How to be more Self Disciplined

What is self discipline? Staying away from distraction? Keeping cell phones away? Now though these are legitimate problems but they don't entirely fit under self discipline but rather in a wider category called behavioural change. 

Behaviour change is the thing that gets us more aligned with our goals, dreams and long term desires. When it comes to the general mission to change out behaviour you need to change three things. 

1. The cultivation of self discipline, slowly improving our self discipline.

2. Creating new habits

3. Customising of environment to remove roadblocks and cause temptation.

What is the difference between self discipline and motivation? often people get confused with these two. Self discipline is the ability to lean into the resistance even when your not feeling like it, like waking up and getting in a workout before going out to do other things (Acting by your thoughts not feelings). While motivation on the other hand is your desire to do something.

1. Change your identity a perfect example for this is a man offers a cigarette to two men the first says "I can't I'm trying to stop smoking" while the second one says "sorry I don't smoke". The difference? The first man still believes he is smoker who is trying to be someone else while still having the same beliefs. The second man believes that the old him smoked and this is no longer who he is. Once you embrace the change you will take actions to be the person you believe you are. 

2. Create reminders why? Why are you doing what you're doing, once you have this figure out you'll automatically be consistent in your work. What you're doing is getting final goal of where you want to be or what you want to achieve in the future. Maybe draw a picture of the future you want or write a note to your future self asking if you've achieved the things you dreamed of achieving. This might act as motivation even when you don't feel like working on something. Or another thing you can do is relate whatever you don't want to do with something you consider bad, like if you're trying to eat healthy consider eating junk food as a potential toxic relationship and the healthy food as a healthy relationship. 

3. Embrace the "this sucks" Just like exercise the more stress you put on your muscles the stronger they become, or like in football even if you suck at performing a skills the more you do it the better you get at it. Whatever makes you uncomfortable makes you better in that particular skill. So if getting up sucks then keep doing it and it wont. 

4. Target the fundamentals to focus on all of this we need our brain an body at full functional mode. How do you achieve that? focus on the fundamentals biological necessities nutrition, sleep, being active etc. Some people might think that the brain doesn't depend on what you're eating but it does cause if you don't The brain doesn't have enough energy to function at full capacity, meaning you might not be as strict as you would be. (okay maybe i'm not so sure about the last part).

5. Practice zazen according to a study at Stanford University study people who practised meditation were more in control of their emotions in general. why is keeping emotions in check necessary? cause as you read before "Act from your thoughts not emotions" also it could help you with keeping your temper under check (I definitely need to start doing it). Zazen meditation is when you focus on your breathing, so just close your eyes set a timer and just focus on your breathing and every time you get other thoughts consciously bring back your attention to your breathing. This helps in improving the whole self control part.  

6. Build new habits okay you've probably heard this one before. How do you get rid of habits like using your phone everywhere? replace it with something like reading a book everywhere. building new habits itself tests your self discipline.

That's all I have for this one. 

P.s these are my takes and additional thoughts from the video linked below: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3vRK2P9lSU&list=WL&index=1