🧩 MY TURN
Story time
I am a first generation college graduate. One spring day in 2003, my parents dropped me off at my first college visit while they went to breakfast. We had no idea that most of the children would have their parents with them.
I walked to my first Q&A alone.
Halfway through the session, a boy raised his hand and asked about AP credit and starting as a sophomore. I had never heard this sentence before.
So I raised my hand and asked, “How do I get AP credit?”
The room fell silent, there were a few giggles and looks were exchanged. The woman leading the tour responded kindly, “You should have taken those classes in high school.”
My small farming town in Central Illinois did not offer any AP classes.
My graduating class consisted of 40 people.
How could I already be behind when we hadn’t even started yet?!
Fast forward to December 2007…..
I graduated summa cum laude in 3.5 years… before that same kid.
Do you feel like you’re behind?
Remember this…..
The most successful people don’t all take ice baths, wake up at 5 a.m., or have an Ivy League education and AP credit. But they all share one thing…
Discipline.
A 2002 study found that discipline trumps talent in predicting academic success during adolescence. Academic work was confronted with less strenuous, more entertaining alternatives. Those with more self-control seemed to make the most of every learning opportunity.
Discipline is the bridge between desired goals and achieved goals.
The average new maker/side hustler will quit after working for a long time with little to no monetary return. In fact, many will actually invest in a lot of equipment or technology platforms, try it for a few weeks, quit, and return to their day job at a loss.
🧩 FAST SPIN:
“What is in our power to do is in our power not to do.” – Aristotle
Today I’m going to teach you how to develop your discipline muscles.
Let’s dive in.
Self-discipline is your ability to control yourself with the intention of achieving a goal.
The good news? Discipline is a learned skill.
The Five Pillars of Self-Discipline:
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Acceptance
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Willpower
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Hard work
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Tenacity
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Patience
🙏 Acceptance:
Most fail to accurately perceive and accept their current situation. It is important to identify an area where your discipline is weakest.
For example: I hate cooking, so when I don’t have any prepared food in my fridge, I order Shake Shack. I don’t make the rules.
💪 Willpower:
Willpower is the ability to resist short-term gratification in the pursuit of long-term goals or objectives. Note: Your willpower is at its lowest when you feel stressed.
Do I want to get up at 5 a.m. every day to write? Not usually. But my desire to grow as a writer and creator outweighs my desire to get an extra 1-2 hours of sleep every night.
Many people find it difficult to resist the temptation of immediate comfort or pleasure, which can undermine their discipline.
Growth requires you to leave your comfort zone.
🚧 Hard work:
Many people try to avoid this by doing what is easiest. Have you ever made a long to-do list and then searched for what would be easiest to check off first?
Hard work is about knowing your greater purpose and choosing the path to get there – no matter how difficult it seems.
Many people who book calls with me through Mentorpass or Intro are looking for the easiest ways to grow their brand, so I’m sharing my playbook for building a personal or consumer brand.
I always say, “What I’m going to show you seems simple, but that doesn’t make it easy.”
💨 Persistence:
Persistence allows you to continue taking action even when you don’t feel motivated to do so, and therefore you continue to accumulate results.
The #1 trick to maintaining motivation is to break your big scary goals into small achievable goals.
Next week marks the start of the fourth quarter, so I’ll share my quarterly goal-setting process to ensure I can balance my day job, side hustle, family, fun, and health.
⏰ Patience:
Success and change don’t happen overnight. It’s possible. be discouraged from looking around and feeling like everyone else is ahead of you.
Patience is trusting the process of how they got there and how you will get there too.
My trick when I get antsy? I look at meetings/emails I sent a year ago that I was focused on. You will realize how far you have come.
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As we discussed last week, social media uses the 90-9-1 rule: 90% lurk, 10% engage, and only 1% create.
A short hit list of the top reasons why most don’t achieve their goals:
♟️ YOUR TURN:
Discipline is the decision to do something whether you want to or not. So let’s set you up for success with 10 steps to build stronger discipline.
Step 1: Accept that you have control over it
Responsibility is your ability to respond to a situation. The only person standing between you and your goal is you.
It’s time to get out of the way and you deserve what you want.
Step 2: Know your WHY
Knowing your motivational values is helpful in achieving self-discipline.
(See this exercise on setting values)
Self-discipline becomes very powerful when combined with goal setting and passion.
Step 3: Choose 3
Most people fail because they bite off more than they can chew. Throughout your day, choose three non-negotiables that will move you toward your bigger goals.
Here are my 3 non-negotiables every day:
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Write ➡️ tailored to my career goals
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Workout ➡️ tailored to my health goals
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No phone from 7-8:30 am when I’m with my kids ➡️ aligned with my relationship goals
What are your 3?
Step 4: Know Your Weakness / Learn Your Excuses
We all make excuses and…….they work.
The next time you skip one of your non-negotiables listed above, write down the excuse you used and make a plan to address it proactively.
Too tired to go to the gym? Go to sleep earlier.
Was work too crazy to put down the phone? Set a late notification that you’ll be gone for an hour.
Step 5: Remove distractions
Staying focused is one of the most difficult aspects of discipline. Numerous distractions can take your attention away from your goals, including social media, emails, and the demands of others on your time.
To stay focused, you have to do that identify And to develop strategies for dealing with your biggest distractions.
Twitter is my biggest distraction, so I had to set boundaries to keep time under control.
Step 6: Personalize it
This may sound a little weird… but stick with me.
I have a character on my emotional bus who I call Mandy. She is weaker and has no cold. She wants to sleep in, skip the gym, scroll Tik Tok and eat lots of sweets.
Whenever I feel the urge to do something that isn’t aligned with my goals, I close my eyes and gently tell her that she has no control and take her back to her seat, leaving *37 year old Amanda with places to go to go* can get back in the car. driver’s seat.
Read more about emotional bus analogy here.
Step 7: Get organized
Every Sunday I do a ‘Sunday reset’ cleaning to ensure I start my week with a clean and organized home. Your physical space will influence your digital and emotional space.
Here are 6 things you can do this Sunday to prepare for your week:
– Choose 2 big things you want to accomplish for your career goals (content plan, outline, deck, etc.)
– Plan your training schedule for the week and put it in your calendar
– Write down in your phone notes app what you are going to eat this week
– Tidy up your house
– Getting groceries
– Go to bed early
Step 8: Be a robot
I’ve done over 100 podcast interviews and if you’ve ever heard one, you’ve probably heard me say, “I’m a cute robot.” I keep roughly the same schedule every day, which allows me to move from time block to time block with fewer distractions and choices that can throw me off track.
Note: I will be sharing resources to help you learn my time blocking system very soon!
Step 9: The 5-second rule
Discipline is not just about what you do, but about your ability to keep doing it even when you don’t feel like it.
Mel Robbins explains that we have five seconds to act before our mind convinces us to do something else. The ‘5-second rule’ creates a process to combat the subconscious and forces us to act on our ideas.
The process is simple. Count backwards from 5-4-3-2-1 and act immediately at the end of the count, and before the mind creates a reason not to act.
“The 5-second rule is simple. If you have an instinct to act on a goal, you must physically move within 5 seconds or your brain will kill it. …. Hesitation is the kiss of death. You may hesitate for a nanosecond, but that’s all it takes. That one little hesitation activates a mental system designed to hold you back. And it happens in less than – you guessed it – five seconds.” Mel Robbins
Step 10a: Decrease double crochet
We all slip or take a step back. Use your energy to get back on track and not to berate yourself.
Step 10b: More Carrots 🥕
A girl on TikTok explained that she gives herself $5 spending money for every mile she runs, and that’s her money to buy clothes. One Saturday she went for a long run with the goal of buying a pair of Abercrombie jeans for $60. 12 miles. So when she got tired at mile 10, she pushed through.
More carrots, fewer sticks.
So let’s recap and prepare you to achieve that goal you’ve been thinking about for so long.
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Accept responsibility
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Know your WHY
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Choose 3 non-negotiables
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Know your excuses
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Remove distractions
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Personalize it
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Is being organised
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Be a robot
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Use the 5-second rule
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Fewer sticks, more carrots
P.S. You deserve to do what you see others doing. Believe it and go after it. 💪
