The Secret to Being Disciplined No One Talks About

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1:28Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you love this podcast, do me a favor, give us a rating and review however you listen to us. The reason why is because the more positive ratings and reviews that we get on those platforms, and whether those platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify show this podcast, people have never listened to it before, which allows us to grow and impact more lives. So if you would do that, I would greatly appreciate it.

1:55Today, I'm going to talk about the secret to being disciplined that nobody really talks about. Because if discipline was just about willpower, you would have already figured it out by now. Do you realize that? Like you've already proven at some point in time that you can force yourself, sometimes for weeks at a time. Like you can do workout streaks for a couple weeks, journaling streaks for a couple weeks, or you do meditation streaks, and yet you always fall off at some point in time. And so I want you to realize that's not really failure. What it is, is it is your brain protecting a self-image of yourself that you've actually never questioned.

2:32And it's something that comes from what was programmed into a childhood. And many people talk about discipline and how to do it and how to just take action. But I guarantee you, what I'm going to teach you today, you've never heard in the way that I'm going to teach you. And it will completely change the way that you think about discipline and the way that you go about creating the life that you want. And so let's dive into it. One of the things you may have heard me say before on this podcast is that I believe discipline is the highest form of self-love that is possible for you in your life. That is the reframe that I want you to start to think of discipline through.

3:06Discipline is not about punishment. You're not forcing yourself and punishing yourself to do something. Discipline is the highest form of self-love. You only need discipline to do the things that are hard for you, but are good for you. Like you don't need discipline to just sit on your ass and scroll on your phone, do you? You don't need discipline to avoid your life. You don't need discipline to avoid the hard conversations in your relationships. You don't need discipline to sleep in. You don't need discipline to eat fast food instead of making yourself a healthy meal. You only need discipline for the things that are good for you.

3:43You need discipline to get up and move your body when you don't feel like it. You need discipline to rest when your trauma tells you that you need to keep pushing and prove that you're worth something. You only need discipline when you need to eat in ways that are best for your body long term. You need discipline when you want to build a business so that you will have a better life and your children will have a better life in the future. So discipline is self-love. Discipline is saying, you know what, like I care too much about myself to not do this. I care too much about myself to not work out today.

4:19I care too much about myself to not eat healthy today. I care too much about my future to not wake up when my alarm goes off. Discipline is saying, I care about myself. I care about my future. I'm not abandoning myself today because I've done it so much in the past. Discipline is saying, I care too much about myself. Do you get that? I care too much about myself to waste my time on my phone. I care too much about myself to stay in this relationship, right? So self-love we think of as like, oh, going to get your hair done or taking a bath and throwing in a bath bomb and lighting a candle. Sure, those can be self-love, but it's not just softness.

4:56It's follow through. It's doing what you say you're going to do. Self-love is doing the thing that your old self resists because your higher self knows that it matters in your life. So discipline is how you keep promises to yourself, even when the motivation disappears, because guess what? It's going to disappear. Caring for yourself now and in the long term will always beat motivation. Anyone can care for themselves when it's easy, though. But discipline is loving yourself when it's uncomfortable. It's saying, I deserve a better life, even if today's version of me doesn't feel like getting up and doing it.

5:37And so it's not just control. It's care. I want you to really understand it's more about devotion to yourself. So let's talk about, I just want to bring that in. That's not what I've, the key of today and the big part I want to cover, but I want to bring that in as just a reframe for the way I want you to think about discipline. Let's talk about why most people fail when dealing with discipline. And the main reason why is because most people think it's about forcing yourself to do things you don't want to do. And that's why discipline can feel miserable. It's literally saying, I don't want to do this, but I'm going to do it, right?

6:07Like that's hard to do. It's hard to force yourself every single day. But the real reason why discipline fails in the long term is because the discipline, the thing that you're trying to make yourself do, conflicts with the identity that you have of yourself. If you see yourself as someone who struggles with consistency, then every habit feels heavy to you. It will feel like a struggle because you are acting out of alignment with who you think you are in your head. Oh, I'm just a lazy person. Well, then getting up and taking action is actually out of alignment with who you think you are. Oh, I'm just somebody who follows through, who doesn't follow through.

6:44Well, then following through over and over again for the next three weeks, four weeks, whatever it might be, doesn't line up with who you think you are. Oh, I'm just someone who don't think that I'm good enough, right? So if you see yourself as not good enough or I don't follow through, or if you see yourself as lazy. Discipline actually feels like self-betrayal. And so if you see yourself as someone who always falls off, your brain will make sure that you eventually do. You're going to eventually crash the car. Do you get it? So discipline, if it feels hard, if it feels out of alignment with how you view yourself, it's not as much the habit or the action in the short term that's the problem.

7:24The problem is the self-image of yourself that you have. Your brain's main job is to protect who you think you are. So if discipline threatens that identity of yourself, your brain will self-sabotage. And that's why you can willpower yourself to do something like work out every single day or journal every single day or meditate every single day. But eventually you fall off every single time. Why? Because you are trying to stay unconsciously. You're trying to stay in alignment with who you think you are. That's what self-sabotage really is. And people are like, I always self-sabotage. You've got to ask yourself, what is self-sabotage?

8:00What is self-sabotage actually? Self-sabotage is your brain choosing identity over improvement. So the moment that your habits start to feel challenging to who you think you are, your brain creates resistance to pull you back into alignment with your identity. You're who you think you are. So you don't fall off because of necessarily lack of willpower. you fall off because consistency threatens your own self-image. Do you get that? Like, I really, really want you to get this part. Self-sabotage is not self-destruction. It's actually self-preservation. But it's self-preservation of the wrong identity, the identity that's keeping you in the exact same position.

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11:29That's mintmobile.com slash mentor. Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com slash mentor. That's it. There's no catch. $45 upfront payment required equivalent to$15 a month. New customers on first three-month plan only. Speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. And now back to the show. So your brain would rather keep you the same than become somebody who's unfamiliar. So self-sabotage is you falling off because taking the action consistently over time threatens who you think you are. And you've got to be able to change who you think you are and take different actions in order to actually long-term continue to stay consistent.

12:21And so your brain would rather, once again, keep you the same as long as it knows who you are than become somebody who's unfamiliar. And so the real trick here is to change your identity first, to think differently of yourself because your identity is not true. It's not set in stone. It's not 100 % factual. Your identity is just who you think you are. But then you realize every person who's ever met you has a different identity of who they think you are. So then who the hell are you? Whoever you decide. That's what it comes up to be. So in order for you to truly lock in and get disciplined and take consistent action that is out of the ordinary for you, two things must happen.

13:02Number one, you must consistently take different action. You know that one. And you can do it for a little while, but you always fall off. And number two, you must change the identity of who you think you are. You must change the identity of who you think you are. Why? Because as I just said, you will never act out of alignment with who you think you are long-term. You can do it for a little while, but you will always, always fall back to who you think you are. Always, 100%. It might be in two weeks, it might be in two months, but you'll fall back to who you think you are. The most disciplined people in the world are not the most motivated people in the world.

13:44They're the most aligned people. who they think they are and the actions that they take are aligned. You know, so they don't ask like, oh, do I do I want to do this? Do I feel like doing this? No, they think like this is just something that someone like me does. I take action. I follow through. I do what I need to do to change my life. I am too important to let myself down. I am not that person who I used to be, right? That's how you have to start to talk to yourself. You've got to start to change the way that you speak to yourself. It's all about how you speak to yourself in your own head. You can try to take the right action, but if you're constantly saying, I'm not good enough, I don't follow through, I'm lazy, you'll eventually self-destruct.

14:28And so stop trying to be disciplined and start proving a new identity of a disciplined person to yourself. Do you see that? It's like everybody's trying to go, discipline, take action, discipline, take action. When the real secret is like, you have to go around the back door and you do need to take the action, but you also kind of got to go around the back door of it and be like, well, I've got to start to think about who I am differently. I think about myself differently in the way that you speak. And then also the way that you take action. Those are the two parts that have to happen. Every time you say something like, I need to be more disciplined, your brain hears, I'm not a disciplined person.

15:02Because if you were a disciplined person, you wouldn't need to be a disciplined person. So it's automatically saying, I'm not that kind of person. And so you just have to understand that your brain hates acting out of character. You've got to just say to yourself, I am disciplined from here on out. I am committed to following through from now on. Therefore, your BS meter doesn't go off in your head. You know, if you sit there and you say, I'm a disciplined person, but you've never been disciplined, there's a bullshit meter that goes off your head. Oh, I wake up early and you don't wake up early.

15:33You're going to be like, that's bullshit, right? So therefore, you don't want your BS meter to go off your head. So just say something like, I am disciplined from here on out. I am committed to following through from now on. It's not talking about the past. It's talking about from this moment forward, who I'm going to be. And so this is how your brain actually learns your identity and who you are. Your brain constantly updates its identity through repetition. Your brain is hearing what you say about yourself, and that's updating your identity. And it's also seeing what you do in reality in your 3D plane that you live in every single moment.

16:13So your brain updates through repetition. It updates your identity through proof. It updates your identity through the actions you take. It updates your identity through the things that it sees you do day in, day out. Your brain does not update through intention. It updates through what it sees and what it hears about itself. This is why it really matters what you do and it matters what you say. Every small action is a vote for that new self-image. So stop saying like, I'm trying to work out and start saying, I'm somebody who doesn't give up on themselves. That shift is believable. That shift is actionable.

16:51And that shift allows your brain to believe something that's a little bit outside of what it's always believed. Now, let's talk about how when you start to take action, this little thing inside of your brain starts to be released and it's a chemical called dopamine. So your brain doesn't necessarily love discipline, but it loves progress. Brains love progress. Like Tony Robbins always says, progress equals happiness. Everybody needs something that they're working towards in every step in the right direction of that. Your brain starts to get excited and releases dopamine and dopamine is released during pursuit, not achievement.

17:27And so people think, oh, when I achieve this thing, then I'll be happy. No, you'll actually be happy in the pursuit and you being able to see that you're progressing in some sort of way. And this is why streaks like tracking works. This is why checklists work. This is why taking an X and putting a, the day where you, hey, today I ended up taking the ash I needed to. You put an X today and you put an X tomorrow, you put an X the next day. These little, these little streaks and tracking actually start to motivate you. They actually start to signal to yourself that you're winning. They start to show that you're becoming the type of person who takes action and follows through.

18:03They are, they're small bits of proof that show that your new identity is becoming true. And it makes it much more believable for yourself. And so taking these small actions and getting these tiny wins tells your brain, do this again. This is who we are now. And one way that makes it more fun, turn discipline into a game. Like most people make discipline so heavy and they, if they, they screw up, they're so shitty to themselves and they guilt themselves and they shame themselves and they beat themselves up. And then they end up falling off course because they, they're just so mean to themselves.

18:38They don't want to be mean to themselves anymore. And so you don't need to make discipline so heavy or make it so serious or make it so all or nothing. Like your brain hates pressure, but it loves play. And so games and making it fun and turning this discipline into a fun thing for you removes this weight that you put on yourself in order to get it done. And so how can you make taking the action that you need to, to change your life more fun? How can you turn it into a game? How can you treat, you know, consistency like points, not perfection, but being more consistent into points. Like every time you show up, you earn a point.

19:15You know, every time you walk into the gym, you earn a point for yourself. You turn, you gamify this entire thing. Regardless of how much you lift or how long you're there, you showed up at the gym. Boom. You got a point. You know, make rules of the game. Hey, you know, I can screw up once, but I don't miss twice. One missed day doesn't break the game. Two missed days might reset the entire streak. Oh, you got to go back to zero. And then make it more fun. Like, set a minimum to earn points that feels almost too easy so that you can start to see the results. Five minutes of movement, that counts as a workout just to get yourself started.

19:54Obviously, you know, if you really want to change your life, five minutes isn't going to do much for it, but you're just trying to stay consistent for a little while. So five minutes of movement. All right. I give myself a point. One sentence counts as journaling. I give myself a point. One minute of breathing with your eyes closed counts as meditation. I give myself a point. And so you start to track all this stuff and you track the streaks instead of the outcomes. Now, that's a little bit different for most people because most people focus on the outcome. They need to have the outcome. The outcome's got to be what they want it to be.

20:24I want to track the streaks because action is what really matters, not the end result. I know that action long enough will change your life. And so that's the result that we want. the long-term result, not like the short-term results today. If I just show up, no matter how big today was or how small today was, but if I just do it every single day or most days, if I fast forward a year or five years from today, I'm in a completely different place than I am right now. So don't track like weight or the depth or the intensity or how long you did something for. Just track the days that you showed up.

21:01Track the moments when you showed up for yourself. and you can make it fun, like create a visible scorecard, like a scoreboard for yourself. You know, you can do the check marks or the X marks on a calendar so that therefore you can start to track your progress and you start to turn, you know, you can turn your habits and the actions you need to take into challenges. Like I'm gonna just do seven days of showing up every single day. That's it. I don't need you to, you know, maybe don't worry about the next six days. I'm gonna wake up at 5 a.m. every day for the next seven days. That's not a huge lift.

21:29You could probably do that. I'm going to do 30 days of not missing twice at the gym. Once again, reward consistency, not the results, right? Keep the game light. Have fun with it. Don't be such an ass to yourself. Like the moment it feels heavy and you're like, oh God, this is starting to get too much, lower the bar. Make it more fun. If it feels too rigid, add some flexibility to it. Make it fun. Stop being so hard on yourself all the time. Consistency beats intensity every time. consistency rewires your identity in the long term. When you stop beating yourself up so much, the resistance towards it will disappear.

22:04And when resistance disappears, that's when habits really start to stick. And so I really want you to get into your head and like really start to reframe. Discipline is not about forcing behavior. It's about becoming somebody new. You don't rise to the level of motivation that you have. You fall to the level of your identity. So the real question is not how do I get more disciplined? The real question is who am I proving myself to be today. And every small action is enough. One small action after another stacked on top of each other for years will change your life. And every small action is proof of who you are becoming.

22:41And that's how discipline stops feeling so hard and like so much effort and how discipline starts to feel like acting in alignment with who you truly are. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories. Tag me in at RobDial Jr. R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you want to learn more about coaching with me outside of this podcast, go to coachwithrob.com. Once again, coachwithrob.com. And with that, I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you.

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