How to build your self-discipline muscle… and yes, it’s a muscle.
What would be possible if you knew you could trust yourself? How could your life be different if you kept the promises you made to yourself and others?
The difference between that life and the one you live now is self-discipline – the ability to stick to something you say you wan to do– and the reason you don’t have enough of it is because you’re focusing your energy in the wrong places. In other words, you have no mental muscle.
Building physical muscles requires exercise – control over your body. Building mental muscle requires meditation – control over your mental state. When was the last time you sat down to meditate – simply focus on your breath and let all else go? Did you last for more than a few minutes? How about the last time you had negative thoughts running around in your head and you wanted to focus on positives – how did that go?
Am I telling you that in order to make and sustain change in your life you need be able to meditate? Well, actually, yes that’s exactly what I’m saying because when you think about it, it makes complete sense. If you’re trying to make change on the outside and you have no control over the inside, what the fuck do you expect to happen?
No different than building up a muscle in your bicep, your self-discipline muscle takes time to grow and develop. What I love so much about developing this muscle through meditation is that the process truly resembles much of life – you start, you fail (a lot) but if you stick with it you get better over time. And then, somewhere along the line, you gain self-disciple and it suddenly becomes easier to turn down the dessert or shut off social media. You wake up in the morning to go to the gym and, somehow, you just go and you finish the project you started.
Building this muscle isn’t easy but it is simple. You can start small (2-3 minutes) and build up over time and there are hundreds of guided videos, audios and applications to help you with it. Most people give this try and end up giving up. Don’t be most people.
