These are the 15 Steps You Need To Follow if you want to master Self-Discipline!
Hello Aluxers it feels amazing to dive into what it takes to master self-discipline! You’ve been bugging us for multiple weeks that this is the article you want to read and although we touched upon this topic in several other videos, we felt like it needs its own dedicated piece.
Your ability to discipline your actions and your mind is probably the most important skill you’ll ever need on your journey to success. Without it, the only thing you could hope for, is luck, but as you know Aluxers, we’re not big on luck. Don’t get us wrong, it’s nice to catch a break and get lucky, but if luck is your strategy to success, I’m afraid we can’t be friends.
Self-Discipline is one of the hardest things to master and implement, because we live in a world filled with distractions and we are bombarded by shiny things promising us happiness and fulfillment only to be disappointed by a fading state and by money poorly spent.
Listen carefully because this is why you should pay attention to this article!
If you master self-discipline, any feasible dream becomes an objective that is separated from you only by time.
Go through that again if you need to! Write it down until you truly understand that even the longest journey can be achieved if you keep putting one foot in front of the other.
We wanted to create a video that not only covers the basic concepts and WHY discipline is important, but actually offer you, the Aluxers, a blueprint into how to implement this into your daily lives.
We’re gonna be honest with you, it’s gonna be hard and most of you will probably fail at this, because you don’t have what it takes to make it.
Self-discipline is one of the hardest things to master and it will probably take you way longer and it’s going to be way more difficult than you ever expect it to be.
But for the very few of you who do manage to implement this into your lives, damn.. The game will be so much easier to play and win.
If you don’t want to go through the article and feel like watching it in a video format, you can do so below:
Before we get started, make sure you grab a piece of paper and some writing material, because you will need to write some of these things down, if you want to do it right.
That said, here are Alux’s 15 Steps to mastering Self-Discipline:
Step 1: Define a goal worth fighting for
This is not an easy task, because not every goal works. This has to come from within yourself. It needs to be the answer to your life. If this goal happened, your life would dramatically change for the better.
Just by thinking of this goal you should feel a shiver down your spine, your mind should go wild and you could actually feel the blood in your body rushing a bit faster through your veins.
This goal should be strong enough to get your through the hardest times, through the pain and difficult parts of the journey.
This goal will serve as you lighthouse in the distance, it will be your guiding light to the shore.
If the goal is strong enough you can make it through anything. We’ve seen soldiers survive in the most hazardous environments where chances were slim to 0, just because their goal was to see their kids again. If you find the right goal, nothing can stand between you and making it happen.
If you’ve read our piece of the 15 Skils You Need to Develop If You Want to Be Rich, you know the importance of not bullshitting yourself. So choose a goal that is actually attainable despite requiring a large amount of time, money or effort.
Don’t just write down a Billion dollars as your goal because it sounds good, instead, look within yourself at what would be the pillars of your life and what those pillars really are.
Usually the main pillars in life are the following: HEALTH, FAMILY, MONEY & SELF.
Health relates to your well being, your body, your ability to experience the world to its fullest.
Family relates to your closest circle, the people you have around you that are the foundation on which you impact the world.
Money is the tool that will allow you the freedom to reshape the world according to your expectations.
And Self has to do with your growing self, with learning, with the way you perceive the world and how much at peace your are.
Goals in these 4 areas could have the biggest impact in your life.
If this is the first time you’re experimenting with self-discipline, try a smaller goal, something attainable but just a bit out of your comfort zone.
Examples could be: losing 5 kilograms (that’s 10 pounds), taking your close ones on a holiday trip this summer where you’ll make new memories, saving 20,000 dollars or reading 10 books by the end of the year.
If you’ve identified a goal worth fighting for, it’s time to move on to the second step.
Step 2: Deconstruct the Goal
Finding a goal was the easy part, now it’s time to analyze it and break it apart.
This is what most people never do.
If you don’t analyze and deconstruct the goal, it’s no longer a goal, it’s a wish.
Anything you could possible want can be deconstructed into smaller pieces that when put together form the bigger picture.
Your job here is to identify what are the ingredients for your goal. These are highly subjective to each target one sets, but let’s say you are planning to read 10 books in the next 10 weeks.
In order to achieve this goal you will need the following ingredients:
A list of amazing book titles which are worth reading and will elevate your mindset.
2. Actually acquiring the books. Will you be buying all of them at once, will you buy 5 and then 5 more? Will you be reading them off your iPad as ebooks?
3. Time ingredient. When will the reading take place? Will you be reading in the morning, before you go to bed? Will you listen to them as audiobooks, how long will that take?
4. What is the goal of the goal? Why are you reading the books? If the goal is to just go through 10 books, you could find small novels which you can finish in 1 or 2 sittings. If the goal is to actually learn something, you will need to take notes off the books you read, so you will need a reading journal of some sorts where you could store the valuable nuggets you uncover.
As you can see, breaking down the goal to its ingredients gives you a better understanding of what you are about to do, what it takes to do it and how you can achieve it, as well as a deeper understanding of why the goal is important for you.
Step 3: Make a daily plan that if followed will get you to your goal
We loved the ingredients metaphor we used above, so let’s keep with it. If deconstructing the goal got us to a list of ingredients, this is where you establish the recipe.
Without the goal, you’ll never think of what goes into achieving it. What are the ingredients that make it happen. That’s all great, but you need a recipe to turn the ingredients into a final product.
If the goal is baking a pie, you need to first get all the ingredients and then follow a recipe. Makes sense right?
This recipe is your daily plan.
Looking at your goal, you’ll need to see what are the steps necessary which will lead to achieving it.
The more precise you are with these steps the better.
If your goal is to lose a specific amount of weight, you’ve probably identified that your ingredients are what you eat, what you drink & how much physical activity you put into it.
The daily plan should make use of the ingredients. Stop eating junk food and instead eat nourishing foods, eat at a caloric deficit – which means you eat less than you will burn in a day – and start increasing your daily activities with cardio like running, swimming or going to the gym.
It’s not that complicated, yet people struggle to lose weight because they don’t approach it systematically.
If the plan is right and you stick to the plan for an extended period of time, you will achieve your goal.
Step 4: Remove temptations or distractions
No matter how much you want it, there will always be a part of your brain that’s aware of your environment and highlights whenever a shiny thing is around you.
This is where you take control of your environment!
The person who controls his environment, controls his life!
When deconstructing the goal, look for threats, things that could impact your journey negatively and see what you can do to minimize or remove them completely.
If you’re dropping weight, don’t have ice-cream in your house. If you plan on writing a book, don’t start a new tv series, if you’re prone to watching a lot of tv, you could actively remove the tv from your house, so the only thing that’s left is to focus on your goal.
You are in control of what you do and look at temptations for what they are: things designed to keep you from achieving what you want.
If you design your environment around your goal, your chances of achieving it increase dramatically and the time until you do so is cut down by large amounts.
Try to come up with backup plans for situations which you were unable to foresee. You’re not going to go on a long journey without having a spare tire in your car and some money for emergencies, so make sure you don’t get into this journey unprepared.
Step 5: Prioritize the Goal before anything else
The goal you picked will change your life when you achieve it. That’s the premise of this entire thing. This goal is probably the most important thing you can do right now, so it needs to be a priority.
Everything else falls on the second place. Before you do anything else, you need to take care of your daily steps in order to reach your goal.
You’re an adult, who’s in control of his life and his decisions. If the goal you chose could have that much of an impact on your life why wouldn’t you make it your number one priority.
If you’re writing a book and some things come up, you first take care of your daily writing and then deal with whatever poped up.
If you’re losing weight and some friends want to hang out, you first hit the gym and then see your friends.
The goal comes first!
People waste time on urgent but not important issues and neglect the things that could change their lives for the better!
That’s why people never escape the rat race, they’re too busy fighting urgent but unimportant things and never get around to doing what would make a difference.
Step 6: Don’t wait for it to feel right
Getting to where you want to be in life is not going to be easy! Actually it’s going to be really hard, that’s why most people will never make it. That’s why most people are average. Their lives are average, their relationships are average, they look forward to the weekend, because the other 5 days of the week they’re miserable.
Michael Jordan became the Greatest of all time because he kept on training in the off-season while the other players were taking a break.
This pattern of keeping at it, no matter if you feel motivated is sooo important and without it, you’re not gonna make it.
We know this is something you don’t like to hear, but it’s the truth. It will require time, effort, money on a constant basis and you’re not going to be in top shape for the entire run.
You need to keep at it no matter what. How many people have you heard talking about how they’re starting a new diet or quit smoking “NEXT Week”, because they think it’ll feel right.
Sorry, but if you really want to be successful at whatever your goal is, you need to start this very second.
The best time to start was yesterday, the second best is today!
If you just put in the work when you feel like it, the world will reward you when IT FEELS LIKE IT – and the world doesn’t care about you, that’s why you need to do it yourself.
Step 7: Force yourself to do it
Some people don’t understand that you are not your body, you are your mind and your mind controls your body. You can actively force your body to perform certain tasks if your mind is strong enough.
An individual is defined by his willpower! If you’re unable to control your actions, I’m afraid you are not in control of your life, you are just another speck of dust carried by the wind.
It’s time to put your foot down and take control.
We’ve already said that it’s not going to be a smooth ride, but sometimes it’s going to be extremely difficult.
This is where your desire for the goal is getting tested. These moments are like BOSS-Battles in video games, you need to overcome them in order to progress despite how difficult the situation may be.
Every time you overcome one of these obstacles life throws at you, you will feel empowered and more committed to getting what you deserve.
There will be days when you don’t feel creative, snowy or rainy days when going to the gym will look horrible, business hustle that doesn’t seem to bring any results, you just gotta trust your plan and keep pushing forward.
In times like these remember the goal, visualize it, rethink what it could do for your life, what it will feel like when you achieve it.
That is what you’re fighting for, that’s why you keep on pushing!
Step 8: Find role-models who inspire you
The road will be long and it’s easy to feel lonely in this journey, but be assured you’re not the first that went through this.
Many people who master self-discipline already achieved incredible result. These are the people at which the world looks in awe, they don’t understand how someone could attain things that they themselves failed at in the past.
Your goal is to find these people. Study them, read their stories, most of them will share the struggles they went through and while other look at the end result, we suggest you look at the daily grind before they were even on the map to begin with.
Those are the people who are living proof that your goal is attainable, because they did it before you.
Read about them, watch interviews and learn from them whenever you feel like the motivation is dropping.
If they can do it, it means it is possible. It doesn’t guarantee your success, but it’s incredibly reassuring to know someone else walked the road you’re walking and reached the same destination you’re going for.
Depending on what goal you set for yourself, find 3 people who have achieved greatness in this field and from now on, use them as your guiding compass.
Step 9: Schedule breaks, treats & rewards for yourself.
We want to start this step with a quote from one of our favorite artists: BANSKY.
“If you get tired, learn to rest not to quit”
This is such an incredibly valuable insight that, just by itself could change the way you look at life.
Many people push and push and push until they get tired and then quit.
The body needs fuel, the mind needs fuel, you need to recharge.
If you are to attain your goal you need to shift the way you are thinking about this.
It’s not going to be a sprint, achieving your goals is a marathon!
Your ability to properly understand the time and resources it will take to get there is crucial to being a strategic player.
Dose of your energy and plan ahead for the times where you will feel down.
It is important to keep yourself motivated, do reward yourself when you overcome difficult tasks or when you’ve already covered a good portion of the journey. You’ve earned it, but don’t let it rise to your heart, because there’s still a long way to go and it’s easy to think you’ve got this in the bag.
The rewards should be small parts of what the big goal will feel like, this way it will re spark your inner flame and your appetite for greatness.
Step 10: Failure – even for one day – is not an option
The moment you decide to skip 1 day, it’s the moment you sacrifice your goal. Believe it or not, achieving your objective requires you to be all in on this hand from beginning to end.
We’re not exaggerating this. Most people will fail because they think it doesn’t matter if they skip one day.
What it does is, it sets a precedent and already establishes a vulnerability in your foundation.
Think of your entire project as a wall – i’m sure Trump loves this reference -. Every day you put another brick it in, but one day, you decide to skip it or do a half-ass job.
The thing is, the next day you will have a different slot to fill with your brick and that vulnerability is not permanently in the wall. Guess what happens when the flooding comes. The wall may be super solid in the remaining time, but that vulnerability, that’s what compromises the entire thing. Water will start filtering in, the gap will grow until all your progress is nothing but rubble.
No days off!
When you made the plan you committed to following it, you know that following the plan will get you there why would you jeopardize your journey for something that’s not going to matter 1 year from now?
People fail for many reasons. We actually made an incredible video on the 15 reasons why people fail which you can check out below. We recommend you watch it and identify the threats to your goal in it. See how many vulnerabilities you can find in your plan.
Step 11: Keep track of your progress
It’s always shocking to us when people don’t measure their progress. We ourselves measure everything so we have as clear of an understanding of our situation as it is possible.
If you don’t measure and keep track of it, you can not improve on it!
You need the data and the only way to get it, is by dedicating a portion of your time to it.
Measure everything you can measure, this is how you’ll uncover the things that work and those that don’t.
Having this type of information will allow you to make educated decisions and not shoot in the dark hoping something hits.
There are also side-benefits to seeing that the effort you’re putting in is actually showing results. Those small wins will motivate you to keep on pushing .
We recommend you create a calendar where you record your daily activity. This type of action will also make it easier for you the adopt your new plan as a habit since now once you’ve done your task you can check it off in your daily calendar.
Challenge yourself to keep at it as long as you can and it will add a new layer to your journey.
Step 12: Set monthly milestones
If at the beginning of this article we mentioned you should break the goal down into small steps, we recommend you create specific milestone for the end of the month.
They’ll act like mini-goals which when achieved got you just a bit closer to the big goal. That way you will have a deadline right ahead of you and it will make things a lot more easier for you.
The secret is dosing your progress in equal quantities as you progress.
Most of you have been educated in school and one of the things school fails to really teach you is self-discipline when it comes to achieving a task.
Remember when you were in school and had a project to complete? What did you do? Did you do a bit every single day or did you cram the entire thing in the last couple of hours a day before?
Life is not like school in that regard. Quality things take time, patience and discipline.
If you are unable to save 2,000 per month during the year, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to set aside 20,000 in December. That’s why you need these milestone.
They will also help you understand how well you are doing.
We advise you to pay attention to these milestone, make sure they are attainable, but big enough to have you push for them.
If they’re too big you will fail to achieve your monthly milestones and get demotivated to push forward.
If they’re too small, achieving them won’t get you closer to the goal, or it will take waaaay to long which increases the chances that a third party event will dismantle your project.
Achieving your goal is a strategic play.
There is no elevator to your dream life, you need to take the stars, one step at a time!
Step 13: Self-analyze your process
Now that you’ve been already running the experiment for a while and have aggregated some data, it’s time to self-analyze how you’re doing.
We recommend you do this once a month. You will start breaking your process apart and do the same with the results.
Grab a piece of paper and fold it twice, so you get 4 squares. The top 2 are about the process. On the left side write the things that didn’t work out as planned, the things you found most difficult or which yielded the least results.
Top right, we’ll analyze the super-star activities, the ones which got you the best results. List the things that made the biggest difference in the past week.
On the bottom side of the page, we ask you to rationalize why the items above impacted your life they way they did.and what actions you can take to improve or facilitate them better.
We know you don’t like exercises, because they remind you of the meaningless activities you’ve done in school, but these actually have an impact.
You will better understand yourself, you’ll understand the way you behave and what drives those behaviors as well as how to can better control your life.
Just because something is going well, it doesn’t mean that you are being as efficient as you can.
You’ll be surprised that small changes in the order of things in the day can radically change the outcome.
Step 14: Remove negative habits
The exercise mentioned at step 13, if done truthfully, will reveal the biggest setbacks in your efforts. It’s time to cut them them out or find a way reduce the negative impact they have.
This entire process is cyclical, meaning you push push push, then analyze, improve and repeat.
This type of mindset will serve you greatly no matter what goal you are approaching.
Very few people look at life this way and those who do get to enjoy it the most, because they don’t have to deal with all the bullshit that comes as side effects of bad habits.
It’s not enough to work hard if you’re other actions are keeping you from greatness.
Just to use the same example we mentioned earlier, it doesn’t matter if you hit the gym if you keep drinking 6 packs of beer and eating pizza all the time.
You can’t out-train a bad diet!
And this type of thinking will allow you to identify and pinpoint the things that are keeping you from achieving your potential.
Start hunting for them and find ways to diminish their dominance over your life. These negative habits will disguise themselves and seem important to who you are as an individual, until you break them apart and see them for what they truly are. Nobody likes to admit it, but smoking is actively ruining their lives. People watch hundreds of hours of reality tv without even enjoying it, but because they fail to realize the impact it has on their lives.
If you don’t remove the weeds in your garden, sooner or later they’ll take over your roses and you won’t be able to enjoy them.
Step 15: Just keep pushing for 50 days straight
This last step is a challenge we want you to take if you’re up for it.
After going through this list and identify a short-term goal, we want you to keep at it, daily, for 50 days straight. It’s up to you to plan your course of action, to identify what the goal is and make it happen. At the end of it all, you’re not doing it for us, you’re doing it for yourself.
50 days is long enough for you to go through the entire process, the face the struggles, to identify what works and what doesn’t and it’s something anyone who’s serious about this can do.
To be honest, if you’re unable to keep it running for at least 50 days, you don’t stand a chance when life will eventually hit you with the really difficult bits, so at least that way you’ll know what you’re made of.
This entire article can be applied even by individuals who’ve always had problems disciplining themselves and it’s currently the most valuable resource available on the topic.
It took us multiple weeks of research to break it down into this smooth system and you’re getting it for free just for being an Aluxer.
We recommend you come back to this article and go through it once in a while, because every time you come back you’ll find something you missed the previous time.
The information and game-plan is here, now it’s up to you what you do with it.
We’re curious to know Aluxers, are you up for the 50 Day Challenge? If Yes, please write “I’m IN” in the comment section.
