How to Build Self-Discipline Like Building Muscles

A step-by-step guide to enhancing self-discipline – looking at it, it’s really similar to the process of building muscles…

I have an up and down relationship with personal discipline.

For some areas of my life, it’s easy to create personal discipline. For others, it takes much more work.

For instance, I find that I am really disciplined when it comes to some routines such as waking up early in the morning and exercising. But when it comes to eating (specifically impulsive snacking), it’s much harder to be disciplined in.

Developing and enhancing my self-discipline was similar to building muscles. There were sets of routines that were needed to be done, even though they are not the most comfortable experience.

But each time the routines were done, they were making my self-discipline “muscles” stronger, and over a longer period of time, there was a noticeable difference.

So pretty much, my improvement in my self-discipline didn’t happen overnight. Instead, it happened over a series of small steps.

If you’re like me, I need to have clear written steps when it comes doing something, otherwise it will be hard for me to keep up.

That’s why this blog post will outline the small steps to developing our personal discipline “muscles”. A lot of the steps had came from John Maxwell’s book, Developing the Leader Within You (actually pretty much almost all of it)…

Revised Step-by-Step Plan for Developing Personal Discipline “Muscles”

John Maxwell had set out a really helpful process that made a big difference to my personal discipline. I just revised it a bit for it to work more for me. For fun, I’m going to compare the entire experience to building actual muscles. I’m no expert in every step on how building muscles work, but I’ll try my best.

1. List the five areas in your life that lack discipline and work on improving discipline on them one at a time

When we want to work on building muscles, it’s common sense to first know which muscles we actually want to build. Because what’s the point of doing leg exercises when we want to build the upper body muscles?

It’s the same with developing self-discipline, it’s a good idea to know what areas of our life we are lacking the most discipline in.

But once we list all of those areas, another better idea is to tackle them one at a time. I know that when I tried to acquire and practice several new habits all at once, it all got overwhelming, and I ended up breaking them all. I felt that it was much more beneficial when I just worked on implementing one habit at a time.

Exact same with self-discipline, we just work on one area at a time. Once the discipline improves in that area, then we move onto the next.

Number one on my list was my healthy eating (specifically the snacking). It was one area of my life that lacked discipline and I found it hard to control it.

2. Secure resources that gives instruction and motivation to conquer each area

Just like building muscles, there are a range of resources out there that provides instruction and motivation to help us build them. These can be YouTube videos, personal trainers, and sometimes even books. These will all help us have a better idea on how to reach our goals.

It was the same situation when it came to improving my self-discipline on my snacking habits. To be honest, this was my favourite step. I love reading and listening to audiobooks and podcasts, so it was easy to find resources related to that particular area.

However, the one thing to remember is that while reading and listening is one useful step, it is going to be useless if nothing is being done about it. This brings us to the next step…

3. Taking action

Like what was said above, all that reading and listening wouldn’t be of much use if we don’t do anything about it.

Going back to building muscles, we’re not actually going to be making ourselves stronger just by simply watching YouTube videos and speaking with our personal trainer. Yes, those resources would provide instruction and motivation, but that’s all they give.

We only build our muscles when we actually implement what we watch and what the personal trainer tells us.

Same thing with building self-discipline. Reading and listening would just provide a drive of motivation and gives instruction on what we need to do. However, the only way of actually building those self-discipline muscles is if we actually implement what was being said.

It may not work for anyone, but for me, reading and listening to resources on healthy eating was able to instill into my brain different facts about how different foods would affect my body.

It did work – whenever I found myself about to eat a bag of chips, I immediately go back to the time I listened to a podcast about how eating just one small bag of chips a day and continuing that overtime will eventually lead to weight gain and skin breakouts.

Just remember that reading and listening is just a form of motivation and instruction that will help us take action.

The reading and listening was a form of motivation for me not to oversnack, and the instruction on what to do about it. Whether or not I’ll actually do it all starts with me, I am the only one that can control whether or not I’ll actually do it.

There were four ways that had helped take action:

• Changing the Environment – changing the environment for me to not see all the snacks and impulsively eat them.
• Organising Routines – ensuring that what is needed to be done is included in the day to make sure that nothing is missed.
• Creating Systems
• Forming Habits

4. Have someone to hold you accountable
Why do people have a personal trainer?

To keep them accountable.

To keep making sure that they are sticking to all their routines so that they don’t slip off. Slipping off would mean being further away from their desired goal.

We can do the same for building our self-discipline “muscles”.

Whether it’s a family or friend, it doesn’t matter, as long as they are also able to keep track of your progress.

I’ve heard of really cool accountability techniques where some would pay another $50 or more if they break their cycle of discipline.

I’ve heard stories about how some would pay their personal trainers $100 whenever they go beyond their calorie intake.

I’ve personally never used it before, but that’s something I do want to try…

My way of being accountable is through this blog. It is where there will be those reading it and seeing me make these declarations to myself. Just by doing that I feel the need to stay disciplined with my routines.

5. Start small

Just like what I said in the first step, it’s probably more beneficial to improve self-discipline one area at a time.

Of course, having stronger muscles isn’t going to happen overnight. A beginner (like me) isn’t going to be lifting 50kg weights at the start. They are going to be starting off with lighter weights, and then moving on to heavier weights as they start to get stronger.

It’s just like with developing our self-discipline muscles – it’s not going to get stronger overnight. We start by taking small actions and steps that would eventually accumulate to a noticeable difference.

6. Start Early

It’s common sense that the earlier you start building your muscles, the earlier that you will get stronger.

If you know the drill, it’s the same with building those personal discipline muscles (not even going to quote this anymore).

Just start.

For example, if someone was informed that their health was declining, and the way to improve it was to make changes to their eating and exercise habits, the earlier they start the better. The longer they wait, the more detrimental it would be to their health.

If someone wants to build their communication skills, the earlier they start the better. The earlier they start, they earliest they can be able to effectively communicate with people.

If someone wants a body transformation, the early they start, the better. The earlier they start, the earliest they can have that body they desire.

It Ultimate Starts With Us

On top of all of these steps outlined above, there’s one thing to keep in mind.

It all starts with us.

We can watch workout videos on YouTube all we want and speak to our personal trainer everyday, but the real improvement happens when we actually take action.

The same with our personal discipline. We can read or listen to everything that we can, but the real improvement happens when the actual action does.

Then the action has to keep happening regardless of the circumstances.

Ultimately, it’s all up to us whether we do the things that we need to do. And this also includes doing those things when we don’t even want to do them.

Book(s) this post was inspired by:

(not sponsored in any way!)

• Developing the Leader Within You – John Maxwell
• The Compound Effect – Darren Hardy

Disclaimer: If you think that any of what I had written was good, the credit actually belongs to the one whose book was the inspiration for this post. If there’s anything on here that you think is quite stupid, that’s 100% blame on me 🙂

Share This Blog Post Here:

Related Articles:

How the Compound Effect Works

New Year, New WHY… Stop Using Willpower!

The Best Ways to Set Goals! (it will change the way you look at your goals)

Before You Start a New Habit… Read This!

Systems Over Goals! – why you should focus on systems

---

---

CONNECT with ME!! 🗯

Instagram:

@laurenlbarri (blog Instagram)

---

---