 How to be more disciplined. Six ways to master self-control. Have you ever felt like doing stuff and you get on some, you know, path of doing things and you think you're doing real good and it all falls apart and then you quit doing it? That happens, doesn't it? Why does that happen? Well, you probably need an app. That's probably what it is. If you just had an app, if you had a color-coded chart, if you had a booklet that you could write in, nah, we've all tried those things. And besides that, if those things really worked and there's a lot of them out there, there's a lot of organizational things out there, then everybody would be disciplined, but they don't. They don't work. Why is that? If you want to know why and you want to get real self-discipline, there's lasting self-discipline for the rest of your life, then you're going to want to watch this video because I'm going to share it with you in six simple steps. But let's talk about what self-discipline really is anyhow. Self-discipline is a state of mind and you have to have this change in your state of mind to actually have self-discipline. This doesn't mean you have to have some life-changing event or anything like that because really small changes can make huge differences in your life when compounded over time. Okay, the first part to self-discipline is you have to define your why. If you don't define your why, you're never going to be disciplined in any particular area because why are you doing this? Why do you want to do something? I know when I wanted to start a business online, I wanted to do it for years and I never did it. I just never did it and I had all kinds of excuses and they ran the gamut but it was usually because I didn't have time to do it. That's what I always told myself and time is a funny thing because we all have the same amount of time. So it's really a matter of what you consider important and what you decide to cut out of your life as much as what you decide to put into your life. So I was sitting there watching TV one night and I was going to get ready to go to bed and I was like, well, I just don't have time because I'm at work at 7.30 or 8 in the morning, get home 7.38 at night, get the kids in bed. I was a single bed. I only got like an hour, two hours. I watched a little bit of TV. When am I going to start a business? Now possible. And then I realized what my why was. My why was I didn't want to be in this cycle the rest of my life. That was my big why. I don't want to do that. I don't want to have to where I can't do anything that I want to do. I don't want that. That's not what I want. So what I did is when I turned on the TV, I looked at the TV and I said, I've got time right now. I don't have enough time, right? Because I wanted to be able to work for four or five hours on something. I couldn't do that. I only had an hour or two. So guess what I did? I turned off the TV and I worked for an hour. Just an hour. I did it the next night and the next night and then some nights it grew into two or three hours and then four hours because my why had become big enough. I didn't want to do that anymore. What's your why? Why do you want to lose weight? Right? Why do you want to make more money? What is your why? You've got to figure that out first. Before we get into self-discipline, let's talk about what self-discipline is not. Self-discipline is not being a perfect person. Self-discipline is not ever watching TV again. Self-discipline is not never craving a cupcake because you're going to. Self-discipline is something that is learned and it's gradual. You're not going to be a perfect person. You're going to screw up and even if you get really good at self-discipline, sometimes you'll make a mistake there too. It happens and you got to forgive yourself for that. Otherwise you'll say, well, I've already screwed this up. I've already eaten three cupcakes so I might as well just screw the diet. It's not going to work out. You can't do that. You've got to realize that that's just one little error, but it doesn't matter because in the long run you're going to keep doing what you need to do because you have that why that you've already defined. So let's get into this list. I already gave you mine, but the first one here is challenge your own excuses. My excuse I told you was that I wanted to start this business, but I couldn't do it because I didn't have time. I challenged my excuse one night. One night I challenged my excuse and I said to myself, wait a second, right now you've got time. You've got an hour. You've got two hours. Right now you've got time. I challenged my own excuses. If you challenge your own excuses, you will become the master of your results, but you got to challenge your own excuses. And the one excuse that I don't understand is when somebody won't subscribe. You got to go down there and subscribe. I had to work this in somehow. Make sure you subscribe to the channel. Make sure you ring the bell. Turn on all bell notifications. You're notified every single time I do a new video. I'm doing the discipline to sit here and do these videos. You've got to watch them. Okay. Super important. Don't forget to put comments down there too. All right. Let's move on to number two. Number two, you need to delay gratification. Delay gratification. Now as a kid, we're focused on just playing and you're eating and having a good time and never having to do anything. But as we grow up and we mature, we realize that there's other things down the road that if we forgo those little things now that we can have a bigger picture later on, if we get up and go to work, which we don't want to do, that we'll be able to pay the bills at the end of the month. If we go to the gym every single day, then at some point we actually will lose that weight. So what we have to do is have delayed gratification. Delayed gratification is a very tough thing to develop. But once you see the benefits of you doing something, it's not so hard to develop. Once you have lost the weight, you're like, wow, yeah, I did without those cupcakes and I did without those sweets, but now I've lost the weight. Or yeah, you know what? I went to the gym, you know, for a year straight and you know what, my waistline's smaller now and I feel stronger now and I can even more push-ups and set-ups or whatever it is that your goal was. But you have to develop delayed gratification. You've got to understand your mind is designed to get you gratification for every single moment that's going on right now. And you have to resist that and look at the big picture. Number three, what you don't do is almost more important than what you do-do. So in my case, I wanted to start an online business and what I was doing is I was coming home every day and watching TV for an hour or two, okay? An hour or two of TV. It doesn't sound like much. It really doesn't. It sounds like you're owed that, right? You're owed that relaxation time. You're not owed anything, okay? That's the real truth. You're not owed anything. If you want a different outcome, you're going to have to give up some of the things that you think are a pleasure. So when I looked at that, I had to say, well, what I'm doing and watching this TV is hurting me more, right? So I need to quit doing this thing. This thing's hurting me. It's causing me pain watching this TV. Now, it may seem comfortable when I'm doing it, but in the long run, it's not going to do me any good. So that's the thing you have to do. Whatever you are doing is almost more important than what you're not doing. Take for example, the average person nowadays, get this, spends five hours a day on social media. Five hours a day on social media. And you say, well, I don't sit there for five hours. No, you don't. Here's what you do. You check it for 10 minutes in the morning. And then right before lunch, you check it for 30 minutes. And then after lunch, you might as well check in again for another 20 minutes. And as the day goes on, all this builds up and you've lost five hours, five hours that you could have invested in something that would have made you a better person, would have made you more money, would have been, you know, improved your relationships, five hours of lost time. You've got the time. You've got the time. The next thing you got to do is develop consistent small habits. Small habits. Don't start with the big ones, really small ones. We all know about Jerry Seinfeld, very successful comedian. And he was talking to a gentleman by the name of Brad Isaac, who wanted to be a comedian. And he asked for Jerry's advice. And Seinfeld told him, the best way to improve was to write jokes every single day. Don't miss a day. He advised Isaac to get a large wall calendar and a red magic marker. For every day he writes jokes, he makes a big red X over that day. After a few days, you'll start to build up an unbroken chain of red X's, which is a very satisfying feeling. After that, your only job is to not break the chain. The strategy isn't concerned with the results themselves. It's simply about building a consistent habit. And I think that's what most people have a hard time with is they go to the gym for a week or two or two or three months and they go, I don't see any results. This is a waste of time. It's not a waste of time because all of those workouts that you're putting in, all that effort that you're putting in is building up. You just don't realize it, but it is building up. And over time, you will see results. You don't have to worry about the results in the beginning. That's unnecessary. That's one thing I did get right when I started selling online because I was losing money in the beginning, but I didn't care. I was just going to keep doing things until something worked. And that's what you got to do. You just got to develop these small little habits of doing something every single day. And number five, it's about the habit, not the outcome. So what you have to do is decide what kind of habits you're going to have. If you say to yourself, you know, I do want to be in better shape or I do want to be stronger, I do want to lose weight, whatever it is you're working on, then you have to say, well, what's going to be my habit? And you have to decide on that habit and do it over and over again. Let's say you want to lose weight and your habit could be, I'm going to get 10,000 steps a day in. Now I've got one of these nice little nifty watches here and it adds up my calories and all that stuff. And it's really actually helped me. I didn't think I like this watch a whole lot when I first got it. But now I realize that I'm using it because I look at, you know, I have to have a 700 calorie burn a day. That's what I want to have on this watch. Okay. That's not much. That's really not much. But some days I'm 300 or 400 behind what I should because I have kind of a sedentary lifestyle here. I'm sitting behind a desk talking to you on a video camera. So I've got to get up and do stuff. And I'll look at the watch and I'll see what you haven't achieved it. And it'll make me get up and get on the stationary bike. It'll make me get up and do some setups, push-ups, whatever it is I need to do. But it's those little tiny habits and you got to focus on the habits and make sure you do the habits and then the results will come later. Don't worry about the results in the beginning. They aren't that important. Number six, become the person that does those things. Here's what I mean by that. If you had a goal of whatever it is to be a writer, to be a comedian, to be in great shape, you're going to say to yourself, well, somebody who was that, what would their day look like? What would they do on a daily basis? Somebody who was in shape, you may say, well, they walk 10,000 steps a day and they eat five servings of vegetables every day. That's what a person like that does. Become that person. Just do that. Do the 10,000 steps a day. Eat the five servings of vegetables a day. If you want to be that person, you're going to have to do those things. My son is a bodybuilder and he doesn't think twice about going to the gym or meal prep or any of that. That's just what he does. This is what he does because he wants to achieve a certain goal. So every day he's just going to do those things, whatever it takes, he's just going to do those things. Doesn't matter if he's tired, doesn't matter if he doesn't feel good, none of that really matters because that's who he is. What he does every day, he just does those things. That's what you have to do. You have to develop that thing that you're going to do the things that would get you to become the person that you want to become. It's that simple. I like to call this an identity-based habit. The identity that you're trying to develop, you're going to have to say to yourself, these are the habits. Somebody who would be like that would do these particular things. I think it's so funny in dating relationships. I see this a lot and I see people saying, well, I can't quite meet the person I want. I want this attractive person that's in shape and that has a great job, that has good manners and that wants to stay home and doesn't want to go out and party. I can't seem to find that person. They don't seem to exist out there. When in fact, what you have to do is become what you want to attract. You got to become what you want to attract. If you want somebody who works hard and who is polite and who stays home and doesn't go out and parties and is kind to other people and is in shape and all that, then that's what you have to be because guess what? People who are like that are looking for that too. That's what they want and if you're not that thing, you know, if you're out of shape and your finances are a mess and you're not working hard, you're not getting enough sleep and you're hitting the bar every night but you're looking for this other perfect person, you're never going to find them because they're going to look at you and say, you're not what I want. Just like right now, you're looking at those other people saying, that's not what I want. It's not what you want, then you got to become what you want and then you'll attract what you want. There was a gym that opened in our neighborhood and it was called Eat the Frog and I thought, well, wow, that's a stupid name for a gym. Eat the Frog, that's the dumbest thing in the world. And then I googled it, Eat the Frog and it's actually a saying from Mark Twain and Mark Twain was talking about the awful things that you got to do to be successful and he says, if you've got to eat a frog, if you have to eat a frog, nobody wants to eat a frog, that's a horrible thought, but if you've got to eat a frog, the best time to eat a frog is first thing in the morning. It's first thing in the morning because you're going to get it over with, you're going to get it over with and done. So what he was essentially saying is, you got to do the things that are the most difficult for you right away. Don't put them off, get it done, get it over with. If you've got to eat two frogs a day, what do you do? You eat the biggest frog first. You pick the most difficult frog to eat, right? You get it over with. So whatever those difficult things are, don't put them off because they become a mountain later on. You just can't put it off. You can't do that. You got to get it done, eat the frog. And lastly, I want to tell you is, I think a lot of people are waiting for permission. They're waiting for recognition. They're waiting for some confirmation. And what I mean by that is they want somebody to tell them that they're good at something. They want somebody to tell them that they're worthwhile. They want somebody to tell them it's okay to do this. Here's a certificate from college. Okay, you're now educated. You're smart. Here's this other certificate of achievement. You've achieved this. Now you're this. Don't wait for that. You don't even need any of it. None of that even matters really in life. What matters in life is that you're going through what you need to go through to get to where you want and you develop self-discipline. If you follow these habits for self-discipline, you're going to change. You really will. If you start looking at this differently, you're really going to change. If you quit avoiding the things that are uncomfortable, you're going to change. And let me tell you something about comfort. Your brain is programmed for one thing. Comfort. Comfort. It doesn't want you to expel any energy whatsoever. Now, why would your brain be programmed that way? And how do I even know your brain is programmed that way? Because years ago, when we didn't know where our next meal was going to come from, if we moved around, we burned up energy. And our brain says, you can't do that because you don't know when you're going to be fat again. So what we're going to do as a brain here is we're going to say, hey, don't do anything, relax, stay still, don't move, be totally lazy. So if you've ever felt guilty about being lazy, it's really not your fault. It's your brain saying, you've got to conserve energy. That's what you've got to do. But it is your own fault if you know this fact and you continue to do it. If you know that your brain is trying to say, no, don't go down there and do those setups. Don't do those pushups. Don't ride that bike. Don't walk around the block because that's going to burn up energy. You don't know where your next meal is going to come from. I would think if you're watching this video, you got your next meal covered. You're good. You got your next meal covered. It may not be what you want. It may not be the gourmet thing you want, but you got a meal covered, right? Since you've got that meal covered, quit using the excuse not to work out, not to do the things you need to do online. Quit using that excuse because your brain is telling you conserve energy, do nothing. And if you listen to that, the results aren't good. And the very last part of this is don't expect perfection. No matter what you do, no matter what habits you develop, no matter what you go through in life, things are going to get screwed up. You're going to have situations come up. You're probably never going to reach the ultimate peak of who you could be as a person. It's just a constant battle to get there. But if you keep doing this, you're always going to improve. And that's what we're really going for. It is the journey. It's not the end of the road. It's always the journey because the end of the road, that's not good. The end of the road is the end of the road. You don't want to get there. That's not where you want to get to. I just want to add one thing. Discipline is like a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it's going to get, the more disciplined you'll find that you're able to be. If you haven't been disciplined for years, it's going to be tough in the beginning. But if you just keep flexing that muscle and flexing that muscle, it's going to get stronger and stronger. And you're going to start to find it's easier to be self-disciplined. I know I'm more self-disciplined than I was 20, 30 years ago because I didn't know a lot of these things. I didn't study enough. I didn't know enough. I thought a lot of circumstances that I had were just because things happened to me. I didn't look at it as, no, I did this and I caused these circumstances. A lot of your circumstances are caused by you. Wherever you're at in life now, wherever you're at is based on the decisions of things that have happened to you up to this point. That's a fact. Wherever you're at in life right now is based on the decisions of things that have happened to you. You can start changing and you can start changing right now. And the biggest thing you need to change right now is that subscribe button. If it's red, you need to click it and turn it gray so that you're subscribed to the channel. And don't forget, turn on bell notifications too so that you're notified every single time I do a new video or I go live. I hope you enjoyed this video. It's been a lot of fun. Write down in the comments below if you have any questions or comments about the subject. If you had experience with these things, I want to know. I want you to share that with me. If you have any questions about making money online, that's what we talk about on this channel. We're a little off subject here, but we've got to get disciplined so we can make money, right? I mean, we've got to do that every now and then. Got to get some discipline. But if you have any questions about any of that, put that in the description below. I do have a course down there, $97 course. You can get it absolutely free right now. It's a click and learn course. You'll see it in the description down there. I want to thank you so much for watching this video. Give me a thumbs up if you don't mind and I'll see you in the next video. 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