How to be more disciplined and have more self control
Let's talk about discipline and self control! Lots of people email and DM me asking how I manage to be so disciplined - for example getting up at 5am, not drinking alcohol for nearly two years or how I have maintained my fitness regime for nearly 3 years now. And yes, while I am very disciplined I do find that the more disciplined and controlled my environment is the less I need to rely on self control to achieve my goals. So here are three ideas for how you could create a more disciplined environment for yourself.
1. Remove temptations
I am able to eat well because we don’t bring junk food in to the house. When I want to focus on my work I set myself a task, put on a timer and the turn off all notifications such as on my phone or email notifications that pop up on my computer screen. If I’m working on a really big project I will sometimes completely remove myself from my normal home office environment and go to the local library where it is quiet and I can focus.
Research has shown that how we set up our environment influences the choices we make. So don’t bring junk food in the house if you’re trying to lose weight, and change your normal environment if you’re trying to work on something that is difficult and needs extra concentration.
2. Know your reason why
Intrinsic motivation is probably the most powerful motivator for self-discipline. If you have a powerful reason why you want to be studying something new, why you want to lose weight or why you want to get up early each morning then it makes it so much easier to do so.
Search for the intrinsic reasons why you want to achieve what you want and this will help you to naturally become more disciplined. If you are struggling to get up each morning to work on your new project then perhaps that’s just not something that is as important to you as you think it is...?
3. Set yourself a deadline, challenge or specific goal
This has been a huge one for me over my whole life and has resulted in many big wins for me. When I was doing my PhD, for example, I broke a seemingly daunting task of writing a 100,000 word thesis over 4 years in to much smaller goals. First I challenged myself to complete the degree in 3 years rather than 4 (which I did) and I did this by breaking the huge goal down in to a smaller set of goals - such as having a daily writing habit where I had to write 500 words towards the thesis every single day. Another way this has worked for me is when I was creating my online courses. I pre-sold my courses and had paying customers already waiting to take them. I set a deadline for launch day and this gave me a huge incentive to get the course finished and launched. This was a huge amount of work in a small space of time but it is the sort of challenge that really works well for me.
So if you often tell yourself you’re not very self-disciplined then you may find that all you need is to make some changes to your environment or habits or perhaps even set yourself a challenge or deadline of some sort. Think about which strategies might help you and then implement these for the goals you want to achieve!
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Enjoy the rest of your day!
Clare x
Dr Clare Le Roy
