Imagine if, whenever you resolved to make some change, you followed through and made it. Think how cool life would be. It would be like playing the game of life with godmode enabled. You could basically do anything- anything physically possible, at least. On New Years, we traditionally make some New Years Resolutions. What resolutions have you made in the past, and how often were you able to follow through on them? What would your life be like right now if you had successfully kept all your New Years Resolutions throughout the years? I was never very good at resolutions of any kind, New Years or otherwise, until I learned the basic mechanics of how self-discipline works. Self-discipline is the absolute single most important key to keeping New Years Resolutions. In this article, I'll teach you what I learned about the mechanics of self-discipline and how to apply it to keeping those New Years Resolutions.
This isn't an article on how to lose weight overnight. It's not an article on how to quit smoking overnight. Neither is it an article on how to quit drinking, go on more dates, watch less TV, or spend less time on the internet. This is an article about how to train the muscle which you would use to do any of those things, the muscle of self-discipline. There is no magic pill, no magic words you can utter to magically gain infinite self-discipline. Like any muscle, self-discipline must be trained gradually. You know what would happen if you drank a magic potion that made all your muscles bigger overnight? Your skin would rip open, that's what, because it wouldn't be able to keep up. Growth takes time and effort, but the good news is that you can derive fun and profit from that effort.
FIRST STEP: HOW MUCH SELF-DISCIPLINE DO YOU HAVE?
If a weight lifter tries to pick up a weight which is five times what he can lift, it won't do him any good. He may even get a hernia, if he keeps trying hard enough. Neither will he derive any real benefit from lifting a weight that is too small. At any given point, your muscles have a certain limit how much work they can do. The whole point of weight lifting is to increase that limit. It's the same way with self-discipline, except instead of weights, the goal is New Years Resolutions.
I don't know how much self-discipline you have, so instead I'll talk about an imaginary person, Joe, for the sake of illustration. Joe is 20 pounds overweight and on New Years, he makes a resolution to lose those pounds. He starts a rigorous diet and exercise routine, keeps at it for a week, and then completely gives up. His self-discipline was not strong enough to handle the New Years Resolution which he made for himself.
Was Joe's work in vain? No, his efforts have shone a light on the limit of his self-discipline. With that particular diet and exercise regime he chose, he can go one week. Good.
SECOND STEP: SLOWLY INCREASE THE DEMAND
Joe might think of his effort as a failure, since he gave up after only a week. Thinking of an aborted New Years Resolution as a failure would be like a weight lifter getting upset at his failure to lift a big weight, and giving up weightlifting forever. Joe should think of his one-week stint as a good workout. After a good workout, what do you do? You rest, you recover, and you increase the weight a little. Joe should look at his one week attempt at dieting and exercising as a huge success, he went in and he lifted the biggest weight (one week) as he could. Joe should rest for awhile, and as soon as he feels ready, he should go do it again, but this time, aim for eight days.
Gradually increase how much you can do in a "stint". This is like gradually increasing weight at the gym. Your self-discipline will gradually strengthen to handle the gradually increasing demand you put upon it. You know that you can go X number of days, so try to push it forward to X+1 days.
Sometimes, it might seem like progress goes backwards. That's totally natural. Maybe you'll keep the resolution for ten days, and then take a break, and then you can only keep it for nine days. It's okay. This happens to weightlifters all the time. Just keep at it and in time, your self-discipline will grow and you'll get better and better at keeping New Years Resolutions.
STEP THREE: ENJOY THE RESULTS
So you've gone a week following your resolution, and then you quit. And then, you went eight days keeping the resolution, before you had to quit again. You rested, and then you went for ten days. And the next interval was fifteen days. Meanwhile, the results have been accumulating. If the New Years Resolution was a new diet, you are becoming more healthy and sexy. If the New Years Resolution was to quit some addictive habit, the habit is slowly weakening its hold, and you're suffering fewer of its side effects. Just because you've been taking breaks after each stretch of keeping the resolution, that doesn't mean you lost all the positive results.
Results have a way of sneaking up on you. When you're lifting weights, the change is so gradual that if you look in the mirror every day, you might never notice a difference. But compare a photo of yourself after a month of working out, and a photo before that month, and the difference is clear. One of the benefits of thinking of self-discipline as a muscle, is that you have something very tangible and measurable that you can watch improving-- your self-discipline. You can see, by the checkmarks on your calendar or whatever, how your self-discipline is becoming stronger. This is very nice when the original intended results are subtle and hard to see.
STEP THREE-POINT-FIVE: HAVE FUN
You should be having fun with your New Years Resolution. When you view it as a way of training your self-discipline, the most difficult part of the Resolution dissolves: the part which says you have to keep going and going, forever. The biggest misconception about New Years Resolutions is that you must keep them down to the very day, if you miss one day you fail the Resolution. Actually, this is more of an excuse for people to quit the Resolution altogether: "whoops, I missed a day, guess I have no choice but to drop the resolution and start watching eight hours of TV again!"
When you view your New Year Resolution as reps at the gym, you no longer have the impossible pressure of an impossible task. If you can't keep the resolution today, that's okay, you'll just start a new set after resting. With the pressure off, you can have lots of fun with the resolution. A good resolution should be expanding your reality, you should be learning as you go: learning about new kinds of food (if you're dieting); learning about your body (if you're exercising); learning about the things you can do with your free time (if you're giving up a time-consuming addiction). Be like a child, explore your world and have fun.
STEP FOUR: COMPLETE THE RESOLUTION
One of the interesting things about self-discipline training is that eventually, your self-discipline will get so strong that you can keep doing your Resolution indefinitely, or as long as you feel. Maybe your first stretch will be only one week long. You rest, and then make it eight days. Rest again and keep the resolution for eleven days, and then thirteen days, and then suddenly it "clicks", it locks in and you're excited to find you can keep it up as long as you want.
When that happens, if you still want to train your self-discipline further, you'll need to start some new New Years Resolution, harder than the previous one. It's like you've gained a level and moved on to a harder difficulty rating.
Why would you want to keep training your self-discipline even further? Let's see...
ADVANTAGES OF HIGH SELF-DISCIPLINE
When you have high self-discipline, there's basically nothing you can't do. As long as it doesn't violate the laws of physics, it's within your power. Let's say Joe has lost his 20 pounds and gotten some self-discipline from his New Years Resolution to diet and exercise. And now, he wants a sixpack. Getting a sixpack means radically improving his diet and doing some serious exercise. It's a much harder goal than the original goal to lose 20 pounds. But it's physically possible. All he has to do is put in his time at the gym and follow a diet meticulously. Even without a gym, he could pull it off with more creative exercising. So what could possibly stop Joe from getting his six pack? The only person who can stop him is himself.
When your self-discipline gets higher, you can begin taking Right Action: doing what you know you gotta do to accomplish what you wanna accomplish. How would you like to change your life right now? Whatever your answer, there's something you could do right this instant to move toward that goal. The only thing that's possibly stopping you is, not enough self-discipline. Train that self-discipline and go toward what you want and what you deserve.
Here are some other articles I've created which will help you on your journey to New Years Resolution Success.
Training Self-Discipline. This article is pure gold. In it, you can read even more about self-discipline and some of the aspects involved in training and having self-discipline.
30-Day Workout-A-Day Challenge Completed! Read my notes after I went thirty days working out every single day. Was it a New Years Resolution? No, it was a "no particular special occasion, I just wanna get sexier" Resolution. I couldn't have done it if I'd tried it one year ago, before I understood self-discipline and before I had trained my self-discipline.
The French Revolution: French In 30 Days. I would have quit this project around day 3 or 4 if I hadn't been training my self-discipline pretty much constantly during the year prior. There have even been days where I thought about giving it up, but my sheer self-discipline let me plow through those "danger days". The Revolution includes daily updates every day, so you can get an idea about how I was going about it, the things motivating and demotivating me along the way.
My Time In The Seduction Community. I was 23 and had no clue how to get a girlfriend or even a kiss. Then I decided, no! I am not accepting a lonely fate! I have too much love to give to the world, I can't be shut out! Read about my journey out of the darkness of involuntary celibacy. It was a journey which trained both self-discipline and courage.
Five Ways To Be Better At Math. Are you one of those people who has always sucked at math? Then, good! You've got a nice, big barbell you can use to train your self-discipline when you've gotten through some easier resolutions. Resolve to be better at math, and read this article to get some first step ideas.
This isn't an article on how to lose weight overnight. It's not an article on how to quit smoking overnight. Neither is it an article on how to quit drinking, go on more dates, watch less TV, or spend less time on the internet. This is an article about how to train the muscle which you would use to do any of those things, the muscle of self-discipline. There is no magic pill, no magic words you can utter to magically gain infinite self-discipline. Like any muscle, self-discipline must be trained gradually. You know what would happen if you drank a magic potion that made all your muscles bigger overnight? Your skin would rip open, that's what, because it wouldn't be able to keep up. Growth takes time and effort, but the good news is that you can derive fun and profit from that effort.
FIRST STEP: HOW MUCH SELF-DISCIPLINE DO YOU HAVE?
If a weight lifter tries to pick up a weight which is five times what he can lift, it won't do him any good. He may even get a hernia, if he keeps trying hard enough. Neither will he derive any real benefit from lifting a weight that is too small. At any given point, your muscles have a certain limit how much work they can do. The whole point of weight lifting is to increase that limit. It's the same way with self-discipline, except instead of weights, the goal is New Years Resolutions.
I don't know how much self-discipline you have, so instead I'll talk about an imaginary person, Joe, for the sake of illustration. Joe is 20 pounds overweight and on New Years, he makes a resolution to lose those pounds. He starts a rigorous diet and exercise routine, keeps at it for a week, and then completely gives up. His self-discipline was not strong enough to handle the New Years Resolution which he made for himself.
Was Joe's work in vain? No, his efforts have shone a light on the limit of his self-discipline. With that particular diet and exercise regime he chose, he can go one week. Good.
SECOND STEP: SLOWLY INCREASE THE DEMAND
Joe might think of his effort as a failure, since he gave up after only a week. Thinking of an aborted New Years Resolution as a failure would be like a weight lifter getting upset at his failure to lift a big weight, and giving up weightlifting forever. Joe should think of his one-week stint as a good workout. After a good workout, what do you do? You rest, you recover, and you increase the weight a little. Joe should look at his one week attempt at dieting and exercising as a huge success, he went in and he lifted the biggest weight (one week) as he could. Joe should rest for awhile, and as soon as he feels ready, he should go do it again, but this time, aim for eight days.
Gradually increase how much you can do in a "stint". This is like gradually increasing weight at the gym. Your self-discipline will gradually strengthen to handle the gradually increasing demand you put upon it. You know that you can go X number of days, so try to push it forward to X+1 days.
Sometimes, it might seem like progress goes backwards. That's totally natural. Maybe you'll keep the resolution for ten days, and then take a break, and then you can only keep it for nine days. It's okay. This happens to weightlifters all the time. Just keep at it and in time, your self-discipline will grow and you'll get better and better at keeping New Years Resolutions.
STEP THREE: ENJOY THE RESULTS
So you've gone a week following your resolution, and then you quit. And then, you went eight days keeping the resolution, before you had to quit again. You rested, and then you went for ten days. And the next interval was fifteen days. Meanwhile, the results have been accumulating. If the New Years Resolution was a new diet, you are becoming more healthy and sexy. If the New Years Resolution was to quit some addictive habit, the habit is slowly weakening its hold, and you're suffering fewer of its side effects. Just because you've been taking breaks after each stretch of keeping the resolution, that doesn't mean you lost all the positive results.
Results have a way of sneaking up on you. When you're lifting weights, the change is so gradual that if you look in the mirror every day, you might never notice a difference. But compare a photo of yourself after a month of working out, and a photo before that month, and the difference is clear. One of the benefits of thinking of self-discipline as a muscle, is that you have something very tangible and measurable that you can watch improving-- your self-discipline. You can see, by the checkmarks on your calendar or whatever, how your self-discipline is becoming stronger. This is very nice when the original intended results are subtle and hard to see.
STEP THREE-POINT-FIVE: HAVE FUN
You should be having fun with your New Years Resolution. When you view it as a way of training your self-discipline, the most difficult part of the Resolution dissolves: the part which says you have to keep going and going, forever. The biggest misconception about New Years Resolutions is that you must keep them down to the very day, if you miss one day you fail the Resolution. Actually, this is more of an excuse for people to quit the Resolution altogether: "whoops, I missed a day, guess I have no choice but to drop the resolution and start watching eight hours of TV again!"
When you view your New Year Resolution as reps at the gym, you no longer have the impossible pressure of an impossible task. If you can't keep the resolution today, that's okay, you'll just start a new set after resting. With the pressure off, you can have lots of fun with the resolution. A good resolution should be expanding your reality, you should be learning as you go: learning about new kinds of food (if you're dieting); learning about your body (if you're exercising); learning about the things you can do with your free time (if you're giving up a time-consuming addiction). Be like a child, explore your world and have fun.
STEP FOUR: COMPLETE THE RESOLUTION
One of the interesting things about self-discipline training is that eventually, your self-discipline will get so strong that you can keep doing your Resolution indefinitely, or as long as you feel. Maybe your first stretch will be only one week long. You rest, and then make it eight days. Rest again and keep the resolution for eleven days, and then thirteen days, and then suddenly it "clicks", it locks in and you're excited to find you can keep it up as long as you want.
When that happens, if you still want to train your self-discipline further, you'll need to start some new New Years Resolution, harder than the previous one. It's like you've gained a level and moved on to a harder difficulty rating.
Why would you want to keep training your self-discipline even further? Let's see...
ADVANTAGES OF HIGH SELF-DISCIPLINE
When you have high self-discipline, there's basically nothing you can't do. As long as it doesn't violate the laws of physics, it's within your power. Let's say Joe has lost his 20 pounds and gotten some self-discipline from his New Years Resolution to diet and exercise. And now, he wants a sixpack. Getting a sixpack means radically improving his diet and doing some serious exercise. It's a much harder goal than the original goal to lose 20 pounds. But it's physically possible. All he has to do is put in his time at the gym and follow a diet meticulously. Even without a gym, he could pull it off with more creative exercising. So what could possibly stop Joe from getting his six pack? The only person who can stop him is himself.
When your self-discipline gets higher, you can begin taking Right Action: doing what you know you gotta do to accomplish what you wanna accomplish. How would you like to change your life right now? Whatever your answer, there's something you could do right this instant to move toward that goal. The only thing that's possibly stopping you is, not enough self-discipline. Train that self-discipline and go toward what you want and what you deserve.
Here are some other articles I've created which will help you on your journey to New Years Resolution Success.
Training Self-Discipline. This article is pure gold. In it, you can read even more about self-discipline and some of the aspects involved in training and having self-discipline.
30-Day Workout-A-Day Challenge Completed! Read my notes after I went thirty days working out every single day. Was it a New Years Resolution? No, it was a "no particular special occasion, I just wanna get sexier" Resolution. I couldn't have done it if I'd tried it one year ago, before I understood self-discipline and before I had trained my self-discipline.
The French Revolution: French In 30 Days. I would have quit this project around day 3 or 4 if I hadn't been training my self-discipline pretty much constantly during the year prior. There have even been days where I thought about giving it up, but my sheer self-discipline let me plow through those "danger days". The Revolution includes daily updates every day, so you can get an idea about how I was going about it, the things motivating and demotivating me along the way.
My Time In The Seduction Community. I was 23 and had no clue how to get a girlfriend or even a kiss. Then I decided, no! I am not accepting a lonely fate! I have too much love to give to the world, I can't be shut out! Read about my journey out of the darkness of involuntary celibacy. It was a journey which trained both self-discipline and courage.
Five Ways To Be Better At Math. Are you one of those people who has always sucked at math? Then, good! You've got a nice, big barbell you can use to train your self-discipline when you've gotten through some easier resolutions. Resolve to be better at math, and read this article to get some first step ideas.
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