Mindset - Discipline

Discipline is the practice of doing what needs to be done to achieve your goals.

The human brain evolved into its current form approximately 100,000 years ago. This was a very different time that the one in which we now live. As a result, the brain prioritizes extremely important things then but are not particularly important relevant now.

For example:

The brain prioritizes expending as little energy and effort as possible because early humans needed to save all their energy for when they were attacked by a predator or needed to go on a grueling hunt.

The brain prioritizes eating large amounts of fattening, sweet foods because early humans never knew when their next meal would come. When they got a chance to eat, they wanted to take in as much as they could because this strategy provided maximal energy and protection from starvation.

While human life has developed dramatically in the past 100,000 years, our brains – just like our feet, legs, and arms – actually haven’t changed much at all.

As a result of inheriting our brains from these early human ancestors, our brains are still naturally strongly drawn to avoid discomfort, minimize effort, and pursue immediate gratification, pleasure, and reward. When we are presented with an opportunity to get one of these things (whether comfort or pleasure), our brains try to get us to seize the opportunity by making us feel an urge to do it. These urges are known as temptation.

The problem is: the hard work and gratitude deferment so often required to accomplish our goals is many times at odds with our brain’s natural desire to seek ease, comfort, and immediate reward. So, we frequently feel tempted to do things that will make us fail to achieve our goals like napping instead of working out, eating the junk food instead of sticking to our diet or watching TV instead of putting in extra work or studying.

Being mentally tough means, you have the ability to be calm, happy, and effective no matter what life throws at you. Well, you can’t be effective if every time temptation strikes you choose to do what is easy and comfortable rather than what is necessary to accomplish your goals. Therefore, to master mental toughness, we must learn to master discipline – the ability to do what needs to be done regardless of how great the temptation is to do otherwise.

Discipline operates like a set of scales (picture the scales of justice). On one side is the level of temptation you feel to choose comfort and immediate gratification. On the other side is your level of discipline. If the temptation is larger than your discipline, you’ll give in to the urge. If your discipline is greater than the temptation, you won’t.

The way you increase your level of discipline is by learning strategies you can use to defeat temptation. There are tons of powerful, proven strategies for doing this.

Each time you learn to utilize a discipline strategy, it’s like adding a weight to the discipline side of the scales. When you’ve learned how to use a couple strategies for being disciplined, your side of the scale will be heavy enough to outweigh many of life’s little temptations. But if you want to be able to ignore and override the big, heavy temptations – the voice in your head screaming for you to quit when things get really hard and dark – you'll need to stack as many weights as you can get on your side of the scale.

Once you have many weapons at your disposal for defeating temptation, there will be no temptation great enough to overcome your defenses.

To give you a foundation here is a lesson addressing the most common misconception about discipline.

Most people think discipline is the ability to choose the hard road over the easy road. This is not true.

If you zoom in on specific moments in life, it does indeed misleadingly appear like there is always a choice between the hard right and the easy wrong:

Should we sit on the couch or go to the gym?

Should we eat the cookies or the vegetables? 

Should we work on that new business idea or watch TV?

Should we study or scroll social media?

However, when we zoom out and look at the big picture, it becomes clear that this isn’t really the case. While specific moments are indeed about choosing between the hard right and the easy wrong, life as a whole is about choosing between the hard and the hard.

There is no easy option in life. None. So, the only choice we actually have is between which hard we want. Here’s what I mean:

Going to the gym is hard. Being unhealthy and unhappy with how you look, and feel is also hard.

Working late into the night on your new business is hard. Living with disappointment because you never pursued your dreams is also hard.

Life is hard. All you get to do is choose which hard you want. Do you want the pain of discipline? Or do you want the pain of regret, disappointment, and self-loathing? That's your only choice. Which hard would you like?

We often choose the easy way in life – skipping the gym, eating junk food, not studying for the test, not putting in the long hours, or not putting forth our best effort – because we want the comfort and ease that comes with the easy road. But you must recognize that the easy road doesn’t actually come with comfort and ease. While it might disguise itself that way for the first few minutes, the easy road will eventually shapeshift into an utterly sickening feeling in your gut; the feeling that is only produced when you realize you’ve wasted your life and the squandered time is never coming back. It is the feeling that arises when you realize all those dreams and visions you had for your life as a child will never be anything more than figments of your imagination because you kept choosing to be comfortable instead of choosing to be disciplined.

That feeling is not easy. That feeling is magnitudes of order harder than anything life has to offer.

Remember that. When you feel like choosing immediate comfort and gratification instead of doing what needs to be done to achieve your goals, force yourself to remember that the easy way is not actually easy. It is brutal.

Remind yourself that you don't get to choose between easy and hard. You only get to choose which hard you want. So, which hard would you like? The hard of work, effort, tenacity, grit, striving, dream-chasing, and discipline? Or the hard of regret, disappointment, and disgust? Choose wisely. There are no do-overs.