The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett - Moment 203: How To Actually Become Disciplined WITHOUT Willpower… The Leading Behaviour Expert

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Discipline isn’t something you either have or don’t—it’s something you build. Chase Hughes, a leading expert in human behaviour breaks down how small changes in your habits and mindset can transform your ability to stay disciplined. Learn how to leverage focus, emotion, and repetition to create powerful, lasting habits. Listen to the full episode here - Spotify- https://g2ul0.app.link//qeaGbuGkwRb  Apple - https://g2ul0.app.link//cFLUNTJkwRb  Watch the Episodes On Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/c/%20TheDiaryOfACEO/videos Chase: https://chasehughes.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How do I fix my discipline if I'm an ill-disciplined person? Understanding what discipline is, is the most critical element. And I define this differently than most people. So I define discipline as your ability to prioritize the needs of your future self ahead of your own present self. And that's it. That's all all discipline is. I'm prioritizing the needs of future me.

You're trying to think of an exception. No, I was thinking of two scenarios. The scenario one is I go home tonight, because I go to sleep, I get to bed early, and there's this other thing I'm thinking about doing after this, which is going to the gym. Yeah.

And I'm like, as you're saying, I was thinking both help future me. I was like, which one is discipline? I think they would both be discipline. So the moment that we start understanding that, if I could just make decisions that are prioritizing future me, then we go back to where am I getting my dopamine from? And I want past tense me to be a source of dopamine for present tense me. Because most of us look back with regret. I shouldn't have drank that much. I shouldn't have mouthed off at the family reunion. You know, whatever it is. I shouldn't have overslept. If I can start looking backwards with gratitude,

that's the fastest way to make discipline dopamine generating. So the tricks are to start small. So like when I go to bed at night, I will pop open the little Keurig coffee thing and stick the thing in there, put a cup under there, everything's like ready to go. So when I wake up in the morning, I just go, bam, and everything's ready. I'll get my clothes out, everything kind of lined up, ready to put on for the next day,

so I'm lowering the threshold of how much attention I'm spending. So I'm going to set my life up in every single way that I possibly can, as if I were a butler for future me. So when I wake up in the morning, all this stuff set out. My laundry's laid out, my checklist for what I need to do for the day, all the stuff I've got to get on a plane is all laid out by the back door. I can grab it and jump in the car.

Everything that I could possibly do to make my future self go, oh man, that's awesome, and look backwards with gratitude, I'm going to do it. I'll take a hundred dollar bill or maybe a few hundred dollar bills every spring or summer, and I'll stick them in the jacket pocket that I'm not going to use until the winter and I'll forget about it and the winter I'm looking and now I become a source of dopamine past tense me is becoming a source of dopamine for present tense me. That forces me to look in the future, along with like printing that old me photo

and putting it all over the house. But everything that I can possibly do to make myself look backwards with gratitude is what I'm going to start doing. But you have to start small. It's like just going overboard is going to be crazy. And even writing a little Post-It Note to yourself and sticking it in a jacket or maybe a dress shoe that you're not going to wear for a few months, it means so much to

find that. And it's from you. It's not from a loved one. You did it. So you're looking backwards with like, wow, that's amazing. So you're now getting in love and sending gratitude backwards, which automatically means that what's going forwards is concern and care. The moment I'm always looking back with gratitude,

the concern is always going forward in the future. And the concern for present goes away. And I'm going to push that concern to the right out in the future. And the concern for present goes away. And I'm going to push that concern to the right out in the future. People struggle even with the small things, right? Like getting, because it's funny because I watched a video last night about a lady that went to YouTube and started her like journey of weight loss and whatever. And she was very, I think she was 400 pounds or something. And she was trying to get down.

And in the video you watched, some people will know who I'm referring to over the space of a year or two years, she actually just gains weight. So she gets to, I think 500 pounds or something. And as I was watching it, you're watching someone who's saying, I want to change my life. But then it's coming on every day and saying, I've just gained three pounds, I've just gained another three pounds. And there's almost this, this like visible dissonance that you're observing between this person saying they want to change their life, but clearly the actions that they're then

taking are like, are different to that. And many people can relate to that feeling of, I want to be this person. I mean, we're coming up to like, for anyone that doesn't know, we're recording this in December. So New Year's resolutions are around the corner. Everyone's going to say to themselves who they want to become. But it's easier said than done. I think what, seven, eight, eight percent,

nine percent of New Year's resolutions will stick. Yeah. So is it just a case of starting small or is there any other tricks to discipline that you can offer? It's starting small and realizing that all of our lives are about habits, not goals, but what are the habits that make my goal a byproduct? Everything is about byproducts in your whole life,

whether you know it or not. So instead of setting goals, set like the byproduct. What are the byproducts I want to have for this year? And then what are the habits that make that up? So what the big mistake most people make is they see somebody like you. You go to the gym very often. You probably eat really clean.

I know you don't drink alcohol because I brought you a flask and gave it to your team. But... Post-its. They took it. They did. So somebody who doesn't live a very disciplined life would look at you and say, God, I want to be like

Stephen. He's got all this discipline. He's going to the gym. But they don't understand that you going to the gym isn't discipline. It's a habit. So, you're not like forcing yourself to go do something. You're doing something that's a habit for you. The discipline only is necessary. You only need like a teaspoon of it at the very beginning to get this habit started. So start micro habits first and then bigger habits. So the discipline is not something that you should be

seeing if you're seeing someone eat healthy and go to the gym, do all the stuff you want to do. Those are habits. And that person, you're not seeing a discipline at work right there. You're seeing a habit. The discipline was just at the beginning. And I think if more people knew that, that you're just exercising a little discipline at the very beginning, and then it's just, that's just what you do.

It's like somebody who sees someone brushing their teeth every day, like, wow, that's so much discipline. It's just what we do. It's a habit. There's an interesting part of this, like, habit equation you could say, or like discipline equation, which is the why part. Which is like, why does this matter to you? And is it important to get really clear on why this thing matters to you, whether it's the gym or like... Because when I was playing around with this discipline equation idea from my last book and the kind of conclusion I landed at was that to be disciplined,

you have to understand the reason why something matters to you. You can say that in other words. Yeah. Plus the psychological reinforcement you get from the pursuit of the thing, minus the, you could say, the psychological or perceived cost of the pursuit of the thing. So in the context of brushing your teeth, I think I know why it matters, right? Because if I don't, then I have to go to the dentist, my teeth fall out, I look ugly, whatever it might be.

The, is it rewarding and fun to do? No, not really. And minus the cost of the pursuit. It takes two minutes. It's not that bad, but when that nets out, the Y is stronger, thankfully on net than the cost. So the behavior happens. Yeah. But the key part of this equation here is the Y part.

Like it's not the key part, but it's a central part is the Y part. Why does the thing matter to you? Yeah. And, and how much Y? Like how big is the why part. Why does the thing matter to you? Yeah, and how much why? Like how big is the why? Yeah. Because if the why is I need enjoyment in the present moment, then no other why will be bigger.

No discipline why will ever be larger. The only why will be why am I eating these Cheetos right now? Or why am I drinking 20 beers every night? Because that's the only why. So I think once the why starts edging its way into the future, that's the moment where you break the discipline spiral, and you get out of that because your Y's are extending into time that hasn't happened yet. Does that equation stack up for you? Saying this.

I like it a lot because I've been trying I've been saying it. I wrote about this in my book. The whole idea is Y plus like you could say reinforcement minus you could say cost just to simplify it. Yeah. But is there anything missing from this equation? Do you think is there anything missing from this equation? Do you think, is there anything?

I said it to Simon Sinek and he went, let's try it out. And he talked to me about taking his bin out in the morning, like taking the bin out for like the bin men. And it kind of holds up because he's, so the why is if I don't take the bin out, then I'm going to get fined and my bin isn't going to overflow. Pretty strong motivator. Yeah. The reinforcement, there's no reinforcement getting out of bed at at 7 a.m. to take your bin out, it's not nice.

The cost is also significant, getting out of bed. But the why still... So it's why plus... You could say like why plus the psychological reinforcement from the pursuit of doing it. So DJing, really fun for me. I would say it would be divided by the cost of inaction. The cost of inaction would either add to it, but it's always going to be your perception

of the why, your perception of the cost, and your perception of the cost of inaction. And all of that is going to be about can I use, can I leverage my focus, the mammalian brain's focus, can I leverage authority over myself in some way, over that mammalian part of my brain, force myself out of bed, force these habits to start developing? And then tribe, are my friends involved? Have I made a public agreement about something? And then the emotion, which I think would be the why.

And that's the emotional driver. That animal can understand you visualizing yourself better, like looking with a six pack or whatever it is, but printing it on a vision board. This is why I think vision boards are so important, not because we're manifesting something out of the universe. Maybe it is. But we're definitely showing something that a dog can understand.

It's imagery. And dog can understand images. So we're routinely exposing ourselves to these vision boards on a very regular basis. And if you follow the brainwashing formula, which is focus, emotion, agitation, and repetition. It spells fear. And that is the best way to brainwash yourself to form these new habits and goals.

So how can I get myself to focus? How can I build the emotion, which is the why? Recurring emotion, not just one at the very beginning. How can I continue to make it emotional? Or maybe I can make the cost of inaction emotional. Maybe I can buy the app that makes me look fat, or one of those things. And then agitation is, if I'm waking up habituation,

which you just talked about. If I'm waking up at the same house every day that I've been fat in, let's say I wanted to lose weight or whatever, the same house every day that I've lived x-way in, I'm sitting in the same hallway, same rug, same couch, everything looks the same. My brain says, oh, I'm here, I'm going to follow that script.

Because our brain writes scripts for us to save us time. So agitation means I'm going to disrupt my environment so much and so often that my brain has no chance to default to an older script. So, I have clients that repaint their house, they rearrange their furniture, they change up their wardrobe a whole lot, they get a completely new haircut so they're not even looking at the same person in the mirror anymore. They do everything you can to disrupt that rhythm. It's exactly what we would do with a detainee if we were trying to

brainwash someone who is in an intelligence interrogation. So I'm disrupting environment like crazy. And what would we do with a dog? Are we going to let it do everything it's always done? Are we going to change that environment? Are we going to change the behavior, change the leash, change the collar so it's not everything exactly the same. And then repetition.

Repetition, which is just repeating the same thing. Over and over. So like, even just coming to the vision board, the last client I had, I had him go to Best Buy and get a 70-inch TV, and then get one of those cheap tablets, those $300, $200 tablets, and just duct tape it to the back of the TV TV and put his vision point, vision board on that thing. It's like 900 slides of just nonstop photos, but it runs 24 hours a day

in his office. Even if he's not there, he walks in the morning, it's on. Nonstop repetition. Because him having to turn it off at night means he's got another point of discipline. I've got to turn that TV on, start that little PowerPoint thing. But that's nonstop and it's just nonstop exposure. So can I generate focus? That's a lot of focus on the goals. Then there's emotion. You're seeing all of that.

Agitation, which is disrupting my life patterns, and repetition, which is just over and over and over. How can I re-expose you to the same stimuli, re-expose myself to the same stimuli?