The Mindset Mentor - 5 Easy Steps to be More Self Disciplined

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor Podcast. I'm your host, Rob Dial. And if you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you have not yet given us a rating and review and you love this podcast, please do me a real quick favor. Take your phone out, go to Apple Podcasts or iTunes and give us a rating and review however you listen to us. The more people who give us positive ratings and reviews, the more that Apple tends to show our podcast to people who don't listen to it, which means that we grow organically. So if you would take a couple minutes to do that, I would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Today, I'm going to be teaching you the five steps to be more self-disciplined and to get

Starting point is 00:00:45 shit done today. So we're going to talk about how to build the discipline muscle, the discipline habit. The way that I see discipline is I don't think anybody is born with discipline. I think that it's something that is programmed into us, whether it's our parents that program it into us or whether we program it into ourselves. And I think that I see it as a muscle. I see it as a habit. And I see it as something that anybody can bring into themselves, no matter how lazy or unproductive they are at this moment. And I really got into this because I was talking to my fiance about it last night when I was

Starting point is 00:01:19 driving my truck. And we were talking about someone that she knows that's really disciplined. And she goes, it's really, it makes sense though, because both of his parents are really disciplined. His mom's real successful. His dad is real successful. And they're both very driven people. And it makes sense why he's so driven. And I said, well, what about his brothers and sisters? And she said, yeah, that's interesting because all of them, the entire family is driven. And so it's something that you can learn, whether it's learning it from your parents or something that you can instill in yourself as well.

Starting point is 00:01:50 And so I see it like a muscle. The more that you work your discipline muscle, the more it's going to grow. The more you work a discipline muscle, the more it's going to grow. At this point in time, if you don't have a whole lot of discipline, it might just be because you got weak discipline muscles.

Starting point is 00:02:02 It's like you haven't been to the gym, maybe your entire life. But if you just decide to start going to the gym and decide to start lifting weights and show up and show up and show up and show up consistently, eventually your muscles will grow. Your muscles are just going to grow. That's the way that your body works.

Starting point is 00:02:18 It's the exact same way for discipline. For me, I was a very undisciplined person for a long time in my life. For the first 19, 20 years, I was completely undisciplined. I didn't like doing any work, any of that stuff. And now it's hard to not be disciplined. It's hard to not be driven to get something done. And so I know from myself and from other people that I've worked with, discipline is something that can be built into you. It's not something that you're born with, but it's something that can be developed.

Starting point is 00:02:44 can be built into you. It's not something that you're born with, but it's something that can be developed. And so you don't need discipline for easy things. That's the funny thing about it. You need discipline for the hard things. You don't need discipline for sleeping in. You don't need discipline for not going to the gym. You don't need discipline to eat a pizza. You need discipline to actually do the things that you need to do to move the needle in your life. And before we dive into the five tips, I want to tell you something about discipline I think is super important. A lot of people think that the word discipline is, for a lot of people, has a bad connotation. If your child does something or does something wrong, you discipline them. If they don't get good grades or they don't act the way they're supposed to. If your

Starting point is 00:03:22 dog poops on the floor, you're going to discipline your dog. But when I'm talking about self-discipline, self-discipline is actually an act of self-love. It's not an act of doing something bad. It's an act of self-love because you always need self-discipline to do the things that are good for you. You don't need self-discipline, like I said, to sleep in. You don't need self-discipline to not work out. You don't need self-discipline to eat a pizza. You need self-discipline, like I said, to sleep in. You don't need self-discipline to not work out. You don't need self-discipline to eat a pizza. You need self-discipline to wake up early to work on yourself. You need self-discipline to eat the healthy foods.

Starting point is 00:03:52 You need the self-discipline to get yourself to the gym. And so self-discipline is an act of self-love. It's not an act of something negative, which is the way we usually think of the word of discipline. So I want to tell you that before we dive into it. But it's also not about being perfect. You will never be perfect. And so you don't need to worry about that. It's not about being just like this badass productivity machine all day, every single day. It's about making sure that the majority of the actions that you take are the actions that need to be taken to get you to where you want to be

Starting point is 00:04:24 and to move the needle. So it's not about being perfect all the time. Because one of the things I see with people as they start to work on themselves and they start to try to get better is they will be really good for a couple of days and then they'll fall off. And then they start to judge themselves

Starting point is 00:04:37 and they start to feel guilty. And then the judgment and the guilt and the shame and the negative self-talk knocks them off path and they don't do what needs to be done. And so I want you to realize you don't have to be perfect. It's about winning more than you're losing. And that's the way that you really get to move the needle in your life. Okay. So number one is to challenge yourself to finish every single thing that you start. Challenge yourself to finish every single thing that you start, no matter what it is.

Starting point is 00:05:03 Challenge yourself to make sure that you get done. If you make yourself a salad, you have to finish the salad. And then if you made the salad, you have to put everything away before you can go on to the next thing. One of the things that's really interesting that I have a new coach, I guess you could say. I'm learning how to fly a plane. And so I have a certified flight instructor. And it's cool because it's funny because he's not teaching me life skills, but I see life skills coming through as he's teaching me. So he's kind of, I like to call him my coach more than anything else.

Starting point is 00:05:32 And one of the things that you have to do is when you're about to pre-flight your plane and you're going through the plane, you're looking at everything, is you have to check the fuel on the plane. And you have to go through, and in the plane that we have, there's five different places where you have to literally take the fuel out. So two different

Starting point is 00:05:48 places where you have to take the fuel out of the, further out on the ends of the wing, further and closer to the cockpit and the fuselage. And then actually one actually coming directly out of the engine where you actually have to literally get the gas out of there and actually check to make sure that it's good gas. And one of the times I left the cup that you put the gas in on one of the wings. And he goes, this is an important part that you need to learn about aviation is you don't do something else until the thing that you're doing is done. And so even if you're on, where I've put my gas away, the little cup is on the left backside of the plane. The, where I always am at though, is the right wing of the plane. So the complete opposite side

Starting point is 00:06:30 of the plane. And so what he says is even if it's on the other side of a plane, you don't do anything else until it's completed. So you have to walk all the way to the other side of the plane and you have to put it away. And the reason why I love this is because he says in aviation, you have to make sure that the thing that you're working on gets done before you move to something else. Because if you happen to forget something because you go on to something else, because you're distracted, that can be catastrophic. And so you've got to start to think about yourself in your life in the exact same way. And this is what I love about coaches and all different aspects of life is that no matter how big the thing is that no matter how big the thing is, no matter how small the thing is, challenge yourself not to do anything else until that

Starting point is 00:07:09 thing is done. You hear me say it all the time. When you wake up in the morning, make your bed. When you have your coffee, just clean the coffee mug. Whatever it is that you're doing, if you brush your teeth and you happen to brush your teeth and get a little bit that's on the mirror, wipe it off. When you go and you're deciding what you want to wear for the night and you're changing through all of these different outfits, don't leave all of those outfits on your bed and then go out. What you do is you literally figure out what outfits you're going to wear, put it on, and then hang up again and put away every single article of clothing. You've heard me say it over and over and over again, and I just said it in

Starting point is 00:07:42 another podcast. The way you do one thing is the way you do everything. And so if you can force yourself to be self-disciplined for the little teeny tiny things, like making your bed, putting your clothes away, making sure that you wash the dish, every single thing that you do, you're going to translate that into all of the big things in your life as well. And so make sure that you're disciplined in getting every single teeny tiny thing done and finishing what you start. Don't allow yourself to stop early because stopping early is also a habit. And so if you're trying to develop a habit,

Starting point is 00:08:12 what is the habit that you're trying to develop? Finishing what it is that you started. So that's the first one. Step number two is to plan ahead. If you want to just be more self-disciplined and get more stuff done, start being better at planning ahead. It really boggles my mind how few people plan out their week and then they don't plan out their day

Starting point is 00:08:31 in the morning. If you take five minutes with yourself every single morning and ask yourself, okay, look at my schedule, what do I have going on today? Then you take five minutes and you close your eyes and you say, hey, what do I want my day to look like today? How do I want to feel? I'm going to go through driving to work, being at work, the presentation I have to give, lunch, the conversation I want to have. And you just visualize what the perfect day would look like to you and you plan ahead. You'll be so much more productive and it'll be so much easier to be disciplined whenever you've gone through that. Another idea of planning ahead, if you're trying to lose weight, you're trying to get into better shape, why don't you just start meal planning? Plan ahead. Every Sunday, create all of your meals and then you don't even have to think about what it is that

Starting point is 00:09:12 you got to eat every single day. You've already got it made. That's what planning ahead looks like to be more self-disciplined. If you've got to work out four times a week and that's part of your self-discipline, why don't you plan out on Sunday what workouts you're going to be doing day one, day two, day three, day four, and plan out the workouts so that when you show up to the gym, you don't even have to think. You just have to take action. And so sometimes one of the biggest pieces of resistance that we have towards doing things is the mental energy that it takes to get ready and prepared for those things. But if you can make it easier by preparing ahead of time and already having those things done, it'll make it much easier on yourself to execute what it is

Starting point is 00:09:50 that needs to be done. And so make sure that what you're doing is you're planning ahead for all of the important things that are coming up in your life as well. That will help you be so much more self-disciplined. That's number two. Hey, today's program is brought to you by Athletic Greens, the health and wellness company that makes a comprehensive daily nutrition really, really simple to get. AG1 by Athletic Greens is the category-leading superfood product that brings comprehensive and convenient daily nutrition to everybody. Keeping up with research, knowing what to do, and taking a bunch of pills and capsules is hard on the stomach and hard to keep up with. To help each of us be at our best, they simplify the path to better nutrition by giving you the one thing with all of the best things. I literally take Athletic Greens every

Starting point is 00:10:29 single morning because it makes getting my vitamins and minerals so freaking easy. And just one tasty scoop of AG1 contains 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food source ingredients, including a multivitamin, multimineral, probiotic, green superfood blend, and more in one convenient daily serving. So make your nutrition easy. Go to athleticgreens.com slash dial, and Athletic Greens is going to give you an immune-supporting free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first purchase when you go to athleticgreens.com slash dial today. Again, athleticgreens.com slash style to take control of your health and give AG1 a try. Number three is to design your environment. What do you want your environment to look like? How can you create an environment that makes it easier for you to take action or makes it easier for you

Starting point is 00:11:17 to accomplish your goals? So let's say that you want to lose weight. Okay. Well, in your environment of your house, in your car, where you work, all of those things, how can you design your environment to help you in accomplishing that goal of being more disciplined? For me, I love sugar. I think it's amazing. And if I have sugar inside of the house, it's being eaten by me. And I'll probably eat all of it in one sitting. And so what I do is I don't allow any candy, any of that stuff to be inside the house because I know I'm weak when sugar's around. It's like the animalistic part of my brain takes over and it's like, go find the sugar and just do it. So to make it easier on

Starting point is 00:11:55 myself and to have more discipline, I just don't have sugar inside the house. It makes it easier on me. So if sugar's a thing for you, how can you remove the sugar? If alcohol is a thing for you, how can you remove the alcohol? I had a friend that I just spoke to and we were on a Zoom call a couple hours ago. And I haven't talked to him about three years. And I hopped on a Zoom call with him and I barely recognized him. And I was like, man, what happened to you? How much weight did you lose? He's like, I've lost about 40 pounds. I haven't seen him in three years. It's like, I've lost like 40 pounds. Like, you look amazing. What did you do? He goes, do you want another crazy thing, man? I just stopped drinking alcohol. He goes, I love lost like 40 pounds. I'm like, you look amazing. What did you do? He goes, do you want another crazy thing, man?

Starting point is 00:12:25 I just stopped drinking alcohol. He goes, I love drinking alcohol. Not in an alcoholic sense, but I just love drinking it. It's just the way it feels, going out, being with friends and stuff. He goes, I just stopped drinking alcohol. And he looked like a completely different person. And so, you know, he just decided to take his environment

Starting point is 00:12:40 and not have any alcohol in the house. Because if the temptation isn't there, it makes it easier to be more self-disciplined, which then makes it easier to hit his goals. So another thing as far as your environment goes is think about the people that you're hanging out with. Don't be around people who will challenge your discipline. Don't be around, if you want to stop drinking, like my friend I was just telling you about, then don't go around your friends at a bar because that's going to make it really hard to be less disciplined.

Starting point is 00:13:05 And so you've got to design your environment to be the environment that you would want to help you in facilitating your, help you facilitate the accomplishment of the goals or the action that needs to be taken to get you to where you need to be. So number three is to design your environment. Number four is to work and to focus on progress,

Starting point is 00:13:23 not perfection. This is huge for a lot of people. Progress, not perfection. Done is better than perfect. So focus on progress, not perfection. So when you mess up, which you will, don't beat yourself up. Make adjustments. That's all you have to do. One of the things that really holds people back the most is that when they screw something up, they literally drag themselves on glass and just like literally it's like dragging themselves on glass of guilt and shame and negative self-talk and being terrible to themselves. And so many people,

Starting point is 00:13:57 if they would just stop guilting themselves, it would make it so much easier for them to be more disciplined, but also get things done that they need to get done. Right? So when you mess up, which you will, let me say it again, you will mess up over and over and over and over again. That is part of being human. Realize that it is about progress and not perfection. When you mess up, make adjustments. Take a step back and ask yourself, what happened and what could I have done better? So if you look at that and you go, okay, well, my goal was to not have any sugar. Okay, well, what could I have? I just ate some sugar. What

Starting point is 00:14:29 could I have done to have gotten away from that? Well, I probably could have shared my goals with my wife so that she would have known that I don't want to have any sugar. And then she probably wouldn't have bought that ice cream and I wouldn't have pounded that quart of ice cream. Well, okay. Now we know, we take a step back and we look at it and say, okay, now what I need to do is I need to share my goals with her and say, hey, if you want ice cream, you can get it, but do me a favor, either finish it before you get to the house or hide it from me so I can't see it, whatever it is that you need. Literally, I'm not kidding when I tell you this, my fiance, if she has candy, she hides it from me because she knows that if I find it, it's gone. It's done.

Starting point is 00:15:06 has candy, she hides it from me because she knows that if I find it, it's gone. It's done. It's cached, not happening. It's gone. And so she literally will hide stuff from me because she knows that she wants to enjoy it later. She's the type of person that can sit down and she can enjoy one piece of chocolate and then tomorrow come back and enjoy one more piece of chocolate on the person where if I have one piece of chocolate and it registers my brain, I'm pounding the whole freaking bag. And so with her, she hides it from me. That's just our relationship. And I'm completely cool with it. Why? Because it helps me when I don't know that it's there. So my environment is designed in that way. But also, if I do have a piece of chocolate or do have something, then I don't beat myself up over it because I would say the majority of the days, I don't have any. And so I'm not going to try to

Starting point is 00:15:43 live a life that I don't enjoy. And so it's about progress and not perfection or anything else. So that's number four. And number five is reward yourself. Like it's okay to reward yourself. If you have a really good week, and let's just stay on this fitness thing that we're talking about, and you have a really good week of working out,

Starting point is 00:16:00 and you have a really good week of eating healthy, have a cheat meal. I remember when I used to be really, really big eating healthy, have a cheat meal. I remember when I used to be really, really big and I was about 20 pounds heavier than I am now. And I had way more muscle. I'd still have it if I didn't have all these injuries that I've had over the past few years, I'm sure. But I would have one cheat meal a week. And it was like the most glorious cheat meal ever. Because I would look forward to that Saturday. It was Saturday evening. I would have that cheat meal. And it was like, I would go get a pizza and I would eat the

Starting point is 00:16:29 entire pizza. And then I would have a massive bit of ice cream. And then literally almost every single week I would pass out right after because my body was like, shut down. There's too much going on. My body needed to digest all of it. But it was so glorious to literally have like this one meal that I could look forward to. And then I ate so much, all of those things that I didn't feel the need to cheat the entire rest of the week because I was like, holy crap, that was a lot. I need to kind of chill out. And so reward yourself. If you are trying to stay away from sugar, reward yourself a little bit of sugar once a week, whatever it is you need to do. Design your environment to help you be more successful, to help you get done whatever it is you need to get done. If you need to make 100 phone calls every single day in your business,

Starting point is 00:17:07 okay, well, on the end of Friday, when you get those 500 phone calls done for the entire week, how are you going to reward yourself? So enjoy your life and what you're doing. Don't be so disciplined that it just becomes monotonous and not fun. You've got to have some sort of way to, when you do succeed, have a cheat meal. If you make 100 calls, you get a bag of Skittles, whatever it is that's going to help you to reward yourself so that therefore you want to go and be self-disciplined again. Because you can't be self-disciplined all of the time. But when you have a reward for being more self-disciplined, it makes it easier to go ahead and be more self-disciplined the next round. So that's what I got for you for the five different ways to be more

Starting point is 00:17:45 self-disciplined and to get stuff done. Number one, challenge yourself to finish every single thing that you do. Number two, plan ahead. Number three, design your environment. Number four, focus on progress, not perfection. And number five, make sure that you reward yourself as well. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please do me a favor, share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in it, RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And if you're out there and you don't follow me on Instagram yet, but you want some extra motivation and inspiration, follow me on Instagram there. Like I said, it's RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. And I'm going to leave you the same way I leave you every single episode, making sure you make someone else's day better.

Starting point is 00:18:24 I appreciate you, and I hope that you have an amazing day.

The Mindset Mentor - 5 Easy Steps to be More Self Disciplined

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