Day 20 – Self-Disipline
Another day, another lesson. Hopefully, you are tired, as my lesson yesterday made you stay up all night signing up to an Ultra-marathon in Belize or thinking through the logistics of selling your car and moving to Goa to sell necklaces.
Today I need to talk about the less fun but equally vital element of living high-performance lifestyle; Self-discipline.
Self-discipline is a pattern of behaviour where you actively choose to do what you know you should do rather than what you want to do. This inner power pushes you to get out of bed to an Ice bath at 5 am rather than sleep in. (hey… I tried that once and will never do it again… so Kudos to those of you deep into that Wim Hoff-esq life!). Self-discipline is the assertion of willpower over more basic desires and is synonymous with self-control.
You and no one but YOU control your decisions on how you do things. As with losing weight or giving up smoking, you must be sincere and honest to yourself when making a lifestyle change decision. If you are working out as you want to tone up a little bit, it just won’t be as effective as when you are passionately committed to living a healthy, active and athletic life. Learning self-discipline is a tad redundant if you set your sites too low.
Building Rituals
The more you act with self-discipline, the more habitual a behaviour it becomes. Make enough good choices that they build into habits. Build enough good habits that they start becoming part of your day-to-day lifestyle and even form your identity of who you are as a person. This is the secret to transforming your well-being & fitness and living a high-performance lifestyle.
To illustrate, let’s take sleep as an example. Sleep is when the brain, immune system and muscles repair and rebuild. If you have a problem falling asleep, then building a ‘calming down’ sleep ritual before bedtime can be transformative.
For example, turn your phone off and leave it in another room, then have a shower and get into bed at the same time every night. This may sound boring, but it helps to calm the mind, and it will directly help your wellness and performance at work or play the next day. When I work with clients with very international and/or hedonistic lifestyles, this simple ritual does wonders for their headspace and reduces stress & anxiety. The crazier and more chaotic your life is, the more rituals and routines about sleeping and eating will help ground you.
Stoicism
Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy of life, made most famous by Seneca’s collection of essays, ‘Letters from a Stoic.” In the last 2000 years, it has evolved, and there are different interpretations and versions, but it’s essentially concerned with providing a methodology for being a good moral person and leading a good moral life. This is best achieved by cultivating the four virtues of wisdom, justice, courage and temperance (with temperance subdivided into self-control, discipline and modesty).
Acting with stoicism is sometimes confused with being Dr Spock-esqe unemotional and slightly detached. It is more accurate to see Stoicism as just being disciplined over one’s own emotions and actions.
Marcus Aurelius discusses this in his classic “Meditations” book, as does Epictetus in his rather lengthy but rewarding “Discourses”. Both see Stocic behaviour as a recipe for a good, moral life. They are both worth reading.