🧩 MY TURN
Story time
I’m a first generation college grad. One Spring day in 2003 my parents dropped me off at my first college visit while they went to breakfast. We had no clue most kids would have their parents with them.
I walked into my first Q&A session alone.
Halfway through the session a kid raised his hand and asked something about AP credit and starting as a sophomore. I had never heard this phrase before.
So I raised my hand and asked “How do I get AP credit?”
The room grew quiet with a few giggles and exchanged looks. The woman leading the tour kindly replied “you would have had to take those classes in high school.”
My small Central Illinois farm town didn’t offer AP classes.
My graduating class was 40ish people.
How was I already behind when we hadn’t even started?!
Fast forward to December 2007…..
I graduated summa cum laude in 3.5 years….before that same kid.
Are you feeling behind?
Remember this…..
The most successful people don’t all take ice baths, wake up at 5 or have ivy league educations and AP credit……….but they do all share one thing……
Discipline.
A study in 2002 found that discipline outdoes talent in predicting academic success during adolescence. Academic work was pitted against less effortful, more entertaining alternatives. Those with greater self-control seemed to get the most out of every learning opportunity.
Discipline is the bridge between goals desired and goals achieved.
The average new creator/side hustler will quit after going long stretches of putting in work with little-to-no monetary return. In fact, many will actually invest in a lot of equipment or tech platforms, try for a few weeks, quit and return to their day job with a loss.
🧩 QUICK SPIN:
“What lies in our power to do, lies in our power not to do.” – Aristotle
Today I’m going to teach you how to develop your discipline muscle.
Let’s dive in.
Self-discipline is your ability to manage yourself with the intent of achieving a goal.
The good news? Discipline is a learned skill.
The five pillars of self-discipline:
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Acceptance
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Willpower
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Hard work
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Persistence
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Patience
🙏 Acceptance:
Most fail to accurately perceive and accept their current situation. It is important to identify an area where your discipline is weakest.
Ex: I hate cooking so if I don’t have prepared foods in my fridge, I will order Shake Shack. I don’t make the rules.
💪 Willpower:
Willpower is the ability to resist short-term gratification in pursuit of long-term goals or objectives. Note: Your willpower is at its lowest when you feel stressed.
Do I want to get up at 5am every day to write? Not usually. But my desire to grow as a writer and creator outweighs my desire to get an extra 1-2 hours of sleep every night.
Many people find it hard to resist the allure of immediate comfort or pleasure, which can undermine their discipline.
Growth requires you to leave your comfort zone.
🚧 Hard work:
Many people try to avoid this by doing what is easiest. Ever created a long to-do list and then looked for the easiest thing to check off first?
Hard work is about knowing your bigger objective and choosing the path to get there – no matter how hard is appears.
Many people who book calls with me on Mentorpass or Intro are looking for the easiest ways to grow their brands so I share my playbook for building a personal or consumer brand.
I always say “what I’m about to show you will seem simple but that doesn’t make it easy”.
💨 Persistence:
Persistence allows you to keep taking action even when you don’t feel motivated to do so, and therefore you keep accumulating results.
The #1 trick for maintaining motivation is breaking your big scary goals into small achievable goals.
Next week is the start of Q4 so I’ll be sharing my quarterly goal setting process to ensure I am juggling my day job, side hustle, family, fun and health.
⏰ Patience:
Success and change don’t happen overnight. It can. be discouraging to look around and feel like everyone else is ahead of you.
Patience is putting trust in the process of how they got there and how you will too.
My trick when I get antsy? I look at meetings / emails I sent a year ago and where I was focused. You will realize how far you’ve already come.
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As we discussed last week, social media has the 90-9-1 rule: 90% lurk, 10% engage and only 1% create.
A quick hit list of top reasons most fail at their goals:
♟️ YOUR TURN:
Discipline is the act of deciding to do something – whether you want to or not. So let’s set you up for success with 10 steps towards building stronger discipline.
Step 1: Accept it’s under your control
Responsibility is your ability to respond to a situation. The only person standing in between you and your goal is you.
It’s time to get out of your own way and you deserve the thing you want.
Step 2: Know your WHY
Knowing your values for motivation is helpful to achieve self-discipline.
(See this exercise on value setting)
Self-discipline becomes very powerful when combined with goal-setting and passion.
Step 3: Pick 3
Most people fail because they bite off more than they can chew. Pick 3 non-negotiables in your day that will get you to your bigger goals.
Here are my 3 non-negotiables every day:
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Write ➡️ aligned with my career goals
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Workout ➡️ aligned with my health goals
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No phone from 7-8:30 when I’m with my kids ➡️ aligned with my relationship goals
What are your 3?
Step 4: Know your weakness / Learn your excuses
We all make excuses and…….they work.
The next time you skip one of your non-negotiables above, write down the excuse you used and make a plan to address it proactively.
Too tired to go to the gym? Go to sleep earlier.
Work was too crazy to put phone down? Set a slack notification that you are away for an hour.
Step 5: Remove distractions
Staying focused is one of the most difficult aspects of discipline. Countless distractions can take your attention away from your goals, such as social media, emails, and other people’s demands on your time.
To stay focused, you must identify and develop strategies to manage your biggest distractions.
Twitter is my biggest distraction so I’ve had to set boundaries to stay in control of the time.
Step 6: Personify it
This might sound a little wacky… but stay with me.
I have a character on my emotional bus who I call Mandy. She’s weaker and has no chill. She wants to sleep in, skip the gym, scroll Tik Tok and eat a ton of sweets.
Whenever I feel an urge to do something not aligned with my goals, I close my eyes and gently tell her she is not in control and take her back to her seat so *37 year old Amanda with places to go* can get back in the driver’s seat.
Read more about emotional bus analogy here.
Step 7: Get organized
Every Sunday I do a “Sunday reset” clean to ensure I start my week with a clean and organized home. Your physical space will affect your digital and emotional space.
Here are 6 things to do this Sunday to get ready for your week:
– Pick 2 big things to accomplish for your career goals (content plan, outline, deck, etc)
– Plan your workout schedule for the week and put it in your calendar
– Write down in your phone notes app what you will eat this week
– Clean up your home
– Get groceries
– Go to sleep early
Step 8: Be a robot
I’ve done over 100+ podcast interviews and, if you’ve ever heard one, you likely heard me say “I’m a fun robot”. I keep roughly the same schedule every day which helps me move from time block to time block with less distractions and choices to throw me off track.
Note: I will be sharing tools very soon to help you learn my time blocking system!
Step 9: The 5 Second Rule
Discipline is not just about what you do, but your capacity to keep doing even when you do not feel like it.
Mel Robbins explains that we have 5 seconds to act before our mind convinces us to do otherwise. The “5 second rule” creates a process to combat the subconscious mind, and forces us to act on our ideas.
The process is simple. Counting backwards from 5-4-3-2-1 and immediately acting at the end of the count, and before the mind creates a reason not to act.
“The 5-second rule is simple. If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it. …. Hesitation is the kiss of death. You might hesitate for a just nanosecond, but that’s all it takes. That one small hesitation triggers a mental system that’s designed to stop you. And it happens in less than—you guessed it—five seconds.” Mel Robbins
Step 10a: Less Sticks
We all slip or take a step back. Use your energy to get back on track and not to berate yourself.
Step 10b: More Carrots 🥕
A girl on TikTok explained she gives herself $5 spending money for every mile she runs and that’s her clothes shopping money. She set out for a long run one Saturday with the goal of buying a pair of Abercrombie jeans for $60. 12 miles. So when she got tired at mile 10 – she pushed through.
More carrots, less sticks.
So let’s recap and get you ready to go accomplish that goal you’ve been thinking about for so long.
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Accept responsibility
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Know your WHY
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Pick 3 non-negotiables
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Know your excuses
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Remove distractions
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Personify it
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Get organized
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Be a robot
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Use the 5 second rule
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Less sticks, More carrots
PS. You deserve to do the thing you see others doing. Believe it and get after it. 💪
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