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These four things will 10x your discipline in a week
(This will change your life)
Do you find it hard to be disciplined? I did for years and still do. Here’s what refuels me when discipline is the last thing on my mind:
1. Make the alternative painful.
In Roman times, legionnaires developed chiselled, muscular bodies, not because Chad Thundercock on Twitter told them to get ripped because ‘girls and stuff,’ but because they knew they HAD to.
It was either face weakness and death in battle or humiliating punishment from their superiors.
You will be disciplined when you drastically minimise your options like this. It’s do or bust.
How to make the alternative painful in the modern age?
- Pay an accountability partner money if you fail.
- Make your progress public, so you avoid falling short when everyone’s watching.
- Burn your ships — meaning you have no plan B or escape plan. You either succeed or face the pain of defeat.
2. Forget ‘discipline.’
A lot of discipline is hard because the concept is deathly tedious.
Few want to be ‘disciplined’ because the idea inherently suggests doing what you don’t want to do.
But people want to do what they want to do. So mould your world so that the hard stuff — the stuff worth doing — becomes enjoyable.
This means understanding that pain is fun if it’s leading to the right things — to magnificence. It really is. Embrace that sucky suck. Feel the beautiful warmth of your hands bleeding.
Be screwed in the head. Turn heads because you’re the only asshole out here running outside with your shirt off when it’s raining.
Now, what was it Mike Tyson once said? Ah yes: “my definition of discipline is doing what you hate to do, but do it like you love it.”
3. Get aggressive.
Discipline is incredibly unappetising to people who tread aimlessly on this Earth.
This is why big softies want nothing to do with discipline and end up becoming softer.