High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 668: Mastering Self-Discipline

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

Dr. Cindra explores the power of self-discipline and how understanding dopamine can help us build better habits. Sharing her own experience of struggling to finish her book Beyond Grit, she explains how visualizing her audience reignited her motivation. Self-discipline, she says, is the ability to take action even when we don’t feel like it—yet our brains are wired for instant gratification, making it difficult to stay on track. To make discipline easier, Dr. Cindra suggests attaching small, immediate rewards to challenging tasks, using habit tracking, and visualizing success to stimulate dopamine release. By training our brains to associate discipline with rewards, we can turn self-discipline into second nature and overcome procrastination for good. Quote of the Week: "We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret." — Jim Rohn

Hi, friends. My name is Dr. Syndra Kamboff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week, I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go!

Time to check in with Cinder Campoff and today's topic is mastering your self-discipline. We all need this from time to time. Cinder, start us off with one of your quotes. I like this quote by Jerome, a motivational speaker and author. He said, we all suffer one of two things, the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. Okay, tell us a little bit about the topic for today. Today we're talking about mastering self-discipline and you know I wanted to share a personal story. When I wrote my first book Beyond Britt, it was actually pretty overwhelming.

And I think what I know now with a lot of first-time authors still that way, you know there was a point about halfway through that I just stopped writing and I felt stuck. And the thing that actually got me back to writing was my only coach suggested I print out a picture of the people who I wanted to read the book and who I was writing to. So I printed out, uh, some pictures of my dad and my mom and my two boys and some pro athletes, the leaders, those people that I'd worked with. And it actually worked. It worked because it cleared, you know, my victim for what I wanted as the end result and really like why I was writing

the book. And so why is the topic so important, mastering self-discipline? I think like my example, our self-discipline can really waver, right? We can get in our own way. And what self-discipline really is, is the ability to take action even when we don't really feel like it. We don't feel like taking action a lot right? And I think this topic is important because procrastination or over indulgence can really cripple us and today we're gonna talk about how dopamine plays their role and what I mean by dopamine is it's a neurotransmitter in your brain that really

plays a major role in motivation and habit formation. It's often called like the feel good chemical, but really it's like this motivational chemical that really drives us to find rewards. Well, can you tell us a little bit about how dopamine shapes our habits? Absolutely. So I'd say like every habit, either a good habit or a bad habit,

follows this really like neurological loop where we have a trigger or a cue that's something in our environment that signals our brain to take action. And then we have this craving, like a desire for a reward, and this, you know, your brain releases dopamine, like anticipating that reward. And then we take action, and we take action to get the reward. And the last part is like the reward and we either see kind of pleasure or relief. And the brain releases more dopamine,

like reinforcing the behavior. So for example, let's say we have an unhealthy habit where we feel really stressed and that's our cue. And then we wanna relieve the craving, so we eat junk food, if you know that, that's a good response. Sure. And then we feel better and we kind of repeat the cycle. But there's also like this healthy habit loop where, you know, we wake up, we like crave energy, we work out, we feel accomplished within the reward, then we repeat

the cycle. And so the more often the cycle repeats, the stronger our neural pathways, our brain become, making the brain, you know, just even more an automatic habit over time. All right, so we want those healthier habits. Why is self-discipline so hard? I'd say it's hard because our brain is really wired for this instant gratification, right? And seeking these short-term pleasure over long-term rewards. So it seeks like the social media, the junk food, you know, the Netflix and Benjen, right? Because it provides this quick dopamine hit. And so while the activities that require a lot of effort and discipline like writing and exercise, deep work really, they have delayed rewards. Nicole Corsette Sandra, can you tell us a little bit about what we should do?

Sandra Bickford Sure. Okay. So what should you should do? Here's a couple of ideas. First, I think what's important is a task like these small immediate rewards to really hard tasks. So for example, if you're writing, maybe put on some music and you know, play music that you really love or or your favorite movie if you're on the treadmill while exercising. You could use visualization to trick your brain. And so this means like when you're struggling with discipline, like visualize the end reward by picture yourself finishing that book or crossing that finish line, and your brain actually releases a dopamine hit just in anticipation, and that makes you take further action. Kaitlin Luna So when we're struggling with our discipline, we just have to keep looking towards the finish line then?

Dr. Ketchum Yeah, absolutely. One option is to keep looking towards the finish line. Kaitlin Luna Okay. Okay. Do you have a final thought for us? Dr. Ketchum Yes. I would say like today we've been talking about self-discipline and the role of dopamine and it's really about motivation.

And so I think the thing that's most important is that you can train your brain to associate discipline with reward and that's going to make your, you know, your discipline kind of second nature. Now, Cinder, if we want to read more about this or maybe listen to one of your podcasts that relates to it, where's the best way for us to go follow you? You can head over to Dr. Cinder, so D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com and you can find more information about the podcast, our other episodes, and the Beyond Grip book that are coaching over there.

Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe. And you can head over to Dr. Syndra for show notes and enjoy my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Syndra. That's D-R-C-I-N-B-R-A.com. See you next week.