workout

Last week we talked about how, if something is too difficult, you may need to consider whether it really does align with your goals. If not, drop it! Why force yourself to do something you hate?

The danger, of course, is using this as an excuse not to do something we really need to do just because it’s hard. Maybe that activity really does align with your goals in life, with who you are and who you want to be — or more importantly, maybe it’s an absolutely necessary task to achieving the goal — but it’s still tough. That’s when you really need to be honest with yourself. If in the end it’s the right thing to be doing but it’s still HARD: Break it down.

Most discipline, it seems, fails because we move to far, too fast. Let’s go back to the workout routine. If that workout demands you get up at 5:30 in the morning and you’re a night owl, it’s going to take some adjusting! Start small and just practice the ‘getting up’ part. Just like you don’t build a muscle the first bench press you do, new habits take time and repetition. So start by waking up at 5:30am for a couple weeks, without the workout! Then, as you get used to rising early, you can add the first piece of exercise as you build “the muscle” to achieve the discipline. Breaking the process down gives you a chance to catch up with the goal.  As a result, you’ll likely find that discipline is less a sheer act of willpower, and more a process of behavior and alignment — not just with your goal, but with who you are and how you want to see yourself.