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“We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.” Throughout your life, you can make a choice as to how you suffer. Would you rather struggle through the discomfort of shaping your willpower and behavior toward worthwhile ends, or endure the sting of dreams left unrealized because you chose self-indulgence over restraint? Discipline is usually what keeps you from what you truly want. Practicing it entails having to bear a certain level of pain, but so does suffering the consequences of a life without it.
The focus of this book is to ingrain self-discipline and willpower as an unconscious habit to ensure that you can consistently achieve your goals and live without regret.
We first set off in life having no notion of delaying gratification for the purpose of achieving long-term goals.
self-discipline is a quality to be honed.
ventral medial prefrontal cortex while the participants were engaged in the task, suggesting the involvement of said brain region in the practice of self-control and discipline.
These fMRI studies demonstrate that the ability to make healthier long-term decisions and engage in self-discipline comes more easily to some people than others as a result of the activity and structure of their prefrontal cortex.
The same is true for the synaptic connections responsible for discipline. The more you activate these pathways by practicing self-discipline, the easier it will be for you to have self-control in the future because your brain has been primed to use that linkage in day-to-day scenarios.
No comprehensive discussion on self-control can fail to mention the famous Stanford Marshmallow Experiment.
You shouldn’t feel discouraged if you struggle with self-control and discipline in your adulthood.
It certainly would have been easier to learn those skills when you were younger, just as languages have been proven to be easier to learn when young, but that in no way makes it impossible to do so now. Self-discipline and willpower can be consistently exercised to achieve sustainable improvements over time, at any age.
Focus is one of the main pillars of self-discipline; a person who lacks the ability to focus is almost certainly one who will also lack discipline. Focus itself is dependent on something that neuroscientists call executive functions.
The three executive functions we are most concerned with when it comes to being disciplined are working memory, impulse control, and cognitive flexibility and adaptability.
You can see why they are aptly named the executive functions—they institute the brain’s management system. Through the executive functions, you are able to set and pursue goals, prioritize activities, filter distractions, and control unhelpful impulses.
In order to improve and refresh discipline, it’s clearly desirable to have more blood flow to those regions of the brain that are responsible for executive functions. One of the techniques which may help do this is meditation.
Moreover, meditation was shown to impact the amygdala, which is generally responsible for the primal emotions, instincts, and drives that keep us alive.
Meditation is associated with a shrinking of the amygdala, which means that participants who meditated tend to be less susceptible to fear, strong emotional impulses, and stress. Self-discipline is often sabotaged by emotional impulses and stress, so keeping these under control is helpful to setting the conditions for strong willpower.
The brain structure located behind the frontal lobe—the anterior cingulate cortex—also became denser with meditation practice. This brain area has been associated with functions having to do with self-regulation,
Being disciplined in your pursuit of long-term goals is only possible if you can consistently focus on the decisions and actions that lead to accomplishing those goals. Thus, it’s nearly impossible to achieve focus and self-discipline separately, as each is intertwined with the other.
Willpower is a limited quantity, and as it can be drained, we must be careful with it, lest we fall prey to temptations with good timing.
And survival mode is essentially a green light for instant gratification and binge eating, as well as a myriad of other failures of self-discipline.
Exercising self-control can be beneficial, but ultimately the most effective way of maintaining discipline is by simply avoiding the situations that present the strongest temptations and thus the highest chances for failure.
Stress diverts energy away from the prefrontal cortex and causes us to focus more on short-term outcomes, which influences us to make regrettable decisions.
You can best accomplish that goal by being aware of the factors that will fatigue your willpower and putting yourself into the most favorable circumstances.
Another area in the brain, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, is involved in selecting choices that have better long-term consequences.
When it comes to self-discipline, the three main executive functions involved are working memory, impulse control, and cognitive flexibility and adaptability.
The brain regions responsible for executive functions are the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, supplementary motor area, and cingulate motor zones.
In those cases, discipline isn’t applied arbitrarily but rather for a specific purpose or set of reasons. Some behaviors are uninhibited, while a very specific set are controlled.
Knowing the exact outcome you want is an essential part of having self-discipline.
People were most incentivized to work by the feeling of making consistent progress toward a meaningful goal.
It’s one thing to be good at basketball, but to barely be able to dribble a ball on Day 1, then manage to dribble between your legs on Day 7, is a far stronger motivator for continued action.
the study proves that money is a powerful short-term motivator. It’s the lowest-hanging fruit and most obvious cure for our problems and unhappiness. But at a certain point, money almost ceases to matter.
In addition to feelings of progress and investment, they have since come up with three main categories of motivation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
The second motivator, mastery, refers to our innate urge to get better at things.
And then there’s purpose—the belief or intention that we can have an impact on the world.
Extrinsic motivators can also include pleasure-seeking, positive reinforcement, and even bribery. Our drives to accumulate wealth, reproduce, and achieve social status all fall into this category.
This is when we do things for other people, rather than ourselves. They are the types of motivators that make us feel vulnerable to judgment.
Yet the biggest extrinsic motivation is how we are perceived by others.
box breathing (Mark Divine).
A stressed-out mind is an inefficient and uncreative mind,
That’s where the 10-Minute Rule comes in—if you want something, wait at least ten minutes before getting it. It’s simple and leaves no room for debate or excuses.
One of the most common pitfalls in discipline is the belief that altering our behavioral patterns will be easy—this is known as the False Hope Syndrome.
He stated that many people tend to shoot for drastic and unsustainable changes, leading to inevitable failure.
Before you can set attainable goals, you first need to have a realistic view of your capabilities and limitations, your strengths and weaknesses, your interests and boredom triggers.
Moving forward, you can examine every goal you set in that light, and modify it accordingly to ensure you are constructing the appropriate targets based on your true abilities and not on false hope.
A healthy heuristic to combat procrastination and perfectionism is dubbed the 75% Rule. Simply, take action when you’re only about 75 percent certain you’ll be correct or successful.
It takes a realistic approach and a willingness to act without certainty to build discipline.
This is what will happen if you think about your past triumphs: you will associate those memories with the present, so it feels like you have nothing left to do. You will be able to rationalize undisciplined behavior, which undermines your goals.
(“I was so good yesterday I can take a break today”), stop immediately and don’t undercut your own progress.
The general form of the law became that increasing the size of something decreases its efficiency.
You don’t make things more complex or difficult than they need to be just to fill the time.
