You Don’t Need Discipline to Learn How to be Disciplined
Discipline is a skill, and people are not born with skills. So, just like you don’t need to know how to play the guitar to learn how to play the guitar, you don’t need discipline to learn how to have discipline.
Discipline is the result of how you condition yourself in a situation. Conditioning is the process of continuously reinforcing a behavior response. The most effective way to do this is using a progression. A progression is the process of starting with your current abilities and gradually layering on new abilities as you improve.
Furthermore, discipline is not a universal skill just like other skills are not universal. For example, in the guitar example, just because you are good at playing an acoustic guitar does not mean you can automatically play an electric guitar just as well. 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 playing a sport at an elite level does not automatically mean you have what it takes to show discipline in doing academic work at an elite level.
Learning How to be Disciplined
Therefore, the process of learning how to be disciplined requires the application of three principles.
- Identify the specific area you want to build discipline.
- Select a behavior stimulus you can use to condition a response you want.
- 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.