Chris Mance II - Mental Skills Coach

Trying to learn how to build discipline when you aren’t disciplined is not the catch 22 it sounds like. Although instinctively your gut tells you that discipline is a character trait people are born with, it’s not. Discipline is a skill, and people are not born with skills.

So, just like you don’t need to know how to write code to learn how to write code, you don’t need to have discipline to learn how to be disciplined.

Your ability to learn how to build discipline is a product of how you condition yourself in a situation. Conditioning is the process of continuously reinforcing a behavior response to a given stimulus. The most effective way to do this is by using a progression. A progression is moving gradually towards a more advanced or difficult state.

In addition, discipline is not a universal skill just like other skills are not universal. For example, in the computer coding world, just because you are good at coding Java does not mean you can automatically code JavaScript. Or, just because you can build houses doesn’t automatically mean you can build a boat. You may know some basic skills that translate that help you pick up the other skills easier, but there is still a learning curve.

Likewise with discipline. Just because you show discipline in your career does not automatically mean you have what it takes to show discipline in your health and fitness and vice versa.

The Process of Building Discipline

With this in mind, the process of building discipline applies these three principles.

1. Identify the specific area you want to build discipline.
2. Select a behavior stimulus you can use to trigger a response you want.
3. Follow a plan that utilizes a progression.

Let’s say I want to build discipline in the area of health and fitness. Right now, this is too generic. I need to be specific to satisfy the first principle of how to build discipline. Therefore, to narrow down my discipline goal I will focus on my daily water consumption. For optimal health and fitness for my age and weight, I believe that drinking one gallon of water each day is where I need to be.

Now that I have enough specificity, next I need a stimulus for the behavior. Since I’m always hungry and I’ve read that this is often the result of not drinking enough water, I will use hunger as my stimulus. Every time I feel hunger or the urge to eat, I will first drink water.

Finally, my plan for using a progression is that I will start off by drinking a 4-ounce glass of water each time I’m hungry for the first month. Then the next month I will increase by 4 ounces to an 8-ounce glass, then to a 12-ounce glass in another month. I will continue with this monthly progression until I can get to one gallon of water each day.

At that point I will have built discipline in drinking water. You can use this same process and logic in nearly any area in which you want to build discipline.

You don’t need to have discipline already to do this. The only thing you need is a recipe (plan) and the right ingredients for that recipe. Moreover, you don’t need to create the recipe or pick the ingredients on your own.

You can get a mental skills coach to help you with both. In fact, this is something I can help you do. For more information on how I can help you build discipline please contact me here.