The idea of discipline never made sense to me.

The people around me would constantly preach about the importance of it. About doing the hard work even when you don’t feel like it and not listening to your feelings.

And for the longest time, I blindly accepted the path laid out infront of me.

I would try to force my way through life whil eignoring my feelings.

But after a while of running around trying to discipline myself – I made a realization.

I was in in the same place I’d always been. 

I didn’t get more things done, my life had not improved and I wasn’t even more disciplined.

And when I observed the people around me – something clicked.

The people who loved to talk about discipline were some of the least disciplined people I knew:

• They couldn’t focus and were constantly distracted

• They jumped from task to task giving up on one after the other

• They were never able to actually change their situation

By preaching about the importance of discipline, they missed the point where you actually get it.

Because if discipline was this mental switch you could just flick on -- why wasn't everyone disciplined?

Everyone seemed so obsessed with the idea of discipline. Yet no one understood what it actually was.

No more did they understand how to get it.

And so they stayed the same.

Preaching About Discipline Isn’t Discipline

Discipline is your key to greatness.

This isn’t a groundbreaking discovery. It’s common knowledge.

But most people have no idea what it actually is.

They lecture others on how you should do the hard work regardless of how you feel – but then completely fail to do so themselves.

By preaching about discipline (without knowing how to develop it) – they trap themselves in a double bind.

Because according to most peoples’ logic – to get discipline you need to do the things that already require discipline.

To become disciplined enough to clean your room you need to clean your room.

When people speak about discipline, they talk about the outer qualities. Waking up early, resisting temptations, perseverance, dedication etc.

But they ignore the root cause of these virtues.

They try to imitate the symptoms of discipline but of course fail.

If you saw your neighbour flying around outside your window, you wouldn't jump out and try to join him.

Yet when it comes to discipline, people do the exact same thing.

And they fall on their face every single time.

By only understanding the surface level of discipline, people fall into an eternal cycle of staying the same.

They don't realize that this way of thinking creates vicious circle of failure and self criticism.

A circle that all too often destroys peoples’ mental health and lives.

Because without discipline you can’t do the things that you really want to do – and you begin hating yourself for it.

By treating discipline as this mental switch you can just flick on, you start to bang your head against the wall until you begin to despise yourself.

• You loathe yourself because you can’t stick to your diet

• You never finish projects and start hammering yourself for it

• You never make a plan for your life an drift aimlessly in quiet desperation

And in an effort to escape your inner turmoil — you resort to pleasure and entertainment.

You start hiding from your dreams because you don’t want to face your inadequacies. 

Finally you begin denying your deepest desires, the dreams you had as a child and the ambition that still smolder in your heart.

And trust me when I say…

There is no worse way of living life.

I've fallen into this trap many times. And it is not fun.

In exactly the same way that you can't "just fly" — you can't "just be disciplined"

You need to talk to your neighbour, reverse engineer the cause of his flight and then try to replicate it.

You need to deconstruct discipline.

Decoding Discipline

“Without discipline, how can there be a true realization of an ideal?” - Miyamoto Musashi

You won’t make it without discipline.

It’s what everything in your life relies on.

It’s how you despite all your feelings not to chase your dreams – decide to do so anyways.

In other words, discipline is how you do the things you really want to do in life. 

I’m not talking about pleasures or entertainment. You don’t really want to do those things (it’s just your brain seeking dopamine).

What you really want to do is something much more mysterious.

The thing that’s always present underneath the surface of your ordinary reality:

• Feeling good and energetic

• Experiencing the world as you like

• Building and creating the things only you can create

When you’re completely alone with yourself, and you’ve thought about everything you could possibly think about – there is a silent tone behind it all.

A deep inclination to shape the Universe in a certain way.

And the way you turn that resolve into reality is through discipline.

It’s by crafting an everlasting resolve to chase your highest desire and avoid the lower ones.

• “To skip the cheesecake and enjoy a life of motivation and energy”

• “To put off watching television and start outlining that project”

• “To stop procrastinating and actually follow through on your plan for life”

It’s through developing discipline that you reject living life as "just going on".

It’s how you create the only path that will ever be fulfilling – your own.

Let me give you a metaphor.

When you learn or develop discipline, to cultivate it — you become capable of sailing the oceans of your life.

You’re no longer at the mercy of your emotions and lesser desires.

You can actually use your mental energy and fuel it into projects and experiences you care about.

And like the sailor uses the wind regardless of where it’s pointing, you use your feelings, thoughts and emotions no matter what they are.

And finally, you’re able to escape the vicious circle of failure and self criticism.

Let’s break down how.

The Most Complex Emotion

Discipline is complex.

It’s a quality composed of:

• Skills

• Emotions

• Willpower

And it’s the combination of them all that creates what we call discipline.

It is a skill you can develop through repetition, but it’s also an emotion you have to cultivate.

It’s the act of moving despite your feelings, but it’s also not a switch you can just flick on.

Discipline is a melody of many different tones and instruments.

One you need to master (if you want to achieve something in life)

So without further we do, let’s dive in.

Step 1: The Emotional Aspect

“He who has a strong enough why, can overcome almost any how” - Nietzsche 

Discipline is your higher desires ruling over your lower desires.

Because you can’t eliminate desire – unless you’re enlightened that is. In which case, why are you reading this? Go spend your life in a temple.

Fact is, everyone has desires, dreams and ambitions. 

And everyone is disciplined to those desires. 

The difference is that some people make their higher desires clear and actionable. While other people settle for their lower desires of pleasure and entertainment. 

The solution is to keep your higher desires top of mind. Because you will always follow your highest desire.

The thing is, if you don't keep it clear in your mind -- it will start to fade and a lower desire will take its place.

Let me give you an example.

When you’re watching that delicious cheesecake, your higher desire for metabolic health starts moving into the background real quick.

Your highest desire quickly becomes annihilating the cheesecake as your more meaningful goals start to fade.

But if you instead keep your highest goal clearl – the lesser desire will fade in its place.

You will start to see your daily actions as crossroads, one path leading towards your goals and one that doesn't.

The point of discipline isn’t to fight desire, it’s to orient yourself towards your highest possible desire so that you’re not swayed by your lower ones.

It's to make your desire to shape the Universe so abundantly clear, that you can’t help but to follow it.

You need a strong overwhelming desire for a higher goal. A northstar that will pull you forward.

But it needs to be genuine. Just setting any arbitrary goal like every new year’s resolutioner obviously doesn’t work. 

You can’t just tell yourself to make a million dollars and then go about your day. You need to get specific, to highlight the benefits and show the pains that will come from not reaching your goal. You need to become the salesman of your dreams.

Your goal needs to be something you feel is more important than anything you can do right now.

Because with a clear goal in mind, it becomes a thousand times easier to be disciplined.

And if you really have no clear reason for being disciplined — why would your mind create that emotion in you?

You would have to resort back to willpower and force yourself to act in accordance to some guru on the internet. But it will soon fade, because there is just no reason to go on.

You haven’t created a clear reason for you to get out of bed early, eat healthy and workout. And so your mind will eventually overthrow your imposed monarchy.

Think of the biohackers who are able to follow a 3 hour morning routine. They do it because they believe it will aid in their business goals.

A person without that goal would never be able to stick to such a routine, because there is no reason to.

What you need is an emotional democracy working towards a shared goal.

To help you visualize this… 

Imagine yourself as the captain of a ship.

The crewmates who raise the sails and operate the ship are your desires. Anger, Sadness, Hunger, Lust etc.

You can think of them as micro personalities that only want one thing. But they’re alive nonetheless.

If you try to force your will upon them, there will be mutiny. They will throw you overboard.

But if you make the goal grand and clear. If you show the benefits and rally their souls – they will start to work in your favor.

A quote that sums this up is one of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s:

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

Create an emotional democracy, not a monarchy – and you will achieve the tenacious force of discipline.

So how do you create such a vivid and clear goal?

Like this:

1. Pull out a pen and a piece of paper

2. Write down 25 of your curiosities

3. Find common patterns with them

4. Write down 10 problems in the world you care about

5. Connect the patterns to one of the problems

Now you have a purpose.

Then you break down your ultimate goal into projects, monthly goals and daily actions.

This will take you about 20 minutes, but might save you 20 years of your life.

Do this, and you will have taken the first and most important step towards discipline.

Step 2: The Mental Clarity Piece

Discipline isn’t set in stone.

If it was, you would be doomed to the life you’re living right now.

And even though it sounds absurd and cynical, most people act as if this was true. 

They “try” to just be disciplined which ironically prevents them from being so.

But in case I have to be the one to tell you this: you’re not doomed to any life except the one you choose.

Discipline is something you can cultivate through practice and repetition.

And the best way I’ve found to do this is with 2 practices.

1. Meditation

What do the most disciplined people on the planet all have in common?

They meditate.

Let’s break down why.

When you meditate you learn to watch your thoughts, not as a part of you, but as something that comes up like hiccups.

You learn not to identify with them, which is the only way you can have any sort of control over them.

This is very handy when you’re trying to be disciplined.

When thoughts and emotions come up and try to persuade you to stray from your path – you can simply laugh at them and let them go.

Meditation is a subject that deserves a letter of its own, but I will break down the jist of it here.

There are 3 levels of meditation:

1. Listening

2. Detachment

3. Listening of awareness

You don’t really have to be concerned with level 3 until you’ve meditated for a very long time.

But if you’re interested, you can do some research on your own.

For now, we’ll focus on level 1 and 2.

1. Listening

The first step is listening.

Close your eyes and just listen. Notice the general hum and buzz of the world around you. 

Don’t judge the sounds, there are no right or wrong sounds. 

Let your ears hear whatever your ears want to hear and let the sounds play with your eardrums

Then you can start to listen to the inner chatter inside your skull as if it were mere noise of the world.

After a while, you’ll notice that the outside world and the inside world melts together.

But we’re getting ahead of ourselves... 

2. Detachment

The second step after noticing your thoughts, is to let go of them.

Accept them, notice them but then detach and let them go as if they were clouds moving across a blue sky.

This part can be a bit tricky at first.

You will try to condemn your thoughts.

“Why did I think of that” “I shouldn’t be thinking of this during meditation”

But don’t.

Simply accept your thoughts as noise appearing in consciousness and let it pass.

Focus on the stillness and silence beneath the sounds and inner chatter.

2. Increase Your Dopamine Sensitivity

To make it easier to stay on your path, you can leverage your biology.

Dopamine is the molecule of motivation.

It gets you to move toward goals and desires, it doesn’t matter if they’re higher or lower.

The problem when you’re pursuing a higher desire is that it produces less dopamine in the moment than lower desires.

If you follow the lower desire of watching a couple of movies, you will get a lot of dopamine immediately.

If you decide to abstain from the movies and chase a project instead, you will get less dopamine right now.

By having your goal clearly in mind and by practicing meditation, you can steer off the path of lower desires.

But it will be a lot more difficult.

Because your mind will always try to follow the dopamine.

However, you can use it to your advantage by increasing your dopamine sensitivity.

This is also what is known as dopamine detoxing (even though I really don't like that name).

The key is to limit the amount of quick and cheap dopamine you’re exposed to:

• Movies and television shows

• Scrolling on social media

• Excessively tasty foods

• Amount of caffeine

• Obsessive social interactions

This will make dopamine work in your favor again.

Because the only way you will get dopamine is nowthrough pursuing your goals.

And so so you will.

Step 3: The Element Of The Will

Life will suck.

There is no getting around that.

You can’t have the good without the bad, discipline without suffering or the yin without the yang.

Because you wouldn’t know what one was without the other.

You can't hide from a fundamental part of life. 

You won’t always be able to sail your emotions and state of mind without any effort.

Even though finetuning your emotions is a big part of discipline – there is an element of will to it.

Think of it like this:

You can’t row your way through a stormy ocean. No matter how much you develop your body or endurance – your power is no match for the storm.

But you can’t sail a stormy ocean without lifting a finger either. It takes grit and tenacity to raise the sails, keep your hands on the wheel and tack.

In the case of discipline, you still need willpower to navigate and overcome resistance. To start doing the work, to resist sudden temptations and so on.

But in contrast to discipline, willpower is pretty straightforward to develop.

This is because your willpower is almost entirely isolated to one brain area (which is an incredible finding):

The Anterior Mid-Cingulate Cortex.

The name is not important, but know that there is an area in your brain that handles undesired action.

This is the key to developing willpower.

When yous timulate this brain area in people, they almost always explain their emotional state in a similar way:

“I feel like there is a storm coming, but that I can overcome it”

What’s more, studies have discovered that when people do things they don’t want to do –  this brain area grows.

And the larger it gets, the more willpower they have access to.

So how do you implement this?

It’s something Andrew Huberman likes to call: Micro sucks.

Everyday you should do small things that sucks just the slightest:

• Cold showers

• Write an extra page

• Read another chapter

• Perform an extra 10 minutes of cardio

• Do some stretches after your workouts

• Recap the material after a learning session

The key is that it’s something you don’t want to do.

You can do hard things, but if you feel like doing them – you won’t increase your willpower.

And so, the most effective way to increase your baseline willpower is to do shit that you don’t want to do.

Bonus tip:

Willpower has for a long time been thought of as a limited resource.

But a recent study found that willpower is an unlimited resource if you believe it is.

Let me paint you a picture.

Two groups of subjects were given impossible tasks (unsolvable puzzles).

Then they measured how long it took for the two groups to give up on the puzzle.

Afterwards, the two groups got some sugar and got at the puzzle once again.

The group of subjects who believed willpower was finite, didn’t experience any change in willpower.

But the group who believed willpower was infinite, tried to solve the puzzle for much longer.

So what does this mean to you?

First off, engrave in your mind that willpower is infinite.

It does get harder to use due to your brain gathering fatigue, but it is for all intents and purposes – infinite.

Secondly, use healthy sugar to your advantage.

Whenever you need to get some extra push for finishing a task, consume some:

• Honey

• Fruit

• Milk

This will also help your performance because your brain operates on sugar.

To summarize our journey...

This is how you develop discipline:

• Set a strong goal to pull your actions towards 

• Develop your mental control with meditation

• Use micro sucks and sugar to fuel your willpower

The combination is an everlasting resolve you can use to chase your highest desire and avoid the temptations along the way.

Because discipline isn’t something you just do…

It’s a complex puzzle you have to piece together using all your might and brainpower.

But when you do, you will unlock the power to actually do the things you want in this life.

To create, build experience and do the thing every human wants…

Enjoy life.

That’s it for this week.

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Enjoy the rest of your week.

-Simon