set for yourself.

If you don’t follow every single instruction required to achieve your desired outcome, guess what the punishment is?

Exactly.

That’s why committing to self-discipline and following through with what you are supposed to do are both extremely important things.

This is the essence of accomplishing what you want to accomplish.

Sure, there will be days when you don’t feel like getting out of bed.

But with the fire under your chair ready to burn you if you don’t get the job done, it is more important than ever to get up, follow everything that is expected of you to achieve your goal, and put your nose down and achieve it.

Otherwise, you will end up being like everyone else fighting for scraps.

You certainly don’t want that.

Of course, you might try disciplining yourself to work for 90 minutes straight at first and expecting to come out with a great result.

If you are someone who cannot wait another 5 minutes to check your email messages, you need to start small and build yourself up.

This is what is going to get covered in the next section of this post.

Step 2: Start Small and Get Bigger

Here’s the thing with us humans:

We LOVE working in increments.

We don’t like to take the whole bite off of the pie in one shot.

We want to be able to gradually adjust to what we are doing and know how to work with it.

Therefore, I recommend that if you are starting with the process of self-discipline, especially if you are that constant email checker, you ought to break your work sessions up into little pieces.

Let me give you an example.

If you can’t stand 5 minutes without looking at your phone and checking Instagram for that new update on a cat video, try staying disciplined with what you need to do for 5 minutes.

Resist the urge to check up on that new video for 5 minutes.

Take a break for 2 minutes afterward and then try focusing again for another 5 minutes and so on.

If you follow this process, you will eventually get very comfortable with what you are doing and you can move onto the next phase, which is to focus for 10 minutes and get comfortable with that and increase your break while you are at it (by 1.11 minutes for each 5-minute increment).

Eventually, you will move up in 5-minute increments each week to reach 90 minutes followed by a 20-minute break, which is the research-backed recommendation of scheduling your time to maximize your productivity.

What you are doing here is called progressive overload.

This is the same concept that bodybuilders use to build muscle over time, hence those muscular physiques you see in guys.

Your body is gradually adapting to more unpleasant circumstances.

It can’t focus for 90 minutes straight if it isn’t able to focus for 5 minutes straight.

You gradually build your weight up over time to the point where it can handle anything.

Just like how a baby learns to crawl before it can walk and before it can run.

Same thing here.

If you are disciplined with how you gradually build up your ability to focus on unpleasant tasks, you will be pleasantly surprised by the results you see when it comes to getting to that 90-minute mark and becoming supremely focused on what you are doing.

And when you get big, you’ll be a MONSTER!

THAT’S what you should aim for, pal!

Now, here comes the big secret of all disciplined people.

If you get this, you’ll know how to be disciplined.

Read on 😉 

Step 3: Keep Your Eye on the Prize (aka The Secret To Self-Discipline)

Let me tell you something about focus:

Focus is the KEY to getting anything that you want.

Read that sentence again so you can process that.

When you are lasered in on a goal, you go all-in on it and you take massive action to win.

This is what all of the greats do to accomplish what they set out to accomplish.

They identify a goal and put in all of their energy (well, if you have a job, as much as you can) to achieve the goal.

Let me elaborate on a few examples for you so you can see what I mean.

Kobe Bryant had a vision.

If you are not a basketball fan, he had a vision of being the greatest basketball player ever, comparable to Jordan.

He would work relentlessly on his game, perfecting every move of his craft until he could get it all correct by game time.

He was obsessed with being the best.

He would be drenched in sweat at 5 am while his fellow teammates would get to the gym at 9 am.

That is how crazy obsessed he was.

On the court, he would eat you alive every chance he had.

Players feared him.

And at practice, he’d destroy his teammates unremorsefully.

But all of this worked.

He’d go on to win 5 NBA Championships, an NBA MVP Award, 2 NBA Finals MVPs, and 11 All NBA First Team selections.

This is truly remarkable.

You can’t earn this without a truly defined vision that you work relentlessly towards.

Another famous example is Elon Musk.

His vision is to put people on Mars.

Over the years, he had and still has this vision in mind.

According to his testimonial, he would work 22 hour days committing to this vision and he would sacrifice everything, including his sanity, to make it a reality.

Of course, he’s not at Mars yet, but what he has done with focusing his efforts on getting to Mars is even more remarkable than what Kobe Bryant could ever dream.

He put astronauts into space, he became the richest man in the world, and above all, he is going after what he wants every single day.

And this is what you need to do to get to where you want to go.

Focus on a goal and devote all of your free time to pursuing this goal and making it come to fruition.

Work RELENTLESSLY towards that goal and incorporate the right habits towards achieving the goal.

Once you do this and all of the nitty-gritty details you have to master along the way, you will achieve success.

It’s inevitable if you do this; I promise you.

Whatever training you need, find out what it is.

You must get the right training from day one.

If you can’t afford it right now, create a plan to be able to afford it ASAP.

Your goals cannot wait!

You can’t procrastinate!

Procrastination will EAT you alive and you’ll grow up to be an old man/woman with regret.

Don’t do that.

Step 4: Remove Distractions

Do you know that thing in your pocket?

How many times do you use that thing at the most random times?

Exactly.

Now, do you sometimes use it when you are not supposed to?

Exactly.

Look, distractions take away from life in more ways than you can imagine.

They zap the potential out of you since they take your precious asset away.

Do you know what your most precious asset is?

Time.

The more time you spend on unproductive activities, the less time you will have in the future to enjoy what you want to enjoy.

Why is this the case?

Because your ability to provide value is negatively affected.

When you spend time on distractions, you take time away from doing what you are supposed to do, and instead, you devote it to something that will not provide you long-term value.

This is dangerous since you want to spend every productive hour working towards what you want to accomplish.

Now if you don’t understand this point, this of it this way:

Do you like waiting in line?

Be honest. Put your thoughts in the comments below.

Here’s the deal with waiting in line:

You hate waiting in line because it forces you to spend your time (in most cases) on things that do not benefit you at all.

This might include aimlessly looking at something in the sky, dozing off in confusion as to why you are in line in the first place, and, well, being static.

Distractions are a lot like waiting in line.

You spend waking hours on something that is not productive towards your future and the punishment is that you have less time to work towards what you want to accomplish.

This is a recipe for not being disciplined.

Disciplined people don’t do that.

They follow the same routine every day, with this routine being proven to provide value in the form of eventually reaching their goals.

And this is what you have to realize.

Don’t spend time on things that will get you nowhere in life.

Spend them on things that matter and things that will drive you forward.

This lends itself to the next step in being disciplined, which is to:

Step 5: Take Consistent Action Every Day

This is critical.

Without consistency, you will not achieve any success whatsoever.

Period.

Studies of successful people and other subjects show that consistency is what breeds success in what they do.

Why?

Because routines produce the same result over and over again.

Individually, these results are small.

But over time, they start to add up to something big and admirable.

And that’s where consistency comes into play.

Being consistent allows you to add up these small results over time and achieve what you want to achieve.

It’s like a team that wins regular-season games regularly.

At first glance, each game is just another game.

But when you add them up and compare the total number of wins to the other teams, you will start to see a noticeable difference in performance.

And this stems from putting consistency into action.

Now, from a sports perspective, winning regular-season games is just the start; the playoffs come next, which is where the real test begins.

But that was just to prove the point of consistency breeding significant results.

After all, in an 82 game season, you’d much rather have 62 wins and make the playoffs rather than 20 and be in the basement of the league!

Now here is something you should always do whenever you have a goal, big or small:

Step 6: Think Big and Don’t Quit

That’s right.

Whenever you are going to think, think big.

Why?

Because you will push yourself further than what you initially set for yourself and hence, it will make it easier for you to achieve your goals.

Anyone who has accomplished something great did so because they thought about the biggest goal that they could have imagined.

Think of any entrepreneur, athlete, the smartest kid in school, etc.

I can assure you that the only reason they were able to achieve the results they were able to achieve was that they thought BIG.

Then, everything else pieced itself together.

The magnitude of your vision sets the course for the magnitude of your actions.

Where you want to go dictates your effort.

If you want to go to many places, you’ll put a HUGE effort into what you are doing.

If you don’t want to go many places, you’ll put forth a lackluster effort into what you are doing.

And to prove this point, consider this:

Let’s imagine that you want to sit at home all day.

How much effort are you going to put into your goals?

None at all.

How far do these couch potatoes go?

Exactly.

Now, how much effort would you have to put in if you wanted to, say, become President of the United States?

Enormous is an understatement.

And you’ll be fully assured that your discipline will be top-notch to achieve that goal since one wrong move means no office for you.

Thinking big increases your discipline ten-fold.

So you should think as outrageously as possible.

Even if you fail, you will have achieved more than everyone else.

And chances are, your life situation will be great as a result of your thinking.

Also, don’t forget this:

Don’t quit.

Quitting is the sign that you don’t care anymore.

If you quit, you will only harm yourself at the end of the day.

And quitters never win.

Never.

So, therefore, quitting isn’t an option if you want to achieve any goal you set out for yourself.

And think of all of the time you would have wasted if you quit on what you wanted.

When you think about it, that would suck so bad.

So don’t let that be you.

In a nutshell, to be disciplined, you have to think big.

It will motivate you to keep going when the going gets tough (and it will).

It’ll be your driving force to get you over the mountain between you and your dreams.

So do it.

I hope this post helped you become more disciplined and I hope it gave you the tool necessary to take life behind the horns and kick butt in every aspect of your life.

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Until next time,

This is Evan signing off.

PS: Comment below with any results you got from the post; it’d be great to know!