- Note: This is part 1/2
- This part focuses mostly on starting good habits whereas part 2 focuses more on keeping those habits
Nothing in this world will work unless you master your mind. You won’t reach your goals unless you build the habits and discipline to make them happen.
Why do I say that you have to master your mind?
Because your brain doesn’t want you to be happy, it just wants you to be content.
You’ve experienced this first hand. You set out to do something and fell short of what you wanted to accomplish. Maybe it was to lose weight or to become the most attractive man in the room. Perhaps it was a New Year’s Resolution.
Either way, you didn’t reach your goals.
Things may have started out great, but then slowly other things started to creep in until you gave up altogether. Things like eating that extra slice of pizza, or spending just one more hour watching the TV or playing a video game.
Somehow, it just became easier to forget about what you originally set out to do.
And that’s what we’re going to talk about in today’s follow-up to exploiting the Law of Attraction: what it takes to cultivate the winning discipline that moves mountains and crushes everyone and everything that gets in your way.
The Foundation of Discipline
In order to start with building discipline we have to dig deeper into its foundation. At the foundation of discipline are your habits.
Allow me to explain:
Remember the example up above? About how we have all tried and failed to do something before?
If you’re anything like me, then a big reason for the failure is a lack of good habits. Because motivation is something that comes and goes. It will not carry you to success.
What does carry you though, are your habits. Habits are the things that you do even if you don’t want to. For example, how many of you brush your teeth in the morning shortly after waking up or a little bit before bed?
Why do you do that though? Have you ever thought about if you even want to brush your teeth? It’s kinda boring.
Yet we all do it to one degree or another without even thinking about it.
That is the power of a habit in action. To some degree, that’s what building discipline is all about: building great habits.
But before we talk about how to build good habits for our life, we have to talk about what habits we need.
Because it’s great to have a goal, mandatory even. But just as mandatory is the path to get there. You don’t have to have every little detail mapped out, but you should have a general idea about what to do.
Going back to the fitness and food examples: If you want to get beach body ready then you will need to cut out certain foods. You’ll also need to eat better in general while also increasing your physical activity. There’s a lot that can go into each of those sections, but it is a start and gives you the general idea to dive into the subject further.
It sounds like a lot of work at first because it is. Building a habit is difficult at first (but we are going to cover ways to make it easier). But once you have the information you need you can build your road map to your goal. Then, all you have to do is what we’re going to talk about next…
Carve The Time Into Your Schedule
Now you have the general road map to your goal. You need to do X and you need to do Y and whatever else.
Put this time into your schedule and don’t schedule anything else for this time. It doesn’t matter what the goal is. It can be talking to women, it can be working on a business or working out or anything else. Just make sure that it’s in your schedule.
After putting it in your schedule, get everything ready ahead of time that you need.
Example: if you need to eat something then do some meal prep. If you need to hit the gym then put your gym clothes in the bag right by the door/car/wherever close by.
The same can go for anything. Figure out what you will need to do whatever needs to be done and put it wherever you will see it. Then, when the time comes you won’t have to do anything other than picking it up and going.
Then, it will be just like brushing your teeth. If you keep doing it like this then you will eventually just start doing it like a robot.
But there’s an additional hack that works wonders for me:
Work on Your Goal or Sit There Like a Dumbass
Now that you’ve got the things that you need, you’ve scheduled the time into your calendar and you’ve made it to where you need to be. Whether that be the gym to get swole or the popular place in town to chat up women (if you love photography check out this guide to make meeting women more fun).
Doesn’t matter where it is or what the goal is, the fact is, is that you’re there.
Here’s where the fun brain hack comes into play, something that has helped me out immensely.
Don’t allow yourself to get distracted by things. The only thing you’re there to do is what you set out to do. Which is far easier if you have to go someplace (which I recommend for this very reason!)
That means no surfing the web, either on your laptop or your phone. It doesn’t mean texting or whatever else either.
It means doing only what you’re there to do, with only one exception. And that exception is this:
You are allowed to just sit there.
Again, you’re not allowed any distractions. Put locks on your phone or whatever you have to do for however long you need to be there.
Make it a pain in the ass to get distracted.
That way, you will either be bored out of your mind or do whatever it is that you are trying to do.
After even a few minutes of just sitting there, you’ll quickly find the motivation to complete your mission.
Because for me at least, ANYTHING is better than being bored.
It’s an interesting brain/discipline hack that works a lot better if you have to physically go somewhere to do something, like the gym or even an office. Because if you’re at the house then you have an infinite amount of distractions to indulge in.
Know Thyself to Build Discipline
The above is all about building a habit, but in this section, we’re going to go over something a little bit different. It’s all about you!
What I mean by that is first, go back to what exactly it is that you want for your life.
That means figuring out what kinds of rewards that you want. If you want more women then are you doing it because you want to get laid? Are you wanting a girlfriend or girlfriends?
What are you wanting to meet more women for?
The same thing goes with hitting the gym or building a business. Why exactly do you want what you want?
The first goal is to nail down what speaks to you.
What the goal is doesn’t matter much, as long as it’s something that you genuinely want deep down in your core. Doesn’t matter what that goal is, as long as it speaks to you.
The only way to fail this first step is to not be honest with yourself.
I’ll give you an example that I’ve used a few times, including in my article on beating depression. That example is that a big motivator for me is having women and friends in my life.
They aren’t the only thing that’s important, and neither are they the most important thing [anymore]. But they are damn important.
Therefore, whenever I need a hit of motivation I start thinking about what life would be like to have more of them.
This leads us to the next section on building discipline…
What Kind of Person Do You Need to Be?
For example, years ago I desperately wanted to learn how to talk to anyone so that I could make friends and girlfriends (I always want more, but back then I didn’t have any at all).
In order to get what I wanted, I needed to figure out what kind of person I needed to be to get what I wanted.
I had to think about…
- What women and friends wanted in a person like me
- What kind of things would a person like that have to do in order to make friends and take lovers?
- Is there anything that I’m doing that’s hindering my progress?
- Things I’m doing right?
- What kind of challenges am I going to have to overcome?
And general things like that.
But there was something else that I never thought of at the time. Something I never realized until fairly recently, in fact.
What were some of the difficult, or painful things that I would have to do in order to become that person?
It wouldn’t necessarily have to be painful or difficult either, instead, it could have just been unpleasant.
For example: in order to find women who wanted me in the worst of ways I had to talk to lots of women.
This means that I had to get rejected by a shit ton of women so that I could figure out how to make this woman thing work.
And as pretty much all of the pros will tell you; you will still get rejected a lot. But if you, like me, want more women then you’ll have to face those rejections.
Because that’s the kind of man that you’ll need to become in order to get what that kind of man gets: women who want him.
What Kind of Pain Are You Willing to Tolerate to Reach Your Goals?
Which brings us to this: what kind of pain are you willing to live with? Because success is a long, unsexy and difficult road.
We fetishize the glamorous side of certain lifestyles, but we often forget about the failures they went through to get there. Tweet ThisBecause make no mistake, life is very much like a video game. There are trade-offs to every action. We only have so many skill points (hours) to devote to our character (ourselves). And with some abilities come weaknesses in other areas.
If you want a ton of money then you’ll have to put in the time and effort to get it. If you want a body that women and men alike will drool over then you’ll have to spend hours upon hours in the gym and give up certain things in life.
It doesn’t mean that you don’t indulge from time to time, but it does mean that you’ll have to live the life it takes to get what you want. That means living with the positives and the negatives.
In regards to women, it means facing A LOT of soul-crushing rejection.
Luckily, building discipline is always the hardest in the beginning.
Keep Moving Forward
-Alexander
P.S. Keep an eye out for part 2 which will focus more on keeping your good habits that you’ve started!
Develop Discipline Re-Cap Infographic
