How to develop selfdiscipline?

Distraction was an important point I wanted to make. Awesome stuff Verdatti!

Another Tip: Do things you don't like doing ( chores, exercise, read/write)

Final Tip: Meditate Take 20 minutes and think about how you want to improve yourself... not anything else, just on how to improve YOU.

All the best to you!

Self-discipline is a series of habits.

Really what you're asking is, "how do I develop habits?"

First off, don't try to start 10 habits at once. Your body just can't take that much change and will actually fight back trying to revert to old habits even harder which will just make life terrible for you.

Instead, make tiny changes over long periods of time.

For example, if you want to develop the self-discipline to work out every day, and you haven't been working out, don't set the goal for yourself to do 90 minute workouts seven days a week.

Instead, set crazy small goals like:

"At 10 o'clock every day I'm going to get dressed in my workout gear no matter how I feel."

Eventually, that will become a habit.

It sounds crazy, but it works.

Another thing that you can do to develop "discipline" is to write down your goals every single day. Literally, rewrite your goals every single day.

A few things will happen when you do that:

1. Your goals will become more realistic.

Sometimes, in the heat of goal setting, we set goals for ourselves that we don't actually want. We say we want ($1 million), but then when we sit down to try to make $1 million it turns out we don't actually want to do the things that we have to do to make $1 million.

By writing and rewriting your goals every day, you can be more kind to yourself and adjust for the reality of those goals. Maybe you only want $250,000. Maybe you really actually only want $60,000 a year and you'll be totally completely happy for the rest of your life. Etc.

2. Your goals will always be on your mind.

I actually write and rewrite my goals three times a day.

Once in the morning. Once in the afternoon. And once before I go to bed.

I used to have a list of 15 to 20 goals when I first started. Now I have about two or three goals. I learned this by simply writing and rewriting them over and over and over again.

But the point is, that these goals are constantly on the forefront of my mind. I hardly ever get distracted because I'm only three or four hours away from either having written or rewriting my goals.

Have you ever noticed how often you forget your goals? You wake up two or three months later and you think to yourself, "I didn't even do any working out because I totally forgot about it".

That's why I write and rewrite my goals down. I work to keep them at the forefront of my mind.

And lastly, have some compassion for yourself.

You are a human being, and even the great motivational speakers don't get it right 100% of the time.

The harder you are on yourself, the harder you strain to create and develop new habits and disciplines, the harder your body naturally reacts against it. You actually make it harder for yourself.

There is something to be said about the Zen approach to self-discipline.