How To Build Discipline

Self-discipline is your ability to do the uncomfortable but important things when nobody's forcing you to do it. The last part, that no one forcing you, is the thing that people struggle with the most. When you were a kid, your parents told you what to do for the most part. When you're in school, it's your teacher telling you what to do. But when you become an adult, nobody really cares about you that much. There's no one to tell you anything; there's no one to force you to stay in line. And if you don't? Well, whatever—the next person will do it.

This is the main reason why you struggle with being disciplined. It's really easy to negotiate with yourself; you let yourself win and take the longer stick every time. So in that sense, you can't really force yourself to do something. But there is a way to bypass this, and we're going to show you how to do it in this video.

Welcome to a Lux. If you look at extremely disciplined people—whether they're in the military, entrepreneurs, or high-performing athletes—you'll find they all have something in common. They were put into a position where being disciplined was not a nice thing to have but an absolute requirement. You're either disciplined, or you were out. The context negotiates the terms for you, not yourself.

This is the first point into building discipline. You need to understand that discipline is built within a given context. You don't really wake up one day and tell yourself, "Okay, today I'm going to be disciplined," out of the blue. You need a good reason, and on top of that, you need to emulate an environment where being disciplined is the only way to get anything done.

All right, let's go back to college for a second. When you've got a mountain of assignments and homework, the only way to get it done is to just cut the crap and get to work. There's no way around it, past it, or underneath it. You can't negotiate with anyone, nor can you change the terms of the deal. You get what you get.

That kind of makes it a bit easier to be disciplined because someone gives you a framework to follow, and your one and only job is to actually follow through with it. There's nothing else to do. But in the real world, there is no context or framework; you need to build it yourself.

For example, let's say you're getting married in six months and you've got two options in terms of what you wear. You either go with what fits you now, or you get something slimmer. If you go with the second option, you build a context where for the next six months, it's required for you to be disciplined. This is a random example, but you can use this way of thinking with pretty much everything in life.

You can make the decision to put yourself in a context where being disciplined is required. It's up to you. For example, we made the decision to post a video every single day, Monday to Sunday. This context forces us to always operate at a specific level of discipline.

Now, this works on a macro scale, but you can apply the same reasoning on a micro scale. The way to do that is through tight time slots and deadlines. You see, the more time you have to do something, the longer it's going to take you to get it done. It's like an unwritten rule of life, and it's always going to be true. If you've got three days to do something, you'll spend the first two days thinking about it and the last one panicking. It's just the way things are for most people.

So if you want to emulate a context that requires discipline, give yourself little time. One way to do that is to batch things up back to back. Let's take meetings, for example. One meeting in a given day can take three hours, but if you schedule six meetings in three hours, you'll quickly see how 30 minutes is more than enough time to quickly figure something out. If it takes more than that, well, someone is unprepared and wasting everyone else's time.

So we've got context for starters. The next important thing you need to get if you want to force your way into being disciplined is high-value stakes. Something very important to you needs to happen at the end. Let's say a friend calls you up and asks you to grab coffee tomorrow at 5 AM. You might do it; you might not. But let's say the last plane back home leaves tomorrow morning at 5 AM. You're 100% getting on that flight, or else you'll be stranded for the holidays, far away from your family and friends.

You see, when you add high-value stakes into the equation, you add the emotional aspect. You make it personal; it becomes highly important to you, and you don't want to mess it up. This is the reason for your context. If you want to become disciplined, you need to have something to be disciplined for.

Now, this reason is your own to find out because it depends on the context, but it's extremely important to not be vague with it. If you don't give yourself a good enough reason, you'll quit halfway through. We'll give you our reason at the end of the video.

So we've got a context that forces you to be disciplined and high-value stakes that make it important to you and make things personal. These are two main ways to start building your discipline. But there's one more thing—a secret ingredient, if you will. Something that most people really don't tell you about, and it's probably the most important step. That is the right amount of effort.

To better understand this, let's look at how your mind actually works. Your brain has one primal function, and that is to survive, my friend. It pretty much regulates your body so you don't die. Now, obviously, it's way more complicated than that, but for what we're about to tell you, this is all you need to know.

Even though its main job is to keep you alive, it doesn't always send out the right signals. For example, your mind very often overestimates—on purpose—the amount of effort required to do something. It does this to preserve energy. So in the super common scenario when a lion jumps on you from a bush, you've got enough juice to run. Well, this is, in essence, what procrastination is. Your mind overestimates the effort required to do something, and it sends signals to the body to make you feel tired. This is why you sometimes feel tired without doing anything at all.

So why is this important to know? Well, the most common mistake you can make when trying to be disciplined is to over-schedule and over-commit. You believe you could be a couch potato today and a Navy SEAL tomorrow. You put on "Eye of the Tiger" on YouTube, and you get to work for like 25 minutes. Then the rush goes away, and your mind takes control. It's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, no way! We're not doing that." You might be able to fight it off every now and then, but if you want to do this for the long term, you can't be fighting your own mind every single day.

And this is where the right amount of effort comes in. Essentially, you need something hard enough to flex that discipline muscle, but not too hard so your mind doesn't start sending signals to your body that it has to stop. The more often you do this, the easier it'll become. You'll start to handle more effort, and your mind won't see it as too much of a problem anymore. This is how you build discipline in the long term and add it as an actual skill to your arsenal.

This is why you can see someone extremely disciplined and your first thought is, "I'll never be able to do that." But they've been doing it for years; they had the right context, the right reason, and it's not as much effort anymore—it's just how they are now.

Now, for a bonus for sticking with us until the end, we mentioned we would give you our reason. So here it is: the reason we're always trying to build discipline is that it makes things easier. You see, being disciplined is not about achieving massive success or being famous; it's about freedom. If you want financial freedom, you need to be disciplined with your money. If you want time freedom, you need to be disciplined with your time management. If you want life freedom, you need to be disciplined with your priorities.

Discipline is not a way to work yourself into the ground with barely any sleep; it's a way for you to do what's important so you get to enjoy what's enjoyable. And that's all there is to it. You can build discipline if you follow these three things: context, reason, and the right amount of effort. Do this right, and you'll be a completely different person in six months.

Thanks for watching Elixir. We hope you learned something valuable today. We'll see you back here tomorrow for this Sunday motivational video. Thank you for watching this video, A-Lock sir. If you found it valuable, consider subscribing to our channel and joining our awesome community. And if you're still hungry for more, we hand-picked this video for you to watch next, or head over to our website for more amazing content. See you tomorrow.