Do you have difficulties staying disciplined? Asking yourself: Why can’t I force myself to do things ? Why am I not able to get things done?
Undoubtedly the lack of self-discipline is one of the most major causes of failure. Napoleon Hill wrote in his classic Think and Grow Rich: “Before you can control conditions, you must first control yourself“ (p. 140).
But once you have self-discipline, once you can control yourself you will achieve your goals. You’ll be able to lose weight, save money for a trip, stop smoking, start exercising.
Or just doing the things you like.
What is self discipline?
What does it mean to have self-discipline? According to Jay Shetty if you have Self-Discipline you can “Resist the Urges of the mind”. The Cambridge dictionary defined self-discipline as “the ability to make yourself do things when you should, even if you do not want to do them.”
How to force myself to do things?
Can’t force yourself to do the things you know you need to do?
There are many reasons why we don’t feel like doing anything. Like life being bleh, lack of motivation, laziness, numbness, being in a slump, period, the world being grey, the task is absolutely boring.
Sometimes we need a break.
Most of the time we need a kick in the butt.
Here are 10 Quick Tips on: How to push myself to do things I need to do?
- Start a task for 5 Minutes. Work on the task without interruption or distraction.
- Try using the Pomodoro Technique.
- Don’t give yourself time to think about starting a task. Close your eyes take a breath and start. (Your mind will come up with a thousand excuses, to why you should not start if you give it time)
- Break your task into tiny tasks. (Eg. not take a walk, instead put on your shoes)
- Do it with a partner, if you can’t force yourself to do it for yourself you might be able to force yourself if you do it for someone else.
- Just show up, for example, start writing that book (even if you only write 1 word, even if you just stare at the empty screen)
- Just pick 1 tiny task a day. Start small.
- Pretend like you are someone who loves doing that task. Slip into someone else’s role.
- Is it something you are afraid of and that’s why you can’t get yourself to start? (For me that’s sales calls urgh) I am afraid it’s all about practice. Until it becomes comfortable. Try it with a possible client that isn’t too important to you. Laugh if you fail.
- Don’t see the task as forcing yourself see it as training your body to do something.
Also Read:
- A Simple Productivity System to Get Stuff Done
- Best Tips to Stop Procrastination
- Techniques to Overcome Procrastination
- 11 Morning Routines of Successful Women to Inspire You
- How to Stop The Most Annoying, Useless, and Nasty Habit – Overthinking
- 109+ Success Quotes to Boost your Motivation
- 7 Tips on How to Use The Pomodoro Technique for Productivity
- How to Stick to Goals
How to develop self discipline ?
To build your self-discipline check out these 5 proven methods for gaining better self-control.
1. It starts with the right Mindset.
Who do you believe yourself to be? The truth is you are who you believe you are. So, do you think you are a self-disciplined person? Or do you believe you are the most undisciplined person out there? Do you believe you have no willpower to diet or do you believe you can achieve anything?
We all have a certain picture of ourselves in our mind. Our perception is our truth.
From birth onwards, people and experiences have programmed us to believe we are a certain way.
It’s our status quo. If we think we are someone undisciplined our brain will prove to us that indeed we are undisciplined. Each misstep will be registered in our brain as a proof.
Worst … behave according to our beliefs.
For example, I believe myself to be a punctual person. So, I try to be punctual, because it is the kind of person I am. I work hard to meet my deadlines and be perceived as punctual by others. Each time I am punctual my brain thinks “see I am a punctual person”.
Sadly, the same is true for negative beliefs.
So how can we relearn who we are?
With conscious experiences!
Get into situations where you have to show discipline and consciously take note that you indeed have been disciplined.
The more often you experience yourself as a disciplined person the more you will believe you are disciplined.
What to do?
Make a list and make an X every time you practice self-discipline. You’d be surprised about how well you are already doing. You will see you are already a pretty self-disciplined person!
2. Discipline is learned!
As GaryVee said discipline is a learned behavior. So when you ask yourself: Why do i have no discipline ? It’s probably because you haven’t learned that behavior yet. In order to become disciplined, you have to start doing.
Jay Shetty explained we have a monkey brain and a monk’s brain. We receive outside input through our senses such as touch, sound, vision, hearing, and smell. Those senses cause our monkey brain to react according to past experiences, if and only if our monk brain doesn’t interfere.
So, our monk brain is our guardian. He is the one who has Self-Discipline.
Sadly, our monk has become a little lazy or he’s been on a vacation lately. So, it’s time to get him back on track.
Jay Shetty uses the 5R Method:
Reason:
First, you need a powerful enough reason why you should be disciplined to achieve your goal. This reason has to be deep and it has to be real. It’s not good enough to say I want to lose weight, because I want to lose weight.
Research:
Next, you need to do research. Find out who already achieved what you want to achieve. Listen to podcasts and read books. Somewhere out there someone knows how you can get to where you want to go. Ask that person. Or read about it. The more proof your brain has it’s possible and the more you’ll think about achieving your goal. It will be more likely that you stay disciplined.
Repetition:
Set small steps and make those daily steps a priority. Small steps help you be consistent. They don’t cause as much mental resistance.
Responsibility:
Achieve your goal with someone. A partner. So, you feel responsible. Maybe you won’t have enough discipline to work for yourself, but you don’t want to let your partner down.
Reward:
Lastly, recognize how far you’ve come. Recognize when you did well and how much better you’ve already become and reward yourself.
Dean Graziosi stays disciplined through the following method:
- Know what is important to do? What do you want more of in life? What should you be doing?
- Next, decide to just do that. Don’t overwhelm yourself with a broad range of to-dos.
- Schedule your day and don’t let your day schedule your life.
- Stick to the schedule!
- You always should have hard deadlines. You need an exact time when you are to reach the next level.
- Take a break after a hard 2 hours otherwise you get drained. He mentioned that around 5 Productive hours a day is realistic.
- Have the proper mindset.
- Use Systems and Processes that lead you towards your goal.
- Do proactive Planning. We should take more time on planning than on actually doing it. So we do the right things at the right time.
[Read: How to become Proactive – Create your “Proactive Personality”]
[Read: Start Successful into the new year – A Productivity System]
3. Do you really want it bad enough?
“People talk about wanting to win but they don’t actually want to win” is what GaryVee said. Sometimes we talk about plans and goals more in a sense of dreaming.
We say we want to travel the world but to actually travel would mean we would have to sacrifice something we aren’t willing to sacrifice. Like time with family. Our stable job.
Before you make a goal and try to be disciplined find out if it is really what you want or is it something others expect of you? It will be hard to stay disciplined when you unconsciously dislike the goal.
If it feels like you are making a sacrifice it might not be the right goal for you.
4. Get your basic needs met first.
According to Mel Robbins, “our willpower is not at some constant level all day, waiting around for us to use it”.
It gets weaker with decisions we make, and it gets weaker when we don’t meet our basic needs.
It’s a lot harder to have the discipline to work out when you had four hours of sleep and when you are hungry it will be difficult to have the discipline to study. You can find your basic needs in Maslow’s Pyramid of Needs
5. Get Rid of Distractions
Last but not least get rid of distractions. It will be a lot easier when you work in a room without distractions and order.
Remove all the distractions, such as your phone or at least turn off the messengers. Your favorite games, comic books, sweets if you want to go on a diet.
Netflix, social media and youtube are other distractions that might exhaust your self-discipline.
So to Sum it Up
- Get the Right Mindset
- Learn Self-Discipline through experiences
- Make sure it’s really what you want
- Get your basic needs met first
- Get Rid of Distractions
So that’s it for today. Hope we answered the question: How to build self discipline and how to force myself to do things . The next time you think Why can’t I just do things? reread this post for a little kick in the butt 😉 For updates follow us on:
Love from Germany,
Julia and Carina
What a fantastic article! I shared it. I absolutely loved that you included the Napoleon Hill quote: “Before you can control conditions, you must first control yourself“ (p. 140).
This article is filled with super helpful tips people can actually implement. Followed you as well thanks for sharing this! 🙂
Thanks that’s so sweet 🙂 We always try to give practical tips that actually work for us. 🙂