There are two things you need to work toward your goals in life: desire and belief. Desire is the driving force, motivating you to take action; belief is the sustaining force, keeping you going through adversity. While desire and belief don’t guarantee success, they do maximize your willingness and ability to take action toward success.
I’ve covered those ideas in the book and in previous posts. What I haven’t covered are the two concepts behind building and sustaining the habits necessary to maximize your potential: motivation and discipline. Most people focus on motivation because they generally want to do what they want to do and look for ways to build that desire to do the right things. However, you won’t always find motivation when you need it, as you’ll have bad days and setbacks in life that will be demotivating. That’s where discipline comes in. Discipline gets you to perform the required action when you aren’t motivated, and it supplements your inner drive to help you succeed.
So, what is discipline? In practical life terms, it’s simply doing something you don’t want to do or when you don’t want to do it. Motivation is doing something because you want to do it; discipline is doing something despite not wanting to do it. They are complementary because you need to have an inner drive that propels you forward, but you need to keep going even on days where the drive is weak to be successful.
Let’s take a famous example: New Year’s resolutions. January 1st is a magical day in that it gives billions of people the motivation to change their lives. Everyone seems to want to eat better, exercise, complete that project they’ve been putting aside for other things, or go out and meet new people. But, gym membership and attendance data show the difference between motivation and discipline: millions of people join gyms around the New Year, but most stop going by March at the latest. When that New Year feeling wears off and life hits you, it’s hard to keep the positive habit going.
This is where discipline comes in. The people who sustain their resolution use both motivation and discipline to keep going. They continue to want to be fit and healthy, and they also force themselves go to the gym even when they don’t feel like it. With that combination, they keep the habit throughout the year and, possibly, throughout their lives.
So, the question is, how do you maximize both? There are plenty of tricks, so let’s cover them:
Motivation
For motivation, there are three primary things to focus on: the process, the immediate outcome, and the final outcome. Obviously, the best way to sustain motivation is to learn to love the process, as artists, musicians, builders, and other professionals do. You hear about how the best athletes, for example, love practice (Allen Iverson notwithstanding). Loving the process of growth and improvement is going to get you to perform those tasks. However, not every part of pursuing every goal in life is fun. When that happens, wanting the immediate outcome is the next best motivator. If you don’t want to go to work, for example, but love the paycheck, you’ll be motivated to go. With exercise, it might be the “pump”, the endorphin high, or the ability to eat more food afterwards. Those direct benefits can motivate you to go.
If all else fails, though, the final outcome is the last line of defense. The final outcome is whatever the activity gets you in the long run even if it’s not immediate. One of the most famous motivators for exercise or eating healthy is the desire to live long enough to see grandchildren or great grandchildren graduate. That motivator alone has driven millions of people to healthier habits. Others include whatever you want to buy with your money (e.g., a house, a car, a business, a wedding ring) or whatever you want to be able to do with your education, fitness, or new skill. Anyone who is familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo knows what a human can endure when they have a long-term goal that drives every life decision they make (in the protagonist’s case, revenge). Finding a reason to move forward can often propel you through the worst of times.
Discipline
Despite how powerful it can be, motivation has two weaknesses: it can subside, and it competes with other motivations. As a result, motivation alone won’t get you to your goal if either of those weaknesses creep up along your journey. That’s where discipline comes in. There are three primary ways to maximize your discipline: willpower, barrier reduction, and external pressure.
Willpower seems to be the most obvious one: force yourself to do something even though you don’t want to do it because you know it’s good for you. Drive to the gym. Eat that healthy food. Study for the test. Using this method, you simply “Just do it” (as the Nike tagline famously states) despite any resistance. Men commonly know this as, “Quit being a baby,” or other statements to pressure themselves into doing it. Sheer will can work if you are well-rested and not under major stress.
When pure willpower fails, your next lever is barrier reduction. After all, to get over a hurdle, you can either push yourself harder or lower the hurdle. The primary hurdles to overcome are anything that will give you an excuse not to go. If it’s going to the gym, it might be packing your gym bag, driving there, or being tired. Therefore, the ways to lower the barrier are to pack your gym bag earlier, pick a convenient gym (or have exercises you can do at home as an alternative), or go to bed on time. Similarly, if you want to learn a language or eat healthy, make sure that you have the book or app when you’re ready to study or that you bring home healthy food from the store to eat. More extreme measures might be to go to a place without distractions and leave your phone at home to eliminate all alternatives to whatever it is that you need to do. The idea is to lower the barriers to performing the task and raise the barriers to performing the alternatives like sitting on the couch and eating ice cream while watching a television show. Again, you’re competing against both low motivation and alternatives that you might prefer doing in the moment.
Finally, there is external pressure. This is the most extreme of the methods because you basically take control out of your hands. External pressure can be as simple as letting people’s expectations of you get you to go, such as training for a sporting event or going to work because your family is counting on you to provide. The weight of responsibility can be the source of discipline. However, when all else fails, the most drastic measure is restricting your own freedom to choose anything else. This self-imposed prison is helpful for people who know that they will lack willpower and is famously illustrated when Odysseus had himself tied to the mast of his ship because he knew that he couldn’t resist the sirens’ song in Homer’s The Odyssey. However, anything you do to have external forces control you, from giving money to someone else that will be forfeit if you abandon your habit to having a person or app cut off your TV or phone use for hours per day so that you can focus on a task, is an example of external pressure to exercise discipline.
There are plenty more examples of using motivation and discipline to pursue a goal, but this list will hopefully give you ideas for how you can incorporate these concepts into your life. You need desire and belief to keep you going toward your goal, and you need motivation and discipline to perform the acts day to day that will get you there. When you have a goal and need a plan to keep yourself focused on it, these are all the concepts and techniques you need to succeed.