Why Discuss Discipline in the Context of Resistance Training

Most people know roughly how to get healthier through resistance training and cardiovascular training. Yet 70% of Americans don’t perform any physical activity on a weekly basis. I love detailed programming to build optimal health, but when I work with someone who lacks the discipline to build habits, the entire endeavour is doomed from the beginning. I could provide the best plan possible, yet if the client doesn’t show up due to a lack of discipline, my job is redundant. Discipline is the most important aspect of improving your health and therefore it requires detailed discussion.

What Is Discipline

Discipline is the ability to perform the actions you would like to perform and to avoid the actions that you are trying to avoid. Discipline is about being able to follow the plans that your higher self has set, rather than being pulled down to your momentary self, who will almost always seek the easy way out and make poor long-term decisions. Discipline is an inherently difficult way of being, it requires making multiple good decisions throughout your day, these everyday decisions are the ones that make up your life, making them crucial to your wellbeing.

Why Discipline Has Never Been So Important

Discipline has never been so important. Humans have built societies with such abundance that in many countries more people die from obesity than starvation. Humans in first world countries face a myriad of challenges from consumerism, technology addiction, achievement addiction, alcoholism, the list goes on. The pulls on our time and our attention have never been so strong and if we lack discipline we can easily fall into a life that lacks any fulfilment with very poor levels of wellbeing.

This doesn’t go to mention the changing nature of our work, with more and more jobs being taken over by AI, societies will need to be able to navigate having high levels of free time. The ability to not slide into a malaise of screens and junk food will be your ability to use discipline to build a life with high levels of wellbeing and connection to others.

Although AI is our future, our current economy requires discipline. Capitalism is a phenomenal system that has done wonders for our societies in terms of living standards. It is, however, a very competitive environment, not only is it competitive it also has a great deal of unfairness built in. This means that in order to build the life you want in our current environment, it will be important to be a disciplined individual to master the skills and crafts required to earn enough money to live how you would like to.

Discipline isn’t just about work, it is essential for making any intervention in your life, be it building your health, improving your relationships or learning to have fun. It’s about showing up for yourself on a daily basis in order to live how you would like to.

Using Discipline to Build a Beautiful Life, Not a Rigid Life

When we think about a disciplined person we often jump to someone in the military or a successful businessman. Although these roles often require high levels of discipline, these forms of discipline are not the only kind. What about the mother who chooses not to be on her phone in order to build a deeper connection with her child, or a father who makes sure he spends time with his children on the weekend rather than just watching television? It can be the person who takes a surf lesson once a week in order to not be so focused on work and professional success.

Discipline can be orientated towards any goal and doesn’t need to be associated with building a rigid life that lacks in joy and spontaneity, this association has given discipline a bad name.

If you are already a very disciplined person, then it is highly likely that you are disciplined when it comes to certain areas of your life and less so with other areas. Personally, when it comes to exercise, I find this so easy to stick to that I no longer consider myself disciplined here, yet performing administrative tasks is a completely different story where I need to ensure that I am disciplined. Building the ability to zoom out and see where you are lacking in discipline will be highly beneficial over the long term.

Building the life you want to live will require high levels of discipline. It is pretty rare that when people envisage their ideal lifestyle they do things like binge-watching Netflix all weekend or spending 5 hours a day on social media. Discipline will open the door to building your ideal lifestyle, having a positive impact on others around you and reaching professional goals.

From Difficult to An Ease of Being

At the start of this article I mentioned that discipline is a difficult way of being. Yet, I also noted that for me exercise no longer requires discipline. This is because once we have ingrained behaviours that initially required discipline, they become easy and enjoyable, not all the time, but 90% of the time. For me, this is the end goal, living in the way I want to live with an ease of being as the behaviours are both automatic but also enjoyable. There is no point in living a disciplined life that you hate, yes there will always be tasks you don’t want to do but the habitual actions that you repeat on a weekly basis should eventually become endeavours that bring you fulfilment while increasing your wellbeing.

Avoiding the Achievement Trap

Discipline often results in achievement. Achievement results in positive social validation which will result in more striving for achievement. I have nothing against achieving difficult goals, but try and avoid a life that is so monolithic that discipline is only used for career success. This is a trap that moves you away from thinking about the best way you want to live your life rather than just thinking about how much you want to achieve.

How to Become a Disciplined Person

Setting Outcome Goals

Discipline requires some form of goal setting. Without some idea of where you want to orientate yourself towards there can be no behaviour change in order to get there. That is why the first step to becoming a disciplined person is all about goal setting. Goals are made up of two parts: an outcome goal and a practice / behaviour goal. For example, an individual may want to improve their ability to concentrate at work, this will result in practice of turning their phone off while they are working. Most outcome goals have multiple practices that can help move towards the outcome.

Being Your Own Manager

If discipline is about doing what you say you’re going to do then you need to be very, very clear about what it is you’re going to do. You need to imagine that you are managing yourself, you are consistently considering the best way to approach challenges you face. Without this initial step there can be no way of evaluating if you are being a disciplined individual or not. Imagine I am trying to improve my health through physical exercise, I set this as my goal outcome. If I finish here I have no way of knowing if I am living in accordance with this goal. Let’s imagine that this goal results in two behaviours done on a weekly basis, an hour-long walk and a resistance training session. Once I have outlined what this goal currently looks like, then I am able to assess if I am being a disciplined individual when it relates to the goal of improving my health through physical exercise.

Start Small

The biggest problem when people try and become more disciplined individuals is they suddenly consider themselves to be robots that are completely able to do everything required to achieve a specific goal. This is never the case. Discipline, just like resistance training, is progressed slowly over time. Imagine an individual wants to become more efficient through waking up earlier, which will give them more time later in the day to do other activities they enjoy. A regular response to this goal would be to attempt to wake up at 5am. If you have been waking up at 8am, this is way too big a jump and it will almost certainly lead to failure. There is nothing wrong with 6:30am, it still opens up an hour and a half in your day! Starting small and progressing over time is a crucial aspect of becoming a disciplined person.

Evaluation / Assessment

It is crucial at some point in the week that you reflect on your behaviour. If there is no evaluation of how you have acted based on the practices / behaviours you have set yourself then you cannot be aware if you are being a disciplined individual or not. Evaluation is only for behaviours that you are currently attempting to make changes to, which should never be more than one or two at a time. Once behaviours become automatic they do not need to be evaluated regularly unless you become aware that you are consistently dropping away from key behaviours.