15. Discipline Isn’t Sexy, But Your Results Will Be: 10 Steps To Become Your Most Disciplined Self

Want a discipline plan you’ll actually use? We break down ten practical steps that turn good intentions into daily follow-through - without waiting on motivation or living in hustle mode. The core idea is simple: engineer your environment so the right choice is the easy choice, then protect a tiny daily baseline that you can hit even on tough days. From there, momentum does the heavy lifting.

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I am happy we can share this journey of levelling up, together. See you next week!

- Alita <3

https://vitawithalita.buzzsprout.com

Chapters

• 0:25 Why Discipline Matters
• 2:10 Define What To Be Disciplined About
• 4:18 Lower The Activation Energy
• 7:57 Daily Baseline And Non‑Negotiables
• 9:54 Build Systems, Not Motivation
• 12:07 Track Habits Visually For Momentum
• 14:07 Master The First Ten Minutes
• 16:02 Add Friction To Bad Habits
• 17:09 Identity Statements And Boring Truths
• 19:45 Plan For Slip‑Ups And Bounce Back
• 22:00 Recap, Confidence, And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:25

Hello, hello friends. Welcome back to Vita with Alita. So today we're gonna get right into it. Ten steps to becoming your most disciplined self. Why did we decide to talk about this topic today? Well, hopefully by now you notice that everything, literally everything, requires discipline. Whether that's working out, whether that's studying, starting some sort of side project, anything related to self-improvement, growth, essentially you need discipline to have, in my opinion, a fulfilling life, a life that's not just passing you by, a life where you you spend the time doing what you want, and that takes uh some discipline. But sometimes I feel like maybe we are not so clear on how we can get there. Like what does discipline mean? How do you exactly build it? Well, that's why we're here today. And as we started last week, I obviously have a nice new word I would like to share. So discipline is ineffable. Ineffable is I N E F F A B L E. And it means too great to be expressed in words. Maybe that wasn't the best example of using the word ineffable, but I just want you to understand how important and amazing discipline is. So today discipline is ineffable. So I'm going to share 10 steps to becoming your most disciplined self. Hopefully you can apply these. I've tried to keep them as simple as possible so that you can just get right into it. I've touched upon some of these ideas in some previous podcasts, but I thought it was a good idea to incorporate them all into one episode. Make this your go-to episode for when you need a little oomph, a little push, a little reminder that discipline is your best friend, but it does take a little bit of building, we can say. Now, most people, or we may all probably think that discipline is related to willpower. But really, and as I've mentioned before, willpower, motivation, these things are just temporary, they're phases, they don't last forever, and they will never get you to where you want to be. So, discipline honestly is really about sort of engineering your life so that it becomes the easy choice. What do I mean by that? We'll kind of get into it, but in my humble opinion, discipline is super empowering. It's not about like the hustle and like always like being on 24-7. It's just about sometimes having to do those things that you maybe don't want to, but you know are good for you. So it's not about working yourself to the bone. Even like discipline, we talked about, let's say, the importance of sleep. It might take a little bit of discipline to get yourself to bed early. I'm not saying discipline and like working all the time, but discipline and yeah, like I said, things that are good for you. Getting getting yourself to bed early, eating the proper foods to fuel your body. These things may require discipline. So that's why discipline is super important. And let's take a shot every time I say discipline in this episode. Anyway, let's just get into it. So, step uno, you have to get clear on what you want to be disciplined about. Discipline is something that is very it's it's very task-specific. So I know we kind of, when we use the word, we might say, Oh, you're so disciplined, and kind of make it like a personality trait. But honestly, anyone can become disciplined. It's not something you're born with. Anyone can become disciplined, and if we move away the focus from like this personality trait to something that is task-specific, it becomes a little more achievable. But in order to do that, you have to be clear on what you want to be disciplined about. And I know you might be sitting here and say everything, Alita duh. But let's start with one thing at a time. Kind of start with the one thing, the most important thing right now to you that you want to be disciplined about. So this can be like fitness. If you're a student, you want to be disciplined in studying to do better in school. Something related to nutrition, even just self-care. Maybe you're not the most disciplined when it comes to following a proper, I don't know, like routine for your face cream or whatever. Whatever it is, choose what you exactly you want to be disciplined about. And this, we do this because then when you have like that sort of clarity, you're more likely to follow through because you're not really like thinking about it. The cognitive load decreases, and oh, like it's just been shown like the less cognitive load something takes, the easier it becomes, the more likely you are to do it. So get clear on what you want. Clarity will increase follow-through, and that will help you complete that step one of building discipline. Step number two, we gotta lower the activation energy. For my science folks, that one's for you. Anyway, but the point of activation energy is like the amount of energy it kind of takes to start something. In chemistry, it's like a thing for how long it takes for the reaction, whatever. Here we're gonna talk about it in terms of like truly starting something. So something that may seem if it if it seems like such a big and daunting task, you're probably less likely to do it. Like, think about this. If you have a giant to-do list, you I don't know about you, but I start procrastinating because it just feels so daunting and I don't know where to start. So lowering that activation energy means you're gonna make it a little bit easier for yourself. So let's say you want to build discipline in going to the gym and building, let's say, healthier habits. Lowering that activation energy can include simple actions like laying out your clothes the night before, pleanning your workouts for the gym. So when you get there, you just you pull up your phone and you know exactly what you're doing, simplifying your meal prep. So if you have some time to make like bulk foods, like a bunch of rice and chicken, so that way when you went when you go to eat and you're hungry, it's there. You don't have to think about like, oh my god, or am I gonna cook, I'm starving, and then you end up just shooting yourself in the foot. So the the point here is you're setting yourself up for success by lowering the activation energy. And the the idea also here is that when you start building these habits, they they will more likely stick when like the cues that make you think of doing those habits are like right in front of you. Like I said, the gym clothes laid out on the bed. You're more likely to put them on and actually go to the gym when you wake up and you see the gym clothes rather than if they're in your closet. And the point here is you also want the friction to be low, so less steps and less thinking involved to do the habit means you're more likely to do it. Okay, step number three. You're going to set yourself a daily baseline, and this is something that's going to be a non-negotiable. So we say baseline because this is the smallest version of the habit you kind of want to build that you're always going to do. And this is why I mean non-negotiable. It might be a little bit irritating, it might be a little bit annoying, but honestly, to build discipline, you're going to need a little bit of that, and you're going to need to push yourself a little bit. Discipline is not just going to come. You have to decide in your head that you want to do it, and you gotta do it. You just do it for yourself. So, to help you get there, though, we're gonna set this like little baseline. So, for example, you want to start being more active, start with 10-minute movement. 10 minutes. I know you have 10 minutes, okay? 10-minute movement, a one-page reading. If let's say reading or studying is the habit or thing that you want to be more disciplined in, five-minute stretch, whatever it is. Things that are so small and so achievable, but they have to be non-negotiable and something that you do daily to kind of get into that habit. Step number four, we're going to build systems and not rely on motivation. Time and time again, I will keep saying this: motivation is so unreliable. So we're going to build ourselves a system, something that's more stable, a nice strong foundation for which you can you can build upon and eventually you become your most disciplined self. So when it comes to systems, you're gonna have to design your environment. You're gonna have some sort of environmental design, and this goes hand in hand with what I was mentioning earlier about having those like visual cues to reduce the activation energy in order to kind of get into the habit. It's related to that in the sense that you're gonna create an environment around you where discipline becomes the default option. And this includes things like removing phone distractions, if let's say you want to study, creating a gym routine, which we said about the lowering the activation energy. But you can think of this building system as like the broader concept of the small cues that we're going to do or that we're going to follow to lower the activation energy. So here the idea is if you kind of set up your environment in a way where you're not really thinking about your next step. You know exactly what you're doing and it's all laid out for you, and you kind of designed your environments in a way where you're more likely to follow through, you're taking that cognitive load away and you're taking away like that buffer period where you're contemplating if you want to do it or not. When everything's right in front of you, you're more likely to do it and you just you just do it. And then once you put your clothes on, once you start your non-negotiable two-minute habit, you're you already started, you you may as well, you might as well finish, is sort of the idea here. Because you already started and you went through all that trouble, you might as well finish. So we're trying to build systems here, okay? Step five. This is something I have talked about before, but I thought it'd be appropriate to bring back, and this is about tracking your habits visually. So I've previously mentioned that I have like this habits tracker app, and you can see over the period of let's say a month, like the different colors, and green means you you stuck to the habit, red means you didn't, and obviously you want to see more green. And visual cues work so well for us, and that's because of our lovely dopamine. So dopamine attaches to progress. As I mentioned, habit tracker has some sort of calendar, have an app that tracks your fitness and your meal logs, anything about anything that's going to maybe keep that sort of streak. So there's something in the power of kind of not wanting to break the streak. I don't know if you've ever had a streak on, like, I don't know, Duolingo or whatever, where you literally just log on so you don't lose a streak. That's kind of what it is. Having a habit tracker allows you to build that streak for yourself and hopefully gives you that little ounce of encouragement, especially on those days where maybe you really, really don't feel like it. So tracking your habits visually is super, super helpful. Alright, step number six, we want to master the first 10 minutes. And I know you're probably thinking, isn't this just like the thing where you said where you kind of start small and you like set up a daily baseline a little bit? The daily baseline is just like the first step, like putting on your shoes and walking down your driveway. Like that's that could be your daily baseline, just that little thing that you do that's non-negotiable. But when it comes to this step here, where you're mastering the first 10 minutes, the key here is the word master. You want to get good starting because starting is the hardest part. Think of anything. Think of like when you first wake up out of when you first wake up in the morning and you get out of bed and it's super cold, like starting your day is probably so difficult. But once you start, you get into your routine, you continue your actions, you're probably on autopilot, then it gets so much easier. So starting is definitely the hardest part. So if you can commit to the first 10 minutes, so the first 10 minutes is all you need, where you're putting all your brain power, as much as you can, to those first 10 minutes and you're mastering that starting point, then momentum will do the rest. Momentum will carry you through the rest, and hopefully you will be more likely to follow through. This is works for things like studying, working out, cleaning, reading, whatever the thing that we chose in step one that you want to be disciplined in. It works for everything. Set yourself a timer where you put your phone on do not disturb, you put a 10-minute timer, and you just tell yourself, okay, I'm just gonna do 10 minutes. And trust me, once you do those 10 minutes, you're more likely to keep going. So, master, just starting and doing the first 10 minutes. Alright, step seven. Step seven is all about the friction. So we're adding friction to our bad habits. Hopefully, you see a pattern here where the things that we want to keep in our lives are making super easy, and the things that we want to erase were making it difficult by adding a little bit of friction. So we're going to help ourselves by making unhelpful habits inconvenient. Alita, what do you mean? Well, is your phone distracting you while you're studying? You're gonna put it on a different floor in your house or in a different room or whatever you have to do to make it annoying to go get. So that when you want to look at your phone, hopefully your laziness in this case kicks in and you don't want to look at it anymore because you don't want to go grab it. It means blocking apps so that when that notification comes on that you've reached your time limit on the app, it's kind of annoying to like, I don't know, on my phone I have the one for like YouTube or whatever, and then every time the notification comes up, I have to press like ignore for the day, then it gives me options, and then all these clicking, I kind of get irritated and I end up closing my safari app. So blocking apps will hopefully add some friction to your bad habits. Keeping junk food outside of your house. If it's not in your house, you're not gonna eat it, and I don't think, or hopefully, you're going to be less inclined to want to go out to go grab it or to spend money to bring it to your door. So it's all about making those difficult habits or those maybe habits we don't want to do or those habits we want to get rid of more difficult to accomplish. And we do this because this kind of friction will hopefully break this cycle. So if you find yourself on autopilot where you're reaching for the bag of chips without even realizing that you're doing that, by adding these steps when we're clearly when we know exactly what we want to do, and we're clearly spending the time setting up our systems and lowering our activation energy and and creating those, like creating an environment for us to succeed. Hopefully, when you are on that autopilot mode, because you've set yourself up for success, you're less likely to go through with that with that bad habit that you're trying to kind of get out of. So that's that's for our step number seven. So number next is to use identity statements. You're gonna tell yourself I'm a disciplined person. You're not gonna sit there and say, Oh, I'm trying to be disciplined, because when you tell yourself I'm trying to be disciplined, you're kind of giving yourself an out, like, oh, I tried, but it didn't work, so it's okay. I was just trying. No, you are a disciplined person because if you are a disciplined person, and now you don't want to let yourself down. So I am a disciplined person, I am a person that studies, I am a person that reads whatever you chose or that you were clear about in step one, you now are that person. Identity is the key to change. You have to identify with that person you want to be. Fake it till you make it. I don't care. You're gonna fake it till you make it. Use identity statements, it will help you greatly. Once in the morning, once before you sleep, tell yourself, convince yourself that you are who you want to be. Okay, step nine. Accept the boring. Unfortunately, I do not have better news, but discipline is not super sexy. It is actually super boring. Real discipline is very repetitive, and it's not as glamorized as maybe it seems to be. It's just not sexy, okay? It's it's you're doing the same thing every day to build that habit and to be on that autopilot mode for those habits that you want to keep. And it's just boring, it's it's it's very mundane, and it's not supposed to feel exciting daily, honestly. Like if it is, then I don't know. Personally, it's just to me, it's not. And that's because it's consistent, that's because it's something you're doing all the time. Eventually that glamour kind of dies down. And discipline is about the consistency, it's never about the intensity, it's never about going at 100% feeling intense all the time because that's how you burn yourself out. It's just about being consistent with those little habits that you're setting up for yourself. For me, that's about laying out my clothes every day before I go to sleep and packing my lunch so that the next day I'm not thinking about it. I know what I'm wearing, I just grab my lunch and I can go. And I know I have healthy food options in my bag, and I know I have my gym bag already and packed so that when I want to go work out, it's there. I don't think about it and I go. Is it sexy? No. I do it every night. It takes up time, yeah. But it's something I do for myself because I know I know my future self will appreciate it because I am a disciplined person, right? So are you. Last step for our 10-step plan here for our road to discipline is to plan for the slip-up. You're gonna bounce back fast because guess what? I slipped up, you slipped up, we're all gonna slip up, we're all human. Discipline does not mean perfection. We're human at the end of the day, discipline doesn't erase that. So if you plan though for that potential slip-up, it's so much easier to bounce back, to get back into it, and to just turn the page and restart. Mistakes are expected. The key here is because we are expecting it, we're hopefully not gonna fall in this rabbit hole of, oh, well, I ate this piece of cake, so I might as well eat everything else in my fridge anyway. I know we've all been there, but you're gonna catch yourself here. We are planning for this. We're planning to slip up. So take a step back. It's not the end of the world. Remember, we planned for this, so we should be expecting it. Don't fall into the rabbit hole and make it worse. It's okay. So you're gonna introduce for yourself a 24-hour bounce back rule. That means within 24 hours, you're going to restart that non-negotiable habit you set for yourself. You're gonna restart by setting up your environment the way you want to. You're gonna restart by going to look at yourself in the mirror and saying, I am disciplined. Yes, you are, because within 24 hours, you're gonna be exactly who you want to be once again. Remove the shame from the process, okay? Because shame kills your momentum, and that's not what we're here for. Go back to doing that 10 minute first 10 minutes and let momentum carry you. I don't care what you have to do to get yourself back, discipline is not perfect. What gets you results over time is not perfection, but it's consistency, and consistency is what builds discipline. So that's yeah, basically, like don't don't be upset about it. Don't feel bad for yourself. No one else is feeling bad for you. No one cares that you slipped up except you. Just get yourself back in there, give yourself 24 hours, and you can go back to being your most disciplined self. So, very quickly, what are these 10 steps once again? Get clear on what you want and what you want to be disciplined about, lower the activation energy, set a daily baseline, something that is non-negotiable. Build systems, do not rely on motivation, use visual habit tracking to help you. Master the first 10 minutes because starting is the hardest part. Add friction to your bad habits, the ones that we don't want. Make them difficult to do. Use identity statements. I am disciplined. Yes, I am. You gotta just accept the fact that discipline's boring, it's not sexy, but it's okay. And uh lastly, plan to mess up and bounce back within 24 hours. We are all very sedulous people. Yes, we are. That's another word drop. Sedulous, S-E-D-U-L-O-U-S. That means we are working hard and never giving up. And I hope when it comes to discipline, you are not giving up that we are sedulous alike. Because discipline is the best thing that you can do for yourself for any area in your life, not just fitness. Anything that you want to achieve, whether that's cleaning your home, whether that's reading, knitting, starting a new hobby, you need a little bit of discipline. Discipline goes such a long way. So, just to end off this wonderful episode, I want to remind you that discipline is not a personality trait. It's not something you're born with, it's something that you build. And honestly, that's probably the best thing because by building discipline, you're increasing your self-confidence because you're showing to yourself that you can show up and that you can do it. So I hope you took a little something away from this episode. I hope I was able to give you a nice little framework to get yourselves started or to give yourself a head start when it comes to building some discipline in your life. If this episode helped you at all, leave a nice little review. Maybe share it with a friend. Maybe you both can start your discipline journey together. And I encourage you for this week to just pick one step to start with. If you're a little bit overwhelmed, maybe use this week to just get clear on what you want. Journal about it, pray about it, do whatever you do about it, get clear on what you want, and hopefully you can implement these steps in your life to be the best version of yourself. Anyway, that's all I have for today. Thank you so much for your lovely ears, and I hope to see you next week.

SPEAKER_01: 24:44

Bye-bye, I think.