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How to keep to your daily discipline routine each day!

It’s OK to let yourself down and to forgive yourself with discipline failure and don’t beat yourself up about it. It’s OK to mess up, forgive yourself and acknowledge that from here on. From now on, you’re going to make small incremental changes to your routine training.

If you are high in stress and low in dealing with the area of self-discipline and routine then the way to move forward is incrementally and the trick is actually to do one little thing, almost as if you were testing yourself in a self-coaching way. By testing this one little thing and then giving yourself feedback to the positive outcome of that one little thing, that sets up a feedback loop within your own mind, where you have now done this one little thing which was within your comfort zone.

And then all of a sudden you had mental success because you didn’t go lunging into it. You took a small little piece all on its own and you had success. You have to confirm and acknowledge the success of that small thing you did, which I have outlined below. Then you take that forward knowing you can do this well because you just did it. Then you take the same thing to the next incremental action and confirm you had success with that too. And that’s the way you move forward in small incremental or tiny footsteps at a time.

Jumping straight in

Taking large gulps may very well be futile for you because of the way you are set up and structured and once you’ve done one little thing or achieved one little thing, you can then build on that and introduce the same to two little things and 3 little things and then maybe take a greater piece next time. So, we’ll start with one little thing.

Look at what you need to improve your discipline with and set one micro goal, so now think of that goal, that thing you procrastinate over or can’t do or won’t do, or it just feels too much. Bring it to mind. And now set that goal in place to do a bit of it only.

That was the first task. You’ve now set it in place to do it.

Now bring to mind a time and a day or a place. Now what we’re going to do is anchor it. It sounds very technical and dramatic, but it’s not. We’re going to anchor this now and create a simple habit in a way that works positively and beneficially for you and how you anchor this habit is confirm the time and the day you will do it, and think of that now, put it in place, confirm it and it’s now done.

Now you’ve made the decision to do that one thing and you’ve picked the time, place and date. That could be this evening or tomorrow or next week, but it’s now in place. Now you need a visual reminder. So right now, get a post it note or an alarm or a tracking app or whatever it is to keep it visible. Or a piece of paper and pin it to the wall because we’re keeping it to one increment only.

This is one little tiny act to get you to do this one little thing. And when you have completed the thing, this loop is completed, you then know you can do it. And it was easy. If you can’t do this simple thing, then there is no hope for any of us. You might as well just lie down and take your last breath and this is my way of saying here is a kick up the bum!

Now look at if there’s anything that could stop this from happening that you can eliminate, such as friction, such as making sure you’ve got the equipment or the tools or the gym clothes ready or the whatever it is, that you need to reach for, then it becomes another task or chore. Get that ready in advance as well.

So now you’ve eliminated friction because you’ve looked at what could get in the way of the success of this one little thing, this one small incremental task or chore you ae training yourself to do.

While motivation comes and goes, investing in a structured life coaching course provides the exact framework you need to build unbreakable habits and stay accountable every single day.

Confirmation To Yourself!

Now confirm to yourself by making it sacred. Treat, it has a non-negotiable, no argument appointment with your future self, to night, this evening, tomorrow morning, next week. Whatever that time or date and place that you chose, make it sacred and confirm it.

What we’re doing here is creating a small little map and the fact that you’re reading this suggests that the math involved in this issue you have is that you have difficulty with doing even the smallest things at times, this is why your internal map is important.

And now, next reward the effort not the outcome, just reward yourself with a little something. Just run through the motions. It could be a coffee or a bite to eat. However daft, pointless and silly you feel, do it anyway because it feeds the inner loop. That encourages more motivation and more of a need to do the necessary to achieve the same outcome later, because sometimes we do things well and we don’t know why we do them.

We’re all driven by internal loops, rewards and consequences. Celebrate it and treat yourself and acknowledge to yourself not that you can do this, but yes, I have done this and I am doing it. Thank yourself. Thank you, I’m doing this!

Next is self-forgiving. Forgive yourself and forgive the slips and the errors, and just don’t skip it twice, just reset it quickly. No mythering, just do it, forgiveness acknowledged. Completed.

Discipline is a muscle!

It really is like a mind memory muscle that needs feeding and growing. And if you’re trying to achieve something or build something meaningful, such as a practise or a business, a deeper relationship with someone or yourself or health or complete a chore. Daily discipline is your quiet internal power!

Start. Very small and you will have success very quickly. And when people think about discipline, they are often in imagining pushing a massive weight up the hill, forcing against intensity early morning runs or cold showers or huge long checklists but consistency in small increments beats the intensity race INSIDE YOURSELF.

If something takes one hour and upon waking, do it for one minute and acknowledge the above and confirm you did one minute. So tomorrow you can do two minutes and so on. Keep it minimalistic and no, it’s not being lazy. You could call it strategic minimalism, almost cleverness in reverse that you’re having success by doing the very thing you didn’t want to do in tiny little increments.

Confucius say the man who moved the mountain began by carrying away small stones first!

And here’s the best tip of the whole article, do the very thing you don’t want to do in the smallest increment that you can do it in. Do it so small that you can just hardly see it, but enough that you can’t say no, just take a sliver off it and if you can’t do that. Which tells me you can do it. Take the minute sliver and then confirm, that you’ve just done it.

There is such a thing called decision fatigue and you might be suffering from that decision fatigue. So, by creating a ritual, you’re not waiting for the perfect or special time, you’re just aligning, integrating it with your existing current rhythm. You align with it instead of fighting it because you’ve taken a sliver or an increment off the very thing you didn’t want to do or that which you struggle with. And then you’re confirming you’re doing it, in part at least!

One of the most important things in all of this is that you must celebrate the effort. Play a game with yourself, fool yourself, trick yourself, whatever it takes. There’s no judge. No one’s watching. Just an increment, just a sliver and then celebrate your efforts, not just the outcome!

Positive self-reinforcement makes your habits sticky.

For example, if your workout wasn’t right, it wasn’t perfect or your writing felt a bit clunky or it wasn’t hitting the spot, celebrate it anyway. Celebrate that you showed up to do it. This internal validation builds your confidence and new habits around incremental progress as opposed to great big lump sum charging in grasping all in one go to get the thing done, that which you need to get done!

Your golden rule

One missed chore, task or event in a day is fine but never miss it twice, or it becomes a habit in the negative. You don’t want the very thing, you want to get away from, so don’t spiral it into negative self-talk or guilt or regret or disappointment. Just shrug yourself and reset it back to square one without the usual huffing and puffing. Just correction and thank yourself for correcting it and seeing it instead of fighting it and instead of criticising it, thank yourself for seeing it. Thank yourself!

Your quiet power

There is a quiet power lurking inside you. It’s inside all that resistance and huffing and puffing and negativity that you throw around because you have to force yourself to do something that you don’t want to do or can’t do, and that quiet power, is to doing what you said you would do when there’s no one there to see you, because it builds your own inner trust about yourself in small increments, and everything else will grow from that clarity, clearness, confidence, and resilience bit by bit in increments.

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