What We All Get Wrong About Discipline: Busting Myths
Discipline is one of those things that almost everyone I work with at some point starts to beat themselves up about.
“Ugh, I wish I was more disciplined!”
“I need to be more disciplined if I’m going to do this”
“I’m simply not a disciplined person!”
I’ve even written about Discipline before, and most of what I said there, holds true:
Discipline? It’s not about building the skillset up and pushing yourself to the brink - it’s about reducing distractions. That’s it. Discipline is about creating EASE.
Why Distraction Reduction Is Good For Discipline
It’s so much easier for me to avoid eating a sleeve of cookies - I can do it, trust me - when there aren’t cookies in my house. I still remember moving in with my now husband who was shocked I didn’t keep sweets in the house. “You love candy and cookies, we should have them in the house!” But once he saw the way that I inhale oreos at four times faster than he does, he quickly understood it’s not about witholding joy - it’s about creating easeful discipline. It’s so much easier to avoid overdoing it on cookies when they aren’t available. It’s why they say to pour what you want into a little bowl - we’ve all been there, taking the entire bag of chips to the couch results in a very different amount of consumption.
Ugh, But I Should Be More Disciplined! This is a ME Problem.
I read Chip and Dan Heath’s Switch, and they had more ideas about creating ease in distraction reduction. In one of the first chapters they talk about study where people were given popcorn at a movie theater. Crappy popcorn. The ones that are a little stale, maybe charred. Some were given massive bowls, some, smaller. And, EVERY SINGLE PARTICIPANT with a larger bowl, ate more. Even with crap popcorn. And, they were also convinced they had better restraint.
So let’s be smart popcorn people who understand that it’s simply how our brains work. Our brains aren’t very disciplined. That’s okay. Instead of beating ourselves up about it, let’s gently work with it!
7 Tips from Switch (& Me!) To Create Easeful Discipline
Let’s get right into things. I gave lots of ideas before here, but here are some more, some of the same, whatever works friend. Sometimes I need to read things 4, or 24 times for it to sink in. So thanks to Chip & Dan for many of these!
Clear Destination: Something that makes a huge difference in being disciplined is deeply understanding where you want to go, what the goal is. That could look like, I want to run a half-marathon, I want to be bilingual, I want to get promoted to the next level of leadership, you get the picture. It’s easier to be disciplined when we understand what we’re working towards - the clearer, more explicit, the better and easier.
Be Specific: Get as granular as your possibly can on the goal and scripting out the expectation. This helps avoid decision fatigue, the desire to do things “correctly,” or getting caught up in your mental swirl. So for example, rather than saying, I need to get healthier, we could say: I want to move my body for 10 minutes each day; walking, yoga, running or dancing. Then it’s less about how do I get healthy, more about, okay, where will I carve out those 10 minutes?!
Shrink It: If it's overwhelming to try to be disciplined, consistent, etc - make it EASIER. Make it so small that it’s almost silly to not do it. That could look like instead of planning to clean the entire house - a dangerous, onerous task - we can perform the “5-minute miracle” - take five minutes, set a timer, blast some music and clear one area of your house.
Checklist: It can be hard to feel like you’re starting from scratch, or hoping your brain will hold onto all the details. Even though surgeons know all the steps to good hygiene - they have checklists up in their scrub-in stations to make it easier to keep track of the steps and ensure they did it all. Anyone who’s muttered to themselves, “keys, cellphone, wallet” as they scramble to leave knows what I mean. So, if there’s an area that we can add checklists - i.e. in our workplace we might make an easy task list to be able to take off some of the mental fortitude of saying “oh I’ll remember!” Because the narrator is currently saying, “Viewers, she did NOT remember.”
Action Triggers: It’s easier to follow-along when the steps are all there. This could also be considered Habit Stacking - an awesome tool for habit formation! Basically, take something that’s going to happen, and decide that’s a “Trigger” for whatever additional action you want to take. I.e. When you drop the kids off at school, that triggers a gym trip. Or when you have your coffee, that’s triggers a 5-minute meditation!
Tweak the Routine: We easily get stuck in our ways, and how things have been working. I once heard from a brilliant friend that the only way to really see your house and all it’s clutter is to leave for an extended period of time. Or, you may go to the library rather than working from home. Maybe you put your gym clothes on top of your computer! Ultimately, break up the regular and mundane a bit.
Do it… Today: Often with discipline there’s this feeling of, oh I’ll get good at it when I’m ready and prepared. Nah. You’re never prepared as anyone with children will tell an expecting parent. So.. don’t wait until Monday. Don’t wait until January 1st. Don’t wait until “things calm down” HA! When have they ever calmed down?!?!? Do a section of it, right now, today.
What has helped you incrEASE discipline? See what I did there?
Want help on this? You know what to do.