March 15, 2024 • 35 mins
Self discipline is the key ingredient to unlocking everything you want in life. But despite that many of us treat it like its optional and believe the narrative that self discipline requires perfection, requires sacrifice and is too hard. Actually, self discipline is anything but, it is actually the road of least resistance. In this episode we break down 5 tips for building self discipline in any area of life:
- Understanding your motivation
- Leveraging social accountability and desirability bias
- The power of micro habits
- Hacking our dopamine systems through instant versus delayed gratification
- Shifting from learned helplessness to learned industriousness
All of that and more! Listen now!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:27):
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode another topic. As
we break down the psychology of our twenties today, we
are in for such a trait. I'm kind of kidding
because this is perhaps not the most exciting topic, but
(00:48):
I think it's one of the most valuable during this decade,
and that is how we can use psychology, science, even
sociology to build self discipline. I have biggest tips for
ensuring that you have all the tools to pursue your
goals successfully, whatever domain they're in, whether that's fitness, lifestyle changes, work,
(01:12):
creative projects, even just your daily tasks. I think that
discipline is such an interesting concept to me, especially in
our twenties, because it is seriously the secret ingredient to
achieving anything you want in life. Yet so many of
us treat it as optional or believe that it's too
hard to achieve. I think that's because of a number
(01:35):
of misconceptions that we have about self discipline, the first
one being that if you are disciplined, you need to
be aiming for perfection. I think that belief keeps a
lot of us from ever even starting something, because we
truly do buy into this attitude until this belief that
we need to never make mistakes or experience setbacks in
(01:56):
order to get to our end goal. This is so
far from the true with anyone who has done anything
cool or interesting or amazing with their life will tell
you that part of the process is learning from the
times you almost gave up but kept pushing anyways, the
times that you stayed consistent you implemented your habits day
(02:17):
in and day out. Secondly, we tend to believe that
self discipline means sacrifice and giving up all the things
that we enjoy for our one major goal. Again, I
personally believe that that's incorrect. Sometimes there is a small
amount of sacrifice that is necessary, but mainly it just
means change. It just means substitution, swapping out one behavior
(02:42):
or habit for another one. And instead of viewing that
as a sacrifice, which I think creates a lot of
negative attitudes towards self discipline. We should instead be viewing
it as an investment in yourself that you just weren't
previously making. And finally, the negative belief that keeps us
from self discipline is that it's going to be this
hard forever. It's always going to be a struggle. I
(03:05):
actually think it's the opposite. Solely relying on on motivation
and inspiration that is a lot more difficult because you're
basing your efforts on something that is, let's be honest,
quite fickle and not always a constant. You're forcing yourself
to do things when you have no incentive in the
moment to do them. That is what drains our energy.
(03:26):
But self discipline and consistency is our safety net in
those situations. It is the thing that remains constant despite
our whims, despite our changing energy levels, despite our mood,
and you know, as time goes on. Discipline really creates
the habits that make any task a lot easier to do,
(03:46):
even when we don't want to do it. Here's the thing.
We mostly need self discipline to do things that honestly,
we don't really want to do. You know, you don't
need self discipline to binge. Watch the entire season of
Mariative First Sight. You know, you don't need self discipline
to sleep in till eleven am every day. What we
do need it for is to get us into the
(04:07):
habits and the routines we know are going to get
us a better outcome. We know they're going to give
us a better life than what we currently have, even
if they are the harder alternative. I think we often
set out to do something to change our life, to
change our career, to change our future, with a lot
of energy, and we have a lot of gusto, and
(04:27):
we are totally sure of the future that we want,
and we fantasize about the outcome, and we think it's
going to be super easy, that we'll always have this
level of motivation. The thing is, though, when we only
focus on the end goal and how great that's going
to feel, we often don't think about what it's going
to take to get us there, all the small daily steps.
(04:48):
And self discipline is that bridge between wanting something and
realizing that thing, staying focused even when there are a
million other things that have your tension. And that's often
the case in our twenties. It's also about having the
foresight to understand that there will be setbacks, but being
consistent having self control will allow you to overcome them.
(05:12):
It is one of our most valuable skills. It's very
much like a muscle, and it's one that we strengthen
over time and with consistency, and that we need to
train to get the most out of. So lucky for you,
there is so much psychology out there in the world,
hidden in academic articles, hidden in research, that can really
enable us to be more committed to our long term
(05:36):
goals using self discipline. Rather than just encouraging you to
be disciplined and to be more consistent and to be
more motivated and to have strong willpower, and just leaving
it at that, I want to actually give you five precise,
practical steps for building this skill in a manner that
is actually doable and will inevitably help you realize the
(05:57):
dream life that I think we all want. So I'm
going to cut to the chase, because I really don't
like when I listen to a podcast that's like five
tips to do this, ten things you need to know
about X, and they don't give you the list at
the very top and then you kind of end up
getting a little bit lost in the weeds. But in
this episode, we're going to talk about these five tips.
Understanding the psychology behind what motivates you, leveraging our social
(06:20):
desirability bias, building microhabits, creating invariable reward by manipulating your
own dopamine levels in response to gratification and challenges, Shifting
from a learned helplessness to a learned industriousness approach. And
then finally one bonus tip for those of you who
get to the very end. That is a very high
(06:43):
level list. There's going to be quite a bit of
science in this, but it's super digestible, I think, without
further ado, let's get into it and start with point
number one, understanding what motivates you. You cannot force yourself
to do anything if you have no idea why you
want to do it. Sometimes we set these very obscure
(07:04):
goals like I want to be healthier, I want to
be more focused, And the thing is is that, yeah,
those are amazing goals, right, but they're actually too simple
to build self discipline around because it doesn't contain any
of the detail that we need to work with. It
doesn't get to the why. Why do you want to
be more focused and in what area of your life?
(07:27):
I see people do this a lot. I do this
a lot, especially with their fitness goals. You know, they
just say something like I want to run a ten
k or I want to get fitter. Those are amazing goals,
But what's your timeline here? Why do you want to
do that? What is motivating you towards this outcome? Self
discipline is created through detail, So how do we get
(07:49):
to that core ambition that's at the center of any
of our goals. Well, we need to examine behavioral change
theory to really understand what motivates us towards something. Now,
this could be anything, right, It could be a sense
of accomplishment. Maybe you like the idea of winning, You
like impressing others, you like impressing yourself. Maybe you are
unhappy with where you are at currently and you want
(08:11):
to improve your life. Maybe you just want to be happier,
you just want to be healthier. These are all super valid,
high level reasons. But when you create a goal, I'm
going to use that ten k example again and say
I run a ten k, you need to include two
further details. Firstly, you need to include a timeline and
(08:33):
you need to include a motivator. So I want to
run a ten k in six months because I want
to show myself that I can do it. Or I
want to run a ten k in November this year
because doing so will make me fitter and improve how
I feel in my body. In those goals, you have
that those two additional pieces of information that make them actionable.
(08:54):
You have a timeline and you have a motivator, and
those two additional points will allow you to push yourself
and take action regardless of how you're feeling day to day.
And that is essentially the very definition of self discipline.
The reason why those details work is because they create
what we call smart goals. They are specific, they are measurable.
(09:17):
You know when you've achieved the goal. It's attainable. It
serves your overarching mission or ambition, which is maybe to
get fit, and there's a timeframe. Now, something I want
you to know is that you are a lot less
likely to be successful in building the necessary self discipline
to achieve a goal if your motivation for the goal
(09:39):
is external rather than internal. For example, if you're trying
to accomplish something because you think it will make other
people happy, or that you're going to prove them wrong,
or to avoid some weird threat like a threat of
getting fired, it is going to be a lot less
effective than wanting to accomplish something for yourself. That is
(10:03):
because internal self discipline is self directed, self imposed, self managed.
It is not reliant on the possibility of a loss,
or the fear of external judgment or punishment or any
of those things. And what they've found time and time
again across multiple studies is that this sense of doing
(10:24):
something just for you is a lot more powerful and enjoyable.
So if your motivation is centered around the opinions of others,
trying to impress someone else to fulfill some social norm
or expectation, I think at this point it's really wise
to change that to an internal motivator, an internal reason,
(10:45):
or find a new goal, because in three months time,
when you've stopped thinking about that person and they're no
longer relevant in your life, you still want to be
able to stay on track in your journey to accomplishing anything,
to being disciplined. It's also important to keep coming back
to that. Why the reason this is effective is because
(11:08):
of what we call expectancy theory in psychology. The basic
premises of this theory is that you are more likely
to achieve your goals when you remember why you set
them and why they are important. This is because our
motivation is based on how much we value a goal
and how much you believe you have the capacity to
achieve your goal. When you return regularly to why you're
(11:32):
doing this, the what, the why, the motivation, you highlight
the value of the goal to yourself, and you reiterate
that you're capable, that there is a future outcome there
that you want to be consistent for you can do
hard things. Some ways to kind of aid in that
active remembering of your motivator of your why is to
(11:54):
create a vision board for the outcome. To consume content
on social media, through podcasts and books that align with
your goal, because these things act as cues and remind
us as to what you're working towards, so it's easier
for you to stay disciplined in the pursuit of this
sometimes far off objective. It's also important, I think, to
(12:17):
tell people about your goal for that additional accountability. Now,
this doesn't mean that you're doing it for them or
that you're reverting to external motivation more so that you're
leveraging what we call social desirability bias in aid of
your goal. This leads me to my next big step
(12:38):
or tip for building self discipline. Enlist social support or
even accountability. And this is effective because it leverages something
that we know about ourselves as humans, which is that
we are very social creatures and we want to make
others happy. We want to impress them. We don't want
(13:02):
to let them down. When we feel like we will
let someone down if we don't show up to a run,
or we don't get something done on time, or we
cancel on them or we break a promise, this encourages
us to be more disciplined and you know, true to
our word because sometimes you know, it's super easy to
cancel on yourself. It's super easy to just say like, yeah,
(13:23):
I'm not going to do that today, because you are
both the enforcer and the doer. However, when we add
in a little sprinkle of social accountability, the weight of
not doing something we said we were going to do
becomes a lot heavier, meaning that we are more likely
to do that thing to avoid additional and secondary feelings
(13:44):
of shame or guilt. It's also the case that sometimes
we actually just perform better when other people are watching us.
This is called the social desirability bias. It's why people
will more likely to behave in a pro social way
when they know that cameras are on them or help
someone else out when they can see that other people
(14:05):
are going to observe that. Now, this concept of social
desirability bias. This was initially used to describe how people
like to overstate their positive traits and understate their negative
traits in social and clinical research, but we can now
apply it to this arena of goal setting. We want
(14:27):
others to think that we are good people. That is
a very basic human desire, and we know that attributes
like self discipline or hard work, they're very positively viewed.
They make us look like good people. So when we
have the chance to show that we possess these traits
in front of others, we are much more likely to
(14:49):
do so. How do we apply this knowledge in the
strengthening of the self discipline muscle. It's actually really really simple.
You just need to create opportunities for yourself to be
accountable to others in the pursuit of your goal. So
I'm going to give you some examples here. If you
want to be more focused at work, tell a colleague
(15:12):
your to do list and have them check in with
you at the end of the day and confirm what
you've done. If you want to run a ten k
oh no, I'm using this example quite a bit, but
sign up for a run club and make a commitment
to be there two days a week running with others.
Even better, sign up as an admin, sign up as
like an organizer. Then you have to be there. You
want to be more self disciplined when it comes to
(15:34):
a creative project or a side hustle, find someone else
who wants to do the same thing and carve out
two evenings, maybe even one, where you guys are committed
to getting on Zoom together or catching up in each
other's houses and just working. It's like having a standing appointment.
It increases your level of commitment and discipline to do
(15:57):
hard things by doing them alongside other people, build like
a solid work routine, a solid lifestyle routine around other
people as well as yourself. It also just makes it
a lot more enjoyable. You know, I have an example
of how this is working for me. At the moment,
I'm trying to really prioritize my physical fitness. I went
(16:18):
traveling for two months, and I noticed that I lost
a bit of steam. I wasn't as fit as before,
and so I set myself a news resolution to exercise
four times a week. You know what, It would have
been really easy for me to have just made that
promise to myself, not told anyone, and quit after a
few weeks. But I leveraged social desirability and social accountability.
(16:41):
I told as many friends as I could about it.
I created ways to get other people involved to keep
me accountable. So every Sunday, I know that I go
for a rum with my friend k and I don't
want to let her down by not showing up. On Tuesdays,
I go boxing with my friend Emily, I want to
show up. I want to keep the promise, not to
myself and my larger goal, but the promise to them
(17:03):
to do these weekly steps and activities that allow us
to also connect. Moving on to our third tip, let's
talk about microhabits. Now. I'm gonna keep this one rather brief,
because if you're interested in this topic, we actually did
a whole episode on this. It's episode fifty three, The
Power of microhabits. If you want to go and listen
(17:26):
to that, and I don't want to just be repeating myself,
but it is honestly such a life changing, amazing strategy.
So microhabits, if you haven't yet heard of this term,
they are these small everyday actions or tiny itty bitty
routines that turn into automatic behaviors through repetition. The best
(17:48):
thing about microhabits is that they're meant to be eagersy,
but as you build them up, they create self discipline.
Some examples of this are going outside at least once
a day, reading one page of a book before bed,
eating one server of vegetables with every meal, walking to
work instead of driving. Those things all seem super doable, right,
(18:13):
And that's the point. It's because they're meant to be.
They counteract that all or nothing thinking that gets a
lot of us stuck when we're starting out, you know,
we immediately think that big is best when it comes
to getting started. We want to eat healthier, so we
throw out everything processed in our kitchen replace it with
(18:34):
foods that we just actually don't eat, that we're not
used to, and we're not giving ourselves time to adapt
to a new routine and lifestyle, meaning that we're more
likely to fail because we haven't adjusted. And it's not
sustainable when we don't have those habits down pat yet.
We're just changing too much too soon. And some people
can do that, some people can go cold turkey or
(18:56):
all or nothing. But I actually think that it takes
a lot more effort. It puts a lot more strain
on your cognitive and physical resources when you apply micro
habits instead, you break down your big goal into super
manageable tasks that actually stop you from getting stuck in
(19:16):
the procrastination trap of not knowing where to start. It
stops you from feeling overwhelmed, and it helps you build
momentum so that it doesn't It's not that age old
story where you set some goal, you achieve it, and
then you go straight back to how you were six
months before. It actually creates like a lifestyle change that
is going to stay with you for a lot longer. Now,
(19:39):
I want you to pause for a second and think
back to that goal that you are setting. What are
three small microhabits you could do throughout your week that
would aid in achieving that goal? Make them super specific,
but also make them easy. Now, what reasons do you
have to not do those things, even that they require
(20:01):
so little effort and investment. When you start with those
small microhabits, you train yourself to be more disciplined. Okay,
we're going to take a small, short, little break for
a second, but when we return, we're going to talk
about those final two tips I have for you, and
of course our bonus tip. We're going to be right
(20:22):
back after this break, So I'm going to teach you
how to hack your brain and your motivational systems using
some of the most basic principles of neuroscience that create
some of the most non basic behavioral changes and habits
that I know for building your self discipline. This is
(20:45):
the thing about this science. It is so simple, but
it is so effective. So when it comes to building
self discipline, the neurotransmitter we need to be most conscious
of is dopamine. Dopamine is often thought of as our
happy chemical, right. It's the thing that you get when
you have a tasty meal, when you drink caffeine, when
(21:05):
you experience something pleasurable. But it's also so much more
than that. It's not just about pleasure and hedonism and enjoyment.
It is also the neurotransmitter that is most crucial when
it comes to motivational control because of the role that
it plays in reward guided learning and self discipline. When
(21:26):
we do a task that we like, we get a
spike of dopamine. When we achieve a goal, again, we
get dopamine that is going to drive us to keep
working towards our larger ambition, to keep performing those daily
and weekly actions that are necessary for cultivating success, progress
and self discipline, and we can exploit the science behind
(21:49):
that to keep us consistent. So the biggest thing that
stops us from having self control or being disciplined is
buying into a mediate temptation and our whims. Of course,
it is going to feel so much better in the
moment to stay in bed and relax when you should
(22:09):
really be doing your big to do list. Of course,
it's going to feel momentarily better to procrastinate studying in
favor of scrolling through social media, because those alternative activities
give us pleasure. However, what we're encountering in those moments
is what we call instant gratification, and that instant gratification
(22:34):
is actually just a quick dopamine shot that over time
lowers our dopamine baseline and it creates what we know
is the down regulation of pleasure. So this occurs when
the number of receptors in our brain for a neurotransmitter,
in this case, dopamine, are decreased because of an increase
in that neurotransmitter is levels, meaning that we need less
(22:57):
points of impact, less points of connection to actually have
access to that same amount of pleasure because we have
so much of this chemical flooding our brain. So this
is the downside of buying into instant gratification. Pleasure actually
becomes less pleasant because there is so much of it,
but it's not at the same quality as the pleasure
(23:18):
and the satisfaction we would get from a long term goal.
But because we have fewer receptors, it also means that
that dopamine becomes less powerful in keeping us focused and
staying on track. So the alternative to this is to
hold off on instant gratification for a long term reward
that comes from self discipline. Obviously, this involves scheduling when
(23:43):
you're going to give yourself those small spikes, for example,
only letting yourself sleep in once a week rather than
every day so that it becomes more special, or giving
yourself a break to scroll on your phone whilst you're
studying once every two hours rather than once every thirty minutes.
Because this increases our dopamine baseline, you are delaying gratification
(24:07):
for a better feeling later on. So by managing your
dopamine in this way, you experience more fulfillment because you're
not desensitizing yourself to all this pleasure. Another way to
utilize our dopamine systems to become more self disciplined is
to create a rewards schedule for yourself when it comes
to your long term goals. If you set out to
(24:30):
get straight a's or hds in every course that you're
taking this semester, it is going to take a while
before you get to experience the rewards for your efforts. Instead,
what you need to do is create a schedule of
positive reinforcement for yourself that is aligned directly to your
efforts and the small achievements that you're going to come
(24:50):
across in pursuit of your goal. So I'm going to
keep using this academic example because I think it is
such a great way of demonstrating this. If your end
goal is to get a four point zero by the
end of the semester. Break this into smaller goals. To
get that HD, you also need to get an A
in your midsem and you also need to get an
A on your essay. Don't let those small accomplishments go
(25:15):
unnoticed or unrewarded. Give yourself a little treat, let yourself
have some dopamine in response, take yourself out for dinner,
buy yourself something really nice, give yourself the day off.
Managing our dopamine systems doesn't mean completely denying yourselves any
dopamine that isn't associated with our long term goal, right.
(25:37):
It's about just making yourself or achieving a greater balance
so that when you want to use your dopamine. I
know that sounds quite strange, but like when you, yeah,
when you want to use your dopamine for the reasons
that important to you, you actually have access to it,
rather than feeling like there's this whole chemical process going
on in your brain that means that you can't actually
(25:59):
set goals and meet them. So this thing that we're
talking about, this rewards schedule, there are a few caveats.
The important thing is that we want to use a
continuous reinforcement schedule, whereby every time we perform the target
behavior or achieve the target outcome, in this instance, achieving
a grade that contributes to a good overall GPA, you
(26:23):
need to be rewarded for that, so it therefore encourages
us to keep doing those things. The thing is, you
might experience some boredom and displeasure during the transition, but
soon your quality of life actually increases, and it's shown
that we do have stronger self control, We are happier,
we do experience fewer negative emotions, and you actually appreciate
(26:45):
pleasure even more. I think doing hard things being self
disciplined is a shift from instant gratification. But you'll find
that when you delay reward, your satisfaction actually increases. You're
going to show it more. You feel good about yourself,
rather than in those moments where you just live your
life based on short term pleasure and hedonism and giving
(27:10):
yourself anything that you want. You know, if you were
you know, I always think about this in the sense
of like being the parent to your inner child. You
wouldn't let yourself like run around and eat sugar whenever
you wanted it. You wouldn't let yourself stay up till
four am if you were like a twelve if you
were like a six year old child. So why are
you letting your adult self do things that you know
(27:31):
are self sabotaging your efforts for a bigger goal. That
is the main premise of using this reward scheduling. You
want to be in control of how you behave and
when you want to stay motivated, when you want to
be focused, You want to make sure that you have
the resources and the passion and the energy available to
you to do that. Our fifth tip for today is
(27:55):
possibly my favorite. That's why I saved it for last, obviously,
because I really never hear people talking about this, and
it's one of the most fascinating areas of motivational and
learning psychology. It is the principle of learned helplessness versus
learned industriousness, and how shifting from one to the other
(28:15):
can actually get us to enjoy doing difficult things, Which
sounds great, right. Wouldn't it be great if you enjoyed
the hard things on your to do list? Let me
explain this a little bit further. So, learned helplessness occurs
when we feel like no matter what we do, we
cannot escape bad outcomes or failures, and so we just
give up. Researchers, when they first discovered this, began to
(28:38):
observe it in animals, whereby they would keep them restrained
and then expose them to some really negative aversive condition
like pain or an unpleasant noise. These animals couldn't escape,
as sad as you know, it's pretty sad what they
used to do back then. But what it showed was
that even when they let the animals out, even though
(29:00):
when they removed the leash or the collar, they still
kept enduring the painful situation, even though now they could
get away from it. They had learned that they were
helpless in changing their situation. And although a lot of
this initial research was conducted on animals, we can see
(29:22):
that in human behavior as well. No matter what you do,
maybe you found that you just can't stick to a diet,
you can't stay focused on your work, you can't get
the outcome you want, the growth you want, the numbers
you want because you're not seeing that correlation between action
and reward. You lose faith in your self discipline in
your actions, and you quit. So what is the alternative?
(29:43):
In those situations. Well, it's about shifting from a learned
helplessness mindset to a learned industriousness mindset. The difference here
is that learned industriousness focuses on the pleasure in the
action itself. We aren't just reliant on what we gain
from the outcome, but just like the genuine sensation and
(30:05):
good feelings that just come with working hard. I think
this is so so important to have an equal investment
in your goal but also feel like you're getting something
out of the journey, that it's not just a slug,
that there's nothing enjoyable about it. And I also think
that you can feel excited by how much you can
(30:26):
push yourself. You can romanticize the difficult times, the long nights,
the exhausting runs, the hours of studying, instead of just
romanticizing this future outcome that you're hoping for. And it
has a lot of benefits for self discipline. Individuals who
have high levels of industriousness they have a lot of
(30:46):
history of applying greater efforts towards tasks. It's been demonstrated
that they have more task persistence. They're less likely to
quit when things get difficult because that difficulty is actually,
I don't want to say enjoyable, but it's fulfilling. So
how can we train ourselves to do this? How do
we make that shift? What we need to do is
(31:08):
begin to reward our actions, not just our outcomes, through
pared reinforcement. So the gummy bear method is an excellent
example of this. If you have twenty pages you need
to read for a class, after every page, you give
yourself a gummy bear or something that you like, making
it so that you begin to associate hard work with
(31:30):
something pleasant. We can also do this by romanticizing our labor.
Instead of thinking, oh my god, I'm so exhausted, I
don't want to work this hard, it would be so
much easier to quit. Switch that attitude by deliberately creating
thoughts like it's actually really exciting to see how far
I can go. I think I'm going to look back
on these moments with a lot of fondness and pride.
(31:52):
I'm so proud of myself for how I keep going.
It is thrilling and stimulating to be doing these things
that are difficult to push myself. We are reinforcing the
feeling of high effort. As we get better at this,
the self discipline that is contained in that becomes a
valued part of our identity, whereby we begin to see
(32:13):
ourselves as a hard worker, as someone with self control,
as someone who is tenacious and passionate and kind of
willing to do things that others can't. And in this way,
you've shifted your goal from not just being internally motivated,
but something that informs who you are and who you
want to become, which is even more encouraging. Now, I
(32:35):
want to give you one final piece of advice when
it comes to self discipline to finish off, and it
may seem very contrary to the other things that we've
talked about, but I think it's equally important. You need
to let yourself fail, sometimes make mistakes, have slip ups,
(32:55):
and still show yourself as much self compassion and love
as you would if you were perfect at all times.
You just can't hate yourself into self discipline. I'm going
to say that again. You can't hate yourself into self
discipline because self discipline comes from a place of care
(33:15):
and investment in yourself. Time and time again, we see
research that shows that when you use shame as a motivator,
self blame, self hatred as a motivator. All that discipline
becomes so much harder to keep up because you're doing
it from a place of loathing and negativity. You can
make mistakes. In fact, I think that it's really useful
(33:38):
to reflect and grow. You can start something new and
just not be the best at it. Not every day
needs to be insanely productive. That's actually not sustainable. But
what you do need to do is just show up,
Just be consistent. Even if you're not being perfect, Even
if you're only at the gym for ten minutes, you
still wet, and you still are repeating a patterner behaviors
(34:00):
that are going to become routine. You know, I think
that if you're still listening right now, if you've made
it this far, you're obviously super committed to yourself. You're
obviously super committed to your goals. You're already miles ahead
of everyone else who has already convinced themselves that even
the first step in self discipline is too hard. And
(34:21):
now I guess you also have the tools that you need.
You know what needs to be done, and to be
completely honest, I'm just super proud of you for even
caring enough about yourself and your future to be considering
this change in your life, whatever that may be. I
think that self discipline is the secret ingredient. It is
(34:43):
the master key to everything that you want in life.
So I really hope that you have enjoyed this episode.
I hope that you can apply this to your life,
that you have learned something. If there's someone else in
your life who you think might enjoy this, who you
think might take something from this content, from this science
that we've shared, please feel free to forward it onto them.
(35:04):
Make sure that you are following and leave a five
star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening
to this right now. Of course, if there's an episode
suggestion I say this at the end of every episode,
please send it to me. You never know, I never
know who else might relate to some of the things
that are on your mind. And I take a lot
of inspiration from what you guys are going through this
(35:26):
episode in itself. You guys voted on this one, So
if there's anything that is in your thoughts that you
feel other people could benefit from, please send it my
way at that Psychology podcast or at GEMMASPEG. We will
be back next week with a special guest episode. On Tuesday,
so see then
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:27):
Welcome back to the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is so great to
have you here. Back for another episode another topic. As
we break down the psychology of our twenties today, we
are in for such a trait. I'm kind of kidding
because this is perhaps not the most exciting topic, but
(00:48):
I think it's one of the most valuable during this decade,
and that is how we can use psychology, science, even
sociology to build self discipline. I have biggest tips for
ensuring that you have all the tools to pursue your
goals successfully, whatever domain they're in, whether that's fitness, lifestyle changes, work,
(01:12):
creative projects, even just your daily tasks. I think that
discipline is such an interesting concept to me, especially in
our twenties, because it is seriously the secret ingredient to
achieving anything you want in life. Yet so many of
us treat it as optional or believe that it's too
hard to achieve. I think that's because of a number
(01:35):
of misconceptions that we have about self discipline, the first
one being that if you are disciplined, you need to
be aiming for perfection. I think that belief keeps a
lot of us from ever even starting something, because we
truly do buy into this attitude until this belief that
we need to never make mistakes or experience setbacks in
(01:56):
order to get to our end goal. This is so
far from the true with anyone who has done anything
cool or interesting or amazing with their life will tell
you that part of the process is learning from the
times you almost gave up but kept pushing anyways, the
times that you stayed consistent you implemented your habits day
(02:17):
in and day out. Secondly, we tend to believe that
self discipline means sacrifice and giving up all the things
that we enjoy for our one major goal. Again, I
personally believe that that's incorrect. Sometimes there is a small
amount of sacrifice that is necessary, but mainly it just
means change. It just means substitution, swapping out one behavior
(02:42):
or habit for another one. And instead of viewing that
as a sacrifice, which I think creates a lot of
negative attitudes towards self discipline. We should instead be viewing
it as an investment in yourself that you just weren't
previously making. And finally, the negative belief that keeps us
from self discipline is that it's going to be this
hard forever. It's always going to be a struggle. I
(03:05):
actually think it's the opposite. Solely relying on on motivation
and inspiration that is a lot more difficult because you're
basing your efforts on something that is, let's be honest,
quite fickle and not always a constant. You're forcing yourself
to do things when you have no incentive in the
moment to do them. That is what drains our energy.
(03:26):
But self discipline and consistency is our safety net in
those situations. It is the thing that remains constant despite
our whims, despite our changing energy levels, despite our mood,
and you know, as time goes on. Discipline really creates
the habits that make any task a lot easier to do,
(03:46):
even when we don't want to do it. Here's the thing.
We mostly need self discipline to do things that honestly,
we don't really want to do. You know, you don't
need self discipline to binge. Watch the entire season of
Mariative First Sight. You know, you don't need self discipline
to sleep in till eleven am every day. What we
do need it for is to get us into the
(04:07):
habits and the routines we know are going to get
us a better outcome. We know they're going to give
us a better life than what we currently have, even
if they are the harder alternative. I think we often
set out to do something to change our life, to
change our career, to change our future, with a lot
of energy, and we have a lot of gusto, and
(04:27):
we are totally sure of the future that we want,
and we fantasize about the outcome, and we think it's
going to be super easy, that we'll always have this
level of motivation. The thing is, though, when we only
focus on the end goal and how great that's going
to feel, we often don't think about what it's going
to take to get us there, all the small daily steps.
(04:48):
And self discipline is that bridge between wanting something and
realizing that thing, staying focused even when there are a
million other things that have your tension. And that's often
the case in our twenties. It's also about having the
foresight to understand that there will be setbacks, but being
consistent having self control will allow you to overcome them.
(05:12):
It is one of our most valuable skills. It's very
much like a muscle, and it's one that we strengthen
over time and with consistency, and that we need to
train to get the most out of. So lucky for you,
there is so much psychology out there in the world,
hidden in academic articles, hidden in research, that can really
enable us to be more committed to our long term
(05:36):
goals using self discipline. Rather than just encouraging you to
be disciplined and to be more consistent and to be
more motivated and to have strong willpower, and just leaving
it at that, I want to actually give you five precise,
practical steps for building this skill in a manner that
is actually doable and will inevitably help you realize the
(05:57):
dream life that I think we all want. So I'm
going to cut to the chase, because I really don't
like when I listen to a podcast that's like five
tips to do this, ten things you need to know
about X, and they don't give you the list at
the very top and then you kind of end up
getting a little bit lost in the weeds. But in
this episode, we're going to talk about these five tips.
Understanding the psychology behind what motivates you, leveraging our social
(06:20):
desirability bias, building microhabits, creating invariable reward by manipulating your
own dopamine levels in response to gratification and challenges, Shifting
from a learned helplessness to a learned industriousness approach. And
then finally one bonus tip for those of you who
get to the very end. That is a very high
(06:43):
level list. There's going to be quite a bit of
science in this, but it's super digestible, I think, without
further ado, let's get into it and start with point
number one, understanding what motivates you. You cannot force yourself
to do anything if you have no idea why you
want to do it. Sometimes we set these very obscure
(07:04):
goals like I want to be healthier, I want to
be more focused, And the thing is is that, yeah,
those are amazing goals, right, but they're actually too simple
to build self discipline around because it doesn't contain any
of the detail that we need to work with. It
doesn't get to the why. Why do you want to
be more focused and in what area of your life?
(07:27):
I see people do this a lot. I do this
a lot, especially with their fitness goals. You know, they
just say something like I want to run a ten
k or I want to get fitter. Those are amazing goals,
But what's your timeline here? Why do you want to
do that? What is motivating you towards this outcome? Self
discipline is created through detail, So how do we get
(07:49):
to that core ambition that's at the center of any
of our goals. Well, we need to examine behavioral change
theory to really understand what motivates us towards something. Now,
this could be anything, right, It could be a sense
of accomplishment. Maybe you like the idea of winning, You
like impressing others, you like impressing yourself. Maybe you are
unhappy with where you are at currently and you want
(08:11):
to improve your life. Maybe you just want to be happier,
you just want to be healthier. These are all super valid,
high level reasons. But when you create a goal, I'm
going to use that ten k example again and say
I run a ten k, you need to include two
further details. Firstly, you need to include a timeline and
(08:33):
you need to include a motivator. So I want to
run a ten k in six months because I want
to show myself that I can do it. Or I
want to run a ten k in November this year
because doing so will make me fitter and improve how
I feel in my body. In those goals, you have
that those two additional pieces of information that make them actionable.
(08:54):
You have a timeline and you have a motivator, and
those two additional points will allow you to push yourself
and take action regardless of how you're feeling day to day.
And that is essentially the very definition of self discipline.
The reason why those details work is because they create
what we call smart goals. They are specific, they are measurable.
(09:17):
You know when you've achieved the goal. It's attainable. It
serves your overarching mission or ambition, which is maybe to
get fit, and there's a timeframe. Now, something I want
you to know is that you are a lot less
likely to be successful in building the necessary self discipline
to achieve a goal if your motivation for the goal
(09:39):
is external rather than internal. For example, if you're trying
to accomplish something because you think it will make other
people happy, or that you're going to prove them wrong,
or to avoid some weird threat like a threat of
getting fired, it is going to be a lot less
effective than wanting to accomplish something for yourself. That is
(10:03):
because internal self discipline is self directed, self imposed, self managed.
It is not reliant on the possibility of a loss,
or the fear of external judgment or punishment or any
of those things. And what they've found time and time
again across multiple studies is that this sense of doing
(10:24):
something just for you is a lot more powerful and enjoyable.
So if your motivation is centered around the opinions of others,
trying to impress someone else to fulfill some social norm
or expectation, I think at this point it's really wise
to change that to an internal motivator, an internal reason,
(10:45):
or find a new goal, because in three months time,
when you've stopped thinking about that person and they're no
longer relevant in your life, you still want to be
able to stay on track in your journey to accomplishing anything,
to being disciplined. It's also important to keep coming back
to that. Why the reason this is effective is because
(11:08):
of what we call expectancy theory in psychology. The basic
premises of this theory is that you are more likely
to achieve your goals when you remember why you set
them and why they are important. This is because our
motivation is based on how much we value a goal
and how much you believe you have the capacity to
achieve your goal. When you return regularly to why you're
(11:32):
doing this, the what, the why, the motivation, you highlight
the value of the goal to yourself, and you reiterate
that you're capable, that there is a future outcome there
that you want to be consistent for you can do
hard things. Some ways to kind of aid in that
active remembering of your motivator of your why is to
(11:54):
create a vision board for the outcome. To consume content
on social media, through podcasts and books that align with
your goal, because these things act as cues and remind
us as to what you're working towards, so it's easier
for you to stay disciplined in the pursuit of this
sometimes far off objective. It's also important, I think, to
(12:17):
tell people about your goal for that additional accountability. Now,
this doesn't mean that you're doing it for them or
that you're reverting to external motivation more so that you're
leveraging what we call social desirability bias in aid of
your goal. This leads me to my next big step
(12:38):
or tip for building self discipline. Enlist social support or
even accountability. And this is effective because it leverages something
that we know about ourselves as humans, which is that
we are very social creatures and we want to make
others happy. We want to impress them. We don't want
(13:02):
to let them down. When we feel like we will
let someone down if we don't show up to a run,
or we don't get something done on time, or we
cancel on them or we break a promise, this encourages
us to be more disciplined and you know, true to
our word because sometimes you know, it's super easy to
cancel on yourself. It's super easy to just say like, yeah,
(13:23):
I'm not going to do that today, because you are
both the enforcer and the doer. However, when we add
in a little sprinkle of social accountability, the weight of
not doing something we said we were going to do
becomes a lot heavier, meaning that we are more likely
to do that thing to avoid additional and secondary feelings
(13:44):
of shame or guilt. It's also the case that sometimes
we actually just perform better when other people are watching us.
This is called the social desirability bias. It's why people
will more likely to behave in a pro social way
when they know that cameras are on them or help
someone else out when they can see that other people
(14:05):
are going to observe that. Now, this concept of social
desirability bias. This was initially used to describe how people
like to overstate their positive traits and understate their negative
traits in social and clinical research, but we can now
apply it to this arena of goal setting. We want
(14:27):
others to think that we are good people. That is
a very basic human desire, and we know that attributes
like self discipline or hard work, they're very positively viewed.
They make us look like good people. So when we
have the chance to show that we possess these traits
in front of others, we are much more likely to
(14:49):
do so. How do we apply this knowledge in the
strengthening of the self discipline muscle. It's actually really really simple.
You just need to create opportunities for yourself to be
accountable to others in the pursuit of your goal. So
I'm going to give you some examples here. If you
want to be more focused at work, tell a colleague
(15:12):
your to do list and have them check in with
you at the end of the day and confirm what
you've done. If you want to run a ten k
oh no, I'm using this example quite a bit, but
sign up for a run club and make a commitment
to be there two days a week running with others.
Even better, sign up as an admin, sign up as
like an organizer. Then you have to be there. You
want to be more self disciplined when it comes to
(15:34):
a creative project or a side hustle, find someone else
who wants to do the same thing and carve out
two evenings, maybe even one, where you guys are committed
to getting on Zoom together or catching up in each
other's houses and just working. It's like having a standing appointment.
It increases your level of commitment and discipline to do
(15:57):
hard things by doing them alongside other people, build like
a solid work routine, a solid lifestyle routine around other
people as well as yourself. It also just makes it
a lot more enjoyable. You know, I have an example
of how this is working for me. At the moment,
I'm trying to really prioritize my physical fitness. I went
(16:18):
traveling for two months, and I noticed that I lost
a bit of steam. I wasn't as fit as before,
and so I set myself a news resolution to exercise
four times a week. You know what, It would have
been really easy for me to have just made that
promise to myself, not told anyone, and quit after a
few weeks. But I leveraged social desirability and social accountability.
(16:41):
I told as many friends as I could about it.
I created ways to get other people involved to keep
me accountable. So every Sunday, I know that I go
for a rum with my friend k and I don't
want to let her down by not showing up. On Tuesdays,
I go boxing with my friend Emily, I want to
show up. I want to keep the promise, not to
myself and my larger goal, but the promise to them
(17:03):
to do these weekly steps and activities that allow us
to also connect. Moving on to our third tip, let's
talk about microhabits. Now. I'm gonna keep this one rather brief,
because if you're interested in this topic, we actually did
a whole episode on this. It's episode fifty three, The
Power of microhabits. If you want to go and listen
(17:26):
to that, and I don't want to just be repeating myself,
but it is honestly such a life changing, amazing strategy.
So microhabits, if you haven't yet heard of this term,
they are these small everyday actions or tiny itty bitty
routines that turn into automatic behaviors through repetition. The best
(17:48):
thing about microhabits is that they're meant to be eagersy,
but as you build them up, they create self discipline.
Some examples of this are going outside at least once
a day, reading one page of a book before bed,
eating one server of vegetables with every meal, walking to
work instead of driving. Those things all seem super doable, right,
(18:13):
And that's the point. It's because they're meant to be.
They counteract that all or nothing thinking that gets a
lot of us stuck when we're starting out, you know,
we immediately think that big is best when it comes
to getting started. We want to eat healthier, so we
throw out everything processed in our kitchen replace it with
(18:34):
foods that we just actually don't eat, that we're not
used to, and we're not giving ourselves time to adapt
to a new routine and lifestyle, meaning that we're more
likely to fail because we haven't adjusted. And it's not
sustainable when we don't have those habits down pat yet.
We're just changing too much too soon. And some people
can do that, some people can go cold turkey or
(18:56):
all or nothing. But I actually think that it takes
a lot more effort. It puts a lot more strain
on your cognitive and physical resources when you apply micro
habits instead, you break down your big goal into super
manageable tasks that actually stop you from getting stuck in
(19:16):
the procrastination trap of not knowing where to start. It
stops you from feeling overwhelmed, and it helps you build
momentum so that it doesn't It's not that age old
story where you set some goal, you achieve it, and
then you go straight back to how you were six
months before. It actually creates like a lifestyle change that
is going to stay with you for a lot longer. Now,
(19:39):
I want you to pause for a second and think
back to that goal that you are setting. What are
three small microhabits you could do throughout your week that
would aid in achieving that goal? Make them super specific,
but also make them easy. Now, what reasons do you
have to not do those things, even that they require
(20:01):
so little effort and investment. When you start with those
small microhabits, you train yourself to be more disciplined. Okay,
we're going to take a small, short, little break for
a second, but when we return, we're going to talk
about those final two tips I have for you, and
of course our bonus tip. We're going to be right
(20:22):
back after this break, So I'm going to teach you
how to hack your brain and your motivational systems using
some of the most basic principles of neuroscience that create
some of the most non basic behavioral changes and habits
that I know for building your self discipline. This is
(20:45):
the thing about this science. It is so simple, but
it is so effective. So when it comes to building
self discipline, the neurotransmitter we need to be most conscious
of is dopamine. Dopamine is often thought of as our
happy chemical, right. It's the thing that you get when
you have a tasty meal, when you drink caffeine, when
(21:05):
you experience something pleasurable. But it's also so much more
than that. It's not just about pleasure and hedonism and enjoyment.
It is also the neurotransmitter that is most crucial when
it comes to motivational control because of the role that
it plays in reward guided learning and self discipline. When
(21:26):
we do a task that we like, we get a
spike of dopamine. When we achieve a goal, again, we
get dopamine that is going to drive us to keep
working towards our larger ambition, to keep performing those daily
and weekly actions that are necessary for cultivating success, progress
and self discipline, and we can exploit the science behind
(21:49):
that to keep us consistent. So the biggest thing that
stops us from having self control or being disciplined is
buying into a mediate temptation and our whims. Of course,
it is going to feel so much better in the
moment to stay in bed and relax when you should
(22:09):
really be doing your big to do list. Of course,
it's going to feel momentarily better to procrastinate studying in
favor of scrolling through social media, because those alternative activities
give us pleasure. However, what we're encountering in those moments
is what we call instant gratification, and that instant gratification
(22:34):
is actually just a quick dopamine shot that over time
lowers our dopamine baseline and it creates what we know
is the down regulation of pleasure. So this occurs when
the number of receptors in our brain for a neurotransmitter,
in this case, dopamine, are decreased because of an increase
in that neurotransmitter is levels, meaning that we need less
(22:57):
points of impact, less points of connection to actually have
access to that same amount of pleasure because we have
so much of this chemical flooding our brain. So this
is the downside of buying into instant gratification. Pleasure actually
becomes less pleasant because there is so much of it,
but it's not at the same quality as the pleasure
(23:18):
and the satisfaction we would get from a long term goal.
But because we have fewer receptors, it also means that
that dopamine becomes less powerful in keeping us focused and
staying on track. So the alternative to this is to
hold off on instant gratification for a long term reward
that comes from self discipline. Obviously, this involves scheduling when
(23:43):
you're going to give yourself those small spikes, for example,
only letting yourself sleep in once a week rather than
every day so that it becomes more special, or giving
yourself a break to scroll on your phone whilst you're
studying once every two hours rather than once every thirty minutes.
Because this increases our dopamine baseline, you are delaying gratification
(24:07):
for a better feeling later on. So by managing your
dopamine in this way, you experience more fulfillment because you're
not desensitizing yourself to all this pleasure. Another way to
utilize our dopamine systems to become more self disciplined is
to create a rewards schedule for yourself when it comes
to your long term goals. If you set out to
(24:30):
get straight a's or hds in every course that you're
taking this semester, it is going to take a while
before you get to experience the rewards for your efforts. Instead,
what you need to do is create a schedule of
positive reinforcement for yourself that is aligned directly to your
efforts and the small achievements that you're going to come
(24:50):
across in pursuit of your goal. So I'm going to
keep using this academic example because I think it is
such a great way of demonstrating this. If your end
goal is to get a four point zero by the
end of the semester. Break this into smaller goals. To
get that HD, you also need to get an A
in your midsem and you also need to get an
A on your essay. Don't let those small accomplishments go
(25:15):
unnoticed or unrewarded. Give yourself a little treat, let yourself
have some dopamine in response, take yourself out for dinner,
buy yourself something really nice, give yourself the day off.
Managing our dopamine systems doesn't mean completely denying yourselves any
dopamine that isn't associated with our long term goal, right.
(25:37):
It's about just making yourself or achieving a greater balance
so that when you want to use your dopamine. I
know that sounds quite strange, but like when you, yeah,
when you want to use your dopamine for the reasons
that important to you, you actually have access to it,
rather than feeling like there's this whole chemical process going
on in your brain that means that you can't actually
(25:59):
set goals and meet them. So this thing that we're
talking about, this rewards schedule, there are a few caveats.
The important thing is that we want to use a
continuous reinforcement schedule, whereby every time we perform the target
behavior or achieve the target outcome, in this instance, achieving
a grade that contributes to a good overall GPA, you
(26:23):
need to be rewarded for that, so it therefore encourages
us to keep doing those things. The thing is, you
might experience some boredom and displeasure during the transition, but
soon your quality of life actually increases, and it's shown
that we do have stronger self control, We are happier,
we do experience fewer negative emotions, and you actually appreciate
(26:45):
pleasure even more. I think doing hard things being self
disciplined is a shift from instant gratification. But you'll find
that when you delay reward, your satisfaction actually increases. You're
going to show it more. You feel good about yourself,
rather than in those moments where you just live your
life based on short term pleasure and hedonism and giving
(27:10):
yourself anything that you want. You know, if you were
you know, I always think about this in the sense
of like being the parent to your inner child. You
wouldn't let yourself like run around and eat sugar whenever
you wanted it. You wouldn't let yourself stay up till
four am if you were like a twelve if you
were like a six year old child. So why are
you letting your adult self do things that you know
(27:31):
are self sabotaging your efforts for a bigger goal. That
is the main premise of using this reward scheduling. You
want to be in control of how you behave and
when you want to stay motivated, when you want to
be focused, You want to make sure that you have
the resources and the passion and the energy available to
you to do that. Our fifth tip for today is
(27:55):
possibly my favorite. That's why I saved it for last, obviously,
because I really never hear people talking about this, and
it's one of the most fascinating areas of motivational and
learning psychology. It is the principle of learned helplessness versus
learned industriousness, and how shifting from one to the other
(28:15):
can actually get us to enjoy doing difficult things, Which
sounds great, right. Wouldn't it be great if you enjoyed
the hard things on your to do list? Let me
explain this a little bit further. So, learned helplessness occurs
when we feel like no matter what we do, we
cannot escape bad outcomes or failures, and so we just
give up. Researchers, when they first discovered this, began to
(28:38):
observe it in animals, whereby they would keep them restrained
and then expose them to some really negative aversive condition
like pain or an unpleasant noise. These animals couldn't escape,
as sad as you know, it's pretty sad what they
used to do back then. But what it showed was
that even when they let the animals out, even though
(29:00):
when they removed the leash or the collar, they still
kept enduring the painful situation, even though now they could
get away from it. They had learned that they were
helpless in changing their situation. And although a lot of
this initial research was conducted on animals, we can see
(29:22):
that in human behavior as well. No matter what you do,
maybe you found that you just can't stick to a diet,
you can't stay focused on your work, you can't get
the outcome you want, the growth you want, the numbers
you want because you're not seeing that correlation between action
and reward. You lose faith in your self discipline in
your actions, and you quit. So what is the alternative?
(29:43):
In those situations. Well, it's about shifting from a learned
helplessness mindset to a learned industriousness mindset. The difference here
is that learned industriousness focuses on the pleasure in the
action itself. We aren't just reliant on what we gain
from the outcome, but just like the genuine sensation and
(30:05):
good feelings that just come with working hard. I think
this is so so important to have an equal investment
in your goal but also feel like you're getting something
out of the journey, that it's not just a slug,
that there's nothing enjoyable about it. And I also think
that you can feel excited by how much you can
(30:26):
push yourself. You can romanticize the difficult times, the long nights,
the exhausting runs, the hours of studying, instead of just
romanticizing this future outcome that you're hoping for. And it
has a lot of benefits for self discipline. Individuals who
have high levels of industriousness they have a lot of
(30:46):
history of applying greater efforts towards tasks. It's been demonstrated
that they have more task persistence. They're less likely to
quit when things get difficult because that difficulty is actually,
I don't want to say enjoyable, but it's fulfilling. So
how can we train ourselves to do this? How do
we make that shift? What we need to do is
(31:08):
begin to reward our actions, not just our outcomes, through
pared reinforcement. So the gummy bear method is an excellent
example of this. If you have twenty pages you need
to read for a class, after every page, you give
yourself a gummy bear or something that you like, making
it so that you begin to associate hard work with
(31:30):
something pleasant. We can also do this by romanticizing our labor.
Instead of thinking, oh my god, I'm so exhausted, I
don't want to work this hard, it would be so
much easier to quit. Switch that attitude by deliberately creating
thoughts like it's actually really exciting to see how far
I can go. I think I'm going to look back
on these moments with a lot of fondness and pride.
(31:52):
I'm so proud of myself for how I keep going.
It is thrilling and stimulating to be doing these things
that are difficult to push myself. We are reinforcing the
feeling of high effort. As we get better at this,
the self discipline that is contained in that becomes a
valued part of our identity, whereby we begin to see
(32:13):
ourselves as a hard worker, as someone with self control,
as someone who is tenacious and passionate and kind of
willing to do things that others can't. And in this way,
you've shifted your goal from not just being internally motivated,
but something that informs who you are and who you
want to become, which is even more encouraging. Now, I
(32:35):
want to give you one final piece of advice when
it comes to self discipline to finish off, and it
may seem very contrary to the other things that we've
talked about, but I think it's equally important. You need
to let yourself fail, sometimes make mistakes, have slip ups,
(32:55):
and still show yourself as much self compassion and love
as you would if you were perfect at all times.
You just can't hate yourself into self discipline. I'm going
to say that again. You can't hate yourself into self
discipline because self discipline comes from a place of care
(33:15):
and investment in yourself. Time and time again, we see
research that shows that when you use shame as a motivator,
self blame, self hatred as a motivator. All that discipline
becomes so much harder to keep up because you're doing
it from a place of loathing and negativity. You can
make mistakes. In fact, I think that it's really useful
(33:38):
to reflect and grow. You can start something new and
just not be the best at it. Not every day
needs to be insanely productive. That's actually not sustainable. But
what you do need to do is just show up,
Just be consistent. Even if you're not being perfect, Even
if you're only at the gym for ten minutes, you
still wet, and you still are repeating a patterner behaviors
(34:00):
that are going to become routine. You know, I think
that if you're still listening right now, if you've made
it this far, you're obviously super committed to yourself. You're
obviously super committed to your goals. You're already miles ahead
of everyone else who has already convinced themselves that even
the first step in self discipline is too hard. And
(34:21):
now I guess you also have the tools that you need.
You know what needs to be done, and to be
completely honest, I'm just super proud of you for even
caring enough about yourself and your future to be considering
this change in your life, whatever that may be. I
think that self discipline is the secret ingredient. It is
(34:43):
the master key to everything that you want in life.
So I really hope that you have enjoyed this episode.
I hope that you can apply this to your life,
that you have learned something. If there's someone else in
your life who you think might enjoy this, who you
think might take something from this content, from this science
that we've shared, please feel free to forward it onto them.
(35:04):
Make sure that you are following and leave a five
star review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you are listening
to this right now. Of course, if there's an episode
suggestion I say this at the end of every episode,
please send it to me. You never know, I never
know who else might relate to some of the things
that are on your mind. And I take a lot
of inspiration from what you guys are going through this
(35:26):
episode in itself. You guys voted on this one, So
if there's anything that is in your thoughts that you
feel other people could benefit from, please send it my
way at that Psychology podcast or at GEMMASPEG. We will
be back next week with a special guest episode. On Tuesday,
so see then
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