7 Steps to Build Discipline

(upbeat music) Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host Rob Dile. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you love this podcast, please do me a big favor right now. Get your phone out and give us a rating and review on whatever platform you're listening to this on, whether it's Spotify, Apple Podcast, whatever it might be. The more positive reviews that we get on those platforms and more of those platforms show this podcast to people who have never listened to it before and that allows us to be able to grow. And so if you've been listening to me for a really long time and you've never given us a rating review, please take 20 seconds to do it. It helps more than you know. Today, we're gonna be talking about seven ways to be more disciplined. Now you might be sitting there thinking, hmm, yeah, I wanna be more disciplined, but that's not really a sexy word. Discipline is not a sexy word. But think about what your life can have if you have more discipline. Think about how your life changes five years from now, 10 years from now. If you decide that it is very beneficial for you to become a more disciplined person. Actually, let me ask you this question. Is your life better or worse in the future if you decide to be more disciplined today? Pretty easy, isn't it? It's better. But we kind of have a bad connotation around discipline 'cause we think, oh, we discipline, you know, your dog does something it's not supposed to do, you discipline him. Your child does something, you know, they hit their sister, they get disciplined. So we have this bad connotation around discipline when really what it comes down to is we need to have more self-discipline. And the more that we can become resilient and have more self-discipline, the more that we can actually do more amazing things in our life. And so when you look at it like, what is discipline in the first place? Well, it's pretty easy. It means that you take action because you said you were gonna take action, no matter what, even when you don't feel like taking action. It's taking action regardless of how you feel. It's this resistance to I don't want to do this and then leaning into the resistance, doing it regardless of how you feel. Because you never need discipline to do the easy things. You need discipline to do the challenging things that will change your life, right? Like, you don't need discipline to eat. I definitely don't need discipline in order to eat a pizza. I don't need discipline in order to eat a donut. But I do need discipline to not eat them. And I also need discipline to go and get myself into the gym. Which one's better for me, right? It's following the mind and what the mind wants to do versus what the body wants to do. 'Cause the body, we tend to be kind of lazy. We want to lay around and we want to not do as many things. We want to get some food in us. We don't really care what it is. And as long as it tastes good. And so the mind knows what you need to do. There's just some sort of disconnection somewhere. And so let's go through the seven different ways that you can get better with discipline. Number one is to focus on the opportunity and not the obligation. You know, you're not gonna love everything. Like, I love recording this podcast. I love sending it out to the world. I love what it does in the world. But I don't like planning the podcast. Like, I'm not really like the type of person who likes to sit down in front of a computer, do research, do planning. But in order to create these it takes at least an hour to plan and to put the flow of a podcast together to do the research that I need to. So I love creating the podcast, sitting here, recording it. I love putting it out to the world. I love the reaction the world gets. I love that people come up to me and say that it's changed your lives in many ways. But I don't love every single aspect of it, right? I don't love the planning. And so the obligation that's in front of me is I do have to sit down and I do have to plan this podcast. And do you have to do a little research in order for me to make something that I want to put out to the world? That's the obligation. The opportunity is it can help change people's lives. And I love when I'm out on the street. I was over, it was funny, I was over in Florence and somebody recognized me inside of it. The guy and his wife recognized me inside of a leather shop and they came out to me and started talking to me. And then about 20 minutes later, we're walking on Punta Vecchio in Florence and this girl came out to me and said something and how it's changed your life and how it's helped her. And so I love when people come out to me and actually say something. So if you see me, don't be shy, come up and say something to me. I love when that happens and I love when that does to the world. That's me, if I focus on that, it's a lot easier to do what needs to be done versus focusing on the obligation, which is the little teeny tiny things that I need to do in order to make this thing happen, which you know, there's resistance towards, but I have to make myself do them anyways. So when you start to think about that, where are you not taking action where you should be? Like what opportunity should you actually be focusing on? What is the opportunity of you taking the action? So it's like the obligation might be going into the gym and you might not be super stoked about it, but the opportunity is losing weight, having more energy, feeling better about yourself, being healthier later on in life. There's much more opportunity, focus on the opportunity. You still have to do the obligation, but focus on the opportunity versus what's right in front of you. So that's the first thing. Second thing, do the small things really well. I'm a really big believer in mastering the small things. When you look at athletes, they master the fundamentals. Very rarely do you see an athlete practicing before, like say basketball game, right? Before a basketball game, try in some crazy shots or crazy moves they've never done before. What are they doing? They're practicing the fundamentals, right? Success is doing the small things that matter, day in, day out, just doing them every single day. Success is really kind of simple. It's doing the small things every single day and eventually those compound into such big wins that your life is completely different. Because you showed up, you do the small things every single day. So when you think about that, like what are the small things that are required for you to get what you want in life and how can you make sure that you do them every single day? What are the small things that you need to master every single day? Do that and if you can master the small things, makes it very easy to do the big things. So that's number two. Number three is to design your environment to make taking action easier. The action that you want to easier. Design your environment, right? Like for me, my body loves sugar. If I have sugar in my body, if I have a glazed donut, my brain and body turn into a crack head. Like I just want more of it and I want as much as I can until I hate myself, right? So it's like, instead of having candy everywhere in my house, I just designed my environment. Well, if you walk into my house, there is no candy anywhere in the house. There is fruit out and so I can have some fruit because fruit is way better for you than candy is. And so I have designed my environment. I don't buy any candy. And I've designed my environment to help being disciplined in what I want to do and how I want to create my body and how I want to create my future. How I can make it easier for me to do so, right? So how can you design your environment to make success easier? Like one of the things I found about people with willpower, there's actually a part of my book where I talk about discipline. I talk about consistency and I talk about willpower. And what I say is that people who have willpower are not the people who are born with willpower. The people who have willpower are the ones who have designed their environment to make willpower easier. So it's like for me, if I want to stay in good shape and I don't want to have sugar 'cause I know that sugar is really bad for you, it's also one of the main causes to cancer. If I don't want that, then I'm just gonna make it, I'm gonna make my willpower easier by not even having candy around. So how can you use this? Do you waste too much time on the couch? Take all your couch cushions and throw them inside the closet until you're able to get on the couch. Nobody's gonna sit, you're not going to lay on a couch without couch cushions. It's uncomfortable. Do you waste too much time on social media? Put your phone in another room and don't allow yourself to use it for an hour until you're done with XYZ at work. Want to wake up and go for a run? Put your running shoes, your running socks, your running underwear, your running pants, all of the stuff that you need to right next to the sink so when you get done brushing your teeth, you can immediately put your clothes on. Hell, if you want to make it even easier, just wear it to bed. And we will be right back. And now, back to the show. Wear your shorts, your underwear, your t-shirt to bed. So all you have to do is put your socks and shoes on and you just immediately go for a run. Design your environment to support you taking the action that you need to to create the life that you want to. And so what do you need to do in your environment? What do you need to change in your environment to make taking action easier on yourself? Okay, that's number three. Number four, move your body. You've been listening to this podcast for a while. I almost never feel like working out. I'm not the biggest fan of it. I usually am not a fan while I'm doing it, but I like what it does for me. And I like the way I feel after. I like that I feel like I've accomplished something and I like that what my body looks like from doing it as well. But after working out, I can usually make myself go a little bit more. So I don't really feel like it in the beginning, but as I start to move my body, I actually want to do more reps. I want to do more sets and I do more sets and I feel amazing after it. So what happened? I forced my body to create action. And in that action, chemicals change in my body and my brain, which give me more drive to keep going and action creates more action and action creates more in action. And so I know that if I don't feel like doing something, a lot of times I just need to get my physical meat suit moving. And when I get my physical meat suit moving, I get my heart rate up, I do some push-ups, do some jumping jacks. And I just say, "I'm going to do this no matter what." Usually my body starts to catch up and says, "Okay, yeah, I'm feeling a little bit better." It's a lot easier to take action after doing push-ups and jumping jacks than is to take action immediately from the couch. And so just get yourself from the couch to push-ups. Just that little thing and it'll help you. So when you think about that, what in your environment do you need to change in order to make taking action easier on yourself? You know, what is a five minute movement that you can do in order to get your energy flowing? Go on to YouTube, 100%. Like if you just want some help, sometimes it's easier just to follow somebody else doing it. If you're like, "I'm not feeling it today." Go on to YouTube and put, just search five minute intense body weight workout and do it, it only takes five minutes. Do it and I guarantee you you feel much better and much more motivated after that. Okay, so that's number four. Number five is to count down and go. You know, Mel Robbins talks about this in the five second rule for me. I use this when I was a kid. Like I used to be really shy and I knew that if I wanted to have a girlfriend when I was in like sixth, seventh grade, I knew that if I wanted to have a girlfriend, I would have to learn how to speak. And so I would get really shy when I was about to speak in front of people. And so I actually forced myself to know what my first sentence would be. This is literally what I did in middle school. And I would go three, two, one, and I would say the first word 'cause after you say the first word, you gotta commit. And so can you just count down? Can you do it? Like I still do it. I have to have a tough conversation with an employee or with somebody. I'll do the exact same thing and I'll force myself three, two, one, get out the first word. You know, and it's ingrained in us that a lot of us as kids, parents counting down, right? And it's, we start to get used to, oh, you better not do that. You better come over here in three, two, one. And you're like, no child knows what happens at zero because we're always like, oh, shit, mom's gonna get to zero and the world's gonna end, right? And so we're used to this from children kind of programmed into us. But it also doesn't really allow you to kind of sit around and think because we do so much thinking. It's just count down and go. And so an example of how you can use count down and go, let's say that I am on the couch and I'm just being a lazy POS today. And I'm like, man, I've got to do something. I've got to go out and do, I've got to build a piece of furniture for outside. And it's the weekend and I'm just sitting around on my phone but I was like, man, I was supposed to go out and actually build this thing. I'm sitting around on my phone, I'm doing nothing. And I know by using this step number five and also step number four, let me put those two together. Okay, I'm going to get up and I'm gonna do some pushups. I'm gonna do some jumping. I'm gonna do a hundred jumping jacks, okay? Man, I don't really want to do a hundred jumping jacks. Three, two, one, get up, move. Just do a hundred jumping jacks and then see how it feels after. And so how can you incorporate the count down then action into your life to make sure that you start taking more action? So that's number five. Number six is to ask yourself, how can I make this easier? Because life, success, happiness, joy, fulfillment, all of those things are not really difficult. We make it difficult on ourselves, right? We try to make it really difficult. For some reason we think that in order to get what we want in life, we have to struggle. We have to struggle with a success, struggle with happiness, struggle with joy, all of that. Who said that you have to struggle? Like who told you that struggling was just a prerequisite for the life that you want? And so you start to ask yourself, how can you make this easier? And I used to use this all the time when I did one-on-one coaching with clients is I would, at the end of our sessions, we would always have their goals for the next week and their assignments. And we'd always have their assignments and we'd go through, okay, this is assignment number one, number two. And then I would ask them before we get off the call, looking at your assignments, how can you make these easier on yourself? Oh, I can make it easier because I know I normally fail this way. So I'm gonna make sure I don't allow myself to do this thing. You'd be really surprised by just asking yourself the simple question, how can I make this easier on myself? We'll allow you to start to remove roadblocks that you normally put in front of yourself that make the path to success or achievement of whatever it is you're trying to create, much, much easier. And so you just ask yourself a simple question, how can I make this easier on myself? Okay, and then number seven, get an accountability partner. You've heard me say this before, but I really, really, truly believe in accountability partners. I really believe that when we stop doing things by ourselves only, like, you know, I've been an entrepreneur for a really long time now. And there's many years where I've done it all by myself, all alone, and that can be really tiring. And, you know, you can, if you could find an accountability partner, someone that can drive you to help you be better, how often can you talk to them? How often can you start to see how you can help them and they can help you? Where are you not taking action where you should be? You know, what opportunities should you be focusing on that they can help you with? What are the small things that you need to do every single day? And you start to actually figure these things out and you say, "How can I bring an accountability partner to help me with all of this?" And I've said this many times, like, for years I thought an accountability partner was somebody who would do it with you. They would be as excited as you. They would be able to, you know, "Oh, you want to lose some weight? We'll go to the gym together. Oh, you want to do this? Okay, we'll do this together. Oh, you want to make a hundred phone calls a day? Oh, me too, we can do this together." Like, it's great if you could find that person, like that'd be really good if you could find that person, but sometimes you don't have that person. And so you think to yourself, "Well, I'm screwed. I don't have anybody that's as motivated as me. I don't have anybody that's as driven as me." You know, a lot of times I'll get emails from people or messages on Instagram. And they're like, "Rob, I live in a remote place that's in the middle of Wisconsin and I'm this weird person in my family's eyes, in my friend's eyes where I'm motivated. I want something better and nobody's as motivated as me. What do I do? How do I find an accountability partner?" I'm like, they don't have to be as motivated as you. They just have to be annoying. If you could find your most annoying friend and say, "Hey, listen, I need to do X, Y, Z. If I don't do X, Y, Z, I'm going to give you $100." That annoying friend is gonna annoy you to figure out if you did X, Y, Z. And you're not gonna wanna give them the $100, but they're really gonna want that $100. That creates a really good dynamic. So for instance, if you're like, "I wanna work out four times a week. Every time that I don't send you a selfie from the gym, I have to pay you $100." That friend, even if they've never worked out a day in their life, but they're just really annoying, is going to be checking on you almost every single day, which is what you need. You need just a little bit of extra eyes to motivate you so you can't just kind of hide, right? 'Cause that's what we do sometimes. We set a goal. We don't do what we wanna do. We hide. Nobody ever knows. Just by letting other people know. Even if they're not, you could tell everyone that you know your goals. It just drives you a little bit better. Drives you a little bit, drives you to be a little bit better, a little bit, to be a little bit better, but also show up more for yourself and show up for everybody else as well. And so, that's what I would recommend. Get an accountability partner in some sort of way. If they do it with you, awesome. If they don't do anything with you, but they're just annoying, even better sometimes. And so, start to think about that. Like, where are you not taking action where you should be? What opportunities should you be focusing on? What are the small things that you need to master every day? What environment do you need to create in order to make taking action easier? What's a five-minute movement that you can get your energy flowing? How can you incorporate the countdown action? How can I make all of this stuff easier on myself? And then, how can you find accountability partner and how often we talk? Answer those questions and it will make discipline much, much easier. So, that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor. Go ahead and share this on your Instagram stories so that more people can find this. There's millions of people in this world that have never heard of this podcast before. And if this impacts you, I'm sure you have a friend that it would impact as well. So, if you would pay it forward for us, please do me a favor, just share it so that more people can find it. And tag me in @RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And with that, I'm gonna 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 and I hope that you have an amazing day.