How To Stay Disciplined

My Biggest Mistake

This is my biggest mistake when it comes to self-improvement;

Staying consistent. I just wish I knew how to stay disciplined, it would've saved me a bunch of time, frustration and wasted effort.

Knowing how to stay disciplined in life will take you so so far...because almost no one does it.

Everyone does what they're expected to do but no more.

But anyway,

Before getting into it I'd like to clear something up real quick,

When somebody shares their mistakes with you they're not looking for sympathy or validation (Some are, I'm not)

Some people care for you so they don't want you making the same mistakes they made, so that you'll have a slightly easier path than they had.

Now I speak for myself and I say that I just want to help you, but it may not be just me, it may be your parents, sibling, friend, a loved one or even a stranger.

This is something that's hard to do, it's hard to tell someone where you messed up, and the people who share things with you get nothing in return, it's just cause they want to help you.

So please, just try to learn something from it cause you might use it one day,

It's only for your benefit and no one else's.

The Passing of Knowledge

Sharing wisdom is a tale as old as time, from Jesus sharing parables, to grandkids gathering around their grandpa next to the fire to now people sharing things online, this is something that was always a part of human civilization.

The person who knows something teaching it to the person who doesn't know it.

Every mistake has its lesson, every fall has it's rise, everyone's story is uniquely different yet so similar.

My Story

My BIGGEST mistake on self-improvement is not being consistent enough, a lack of consistency, shocker right?

Not staying disciplined, not doing the simple things right.

(Ironically I do the hard things right but mess sup on the small things)

It may sound simple, but Simple and Easy are not the same.

Something may be simple but it could be very hard to do.

My best, most happy days are those where I'm most disciplined, I'm reading, meditating, training and all the jazz,

My worst days are my off days, days where I do absolutely nothing productive,

It sounds backwards cause I should be the happiest when I'm doing easy things right?

But no, deep down you know what you should be doing, and if you're not doing it you'll feel guilty.

If you do do what you should then you'll feel fulfilled and satisfied.

How to Stay Consistent

If I were to explain to you how to stay consistent in one sentence this is what I would say;

Don't have 'zero' days.

Zero days are days in which you do ZERO things productive.

Let me tell you how it usually goes down when I ruin my consistency,

One day I have a perfect day and make so much progress, the next day is slightly less perfect, still riding the high of the previous day's victories then the next I do a fraction of what I did the previous day, then the next I do nothing, and I do nothing for a week, until I notice and get right back to day one, and start the cycle all over again.

Sometimes I lose rhythm because of school work, or a family event, or football training, or chores, or I'm busy doing something else.

Things come up and I don't always find the time to get back to the good habits and that's completely my fault cause if I wasted less time I would have been able to do them,

But at least I know what I did wrong, and I don't waste energy blaming life for my mistakes and that's a good quality to have.

Sometimes I start to imagine (and it really gets me fired up) 'What if I start being consistent, I'm not saying to have perfect days everyday, that's impossible but to make good progress each day that passes, to be disciplined always, what if?

How much further would I be?

How much better would I be?

What if? What if? What if?

'What if' gets us nowhere, we have to do. 

So this is what I mean when I say that to stay consistent you need to make every day slightly productive,

I'm not saying you'll climb the mountain everyday, but if today you're feeling tired or you don't want to do anything power through that to do something called the 2-minute rule

The 2-Minute Rule

The 2-minute rule is a concept I got from the book Atomic Habits (fantastic book btw), it's when you set the goal to do something so small it would be embarrassing for you not to do it,

Don't set the goal of running a marathon, just put on your running shoes, that would be shameful if you couldn't even do that right?

Don't read the entire d*mn book, read 1 page.

Basically just do something that can be done in 2 minutes or less,

Something atomically small...

...small but it gets the ball rolling.

If you don't want to do anything after that then it's okay, take the rest of the day to rest,

But at least you didn't kill your momentum,

You stayed in the same place instead of going backwards,

And on somedays that's the only think you have the strength to do.

Now I know I'm sharing this with you like I beat it and overcame it and I have for a good chunk of it, but I'm not perfect, I'm human just like you so I still struggle with it to this day but I'm sharing it with you so you can avoid making the same mistakes.

You may ask, 'But how can I be consistent, how can I stay disciplined?' 

My answer to those questions are start small (kinda how I explained), you can't start big and expect yourself to keep up, so start at your level and work your way up. 

Jim Rohn once said 'If you can't handle the big disciplines how can you handle the little disciplines?'

Start with the small things. Look at it like a video game, every time you do the action you gain EXP, lets say for example to do a pull up I need to be level 10 but I'm only level 3 so I can't do it right?

So I start by doing pushups to level up until eventually I am at the level that I can do something harder.

It's just about being good MOST of the time, you can't be good all the time cause we're not robots, but we can be good most of the time, I like to use the 80/20 rule,

80 Good/20 Bad

The 80/20 principle can be used for a lot of things and I try to find ways to implement it more, the 80% will make sure you're doing your work and the 20% will make sure you're not going full throttle.

You can be so good bro, you can be all that you dream of becoming,

But it must start with you, no one can do your work for you, no one can learn skills for you, you have to do things for no one but yourself, you are responsible for what you are and what you become.

It's a slightly scary and freeing realisation that both your success and your failures are your fault. You are the reason you achieve or don't. You're the ONLY person who can make this work or mess it up, it only depends on you.

Conclusion : 

Knowing how to stay disciplined means that you know when to run and when to walk, you can't always bulldoze your way through, sometimes you have to accept that you're just not feeling it that day,

So muster any strength you have and do something small, it keeps the momentum alive and also keeps you from taking a step back.

Staying at 5 is better than going down to 4 right?

I know life gets in the way sometimes, I know being consistent and staying disciplined on self-improvement or any other area of life is hard but, be more consistent than I have, remove distractions and make progress every single day, even if it's just a bit, you'll be surprised at how far it takes you.

Don't have 'zero' days

Consistency is key.