The 4 Habits Of Highly Disciplined People
Becoming disciplined isn’t hard if you know how to lay a good foundation.
After years of studying what made the worlds most disciplined people who they are I’ve identified four common habits among them.
These habits are:
Habit #1: The 3 G’s Of Willpower (Gym, Good Food, & Good Sleep)
Habit #2: Vitamin M: Meditation
Habit #3: Purpose Aka WHYpower
Habit #4: Maximizing motivation by Minimizing Stimulation
If you want to become disciplined, master these first and the rest will come easy.
The First Habit: The 3 G’s Of Willpower
What determines if your car’s engine runs clean?
What you put in it.
If you want a car to run clean, you need to give it high quality gasoline right?
If you want your mind to run clean, you need to do the same.
What gas is to a car, the 3 G’s are to the human body.
What are they?
- Good Food
- Good Sleep
- Gym
The First G: Good Food
My guys, do you think monks run on Taki’s and Four Lokos?
Do you think the U.S Navy gives seals KFC and donuts before they go on a mission?
No, obviously.
Why?
Because one of your brains first limiting factors is what you feed it, and if you’re feeding it trash the engine is going to run dirty and have suboptimal output right?
The solution?
Just eat the things your parents were telling you to eat as a kid.
- Fruits & Vegetables
- Lean meats & cheese.
- Whole grains & complex carbs.
In general if your ancestors could be found eating it 200 years ago, it’s probably healthy for you.
If you’re still looking for something more precise peep a dash diet, a pescatarian diet, or a Mediterranean diet as they’ve been established to be both sustainable long term and satisfying to eat.
The second G: Good Sleep
My brothers, why do you think the human body devotes literally a 3rd of it’s day to one activity?
BECAUSE IT’S INSANELY IMPORTANT.
When you get poor sleep you’re more irritable.
You literally feel like you’re in pain leading you to crave things that get you out of pain.
Your ability to process information becomes comparable to that of someone who’s drunk.
Do you want to walk through life like a drunk person?
Probably not.
So with that being said you’re going to want to start cleaning up your sleep, the easiest way I’ve found to do this is simply by keeping a sleep journal.
What’s a sleep journal?
A sleep journal is a little note sheet or notebook where you track the things you did during the day or evening prior, and then when you wake up you track how well you slept right?
So for me things like:
- Light
- Background Noise
- Heat
- Hunger/Thrist
- Stress
- Sleep irregularity 9pm one day 1Am the next etc.
All made my sleep quality go down so once I started addressing those my sleep quality slowly started to improve as did my ability to control myself.
Here’s a useful article from the national institutes of health if you want to identify some common causes of poor sleep.
The third G: Gym
Y’all its been established by some researchers at stanford that as you build physical muscle, you also build the muscle in your brain responsible for self control right?
That’s why if you haven’t noticed some of the most disciplined people in the world… they’re all ripped.
Goggins.
Hamza.
Hormozi.
Literally just look at their bodies.
When you practice consistently disciplining yourself in the gym, you naturally tend to start eating better to protect your gains.
The exhaustion usually helps you start sleeping better.
Then the boost in confidence helps you start feeling more positive as well, all of which boost your ability to control yourself.
This is actually where I got started on my discipline path as I built my gym habit first, then everything came naturally afterwards, I legit can’t recommend it enough my brothers.
Now that you understand the 3 G’s, let’s move to the next pillar.
The Second Habit: Vitamin M
Who are the most disciplined people in the world?
For me when I heard this question I immediately thought,
“Monks.”
Alright, what’s the NUMBER ONE thing you associate monks with?
Meditation.
Why do you think the worlds most disciplined group of people do something so long and so often?
Because it works.
You see for years I’d been meaning to start meditating right?
Thing is I absolutely hated it, I felt like I got no benefits from it, it was boring and painful, and I felt like I was no good at it because I could only focus for about 15 seconds right?
It wasn’t until I read the book The Willpower instinct & watched a video called how to meditate properly by Hamza that everything finally clicked.
So you brain has a little organ behind the skull called the prefrontal cortex right?
Homeboys sole job is to make you do things you don’t want to do — i.e. Work.
Orrrr
Make you STOP doing things you DO want to do — I.e. don’t buy that useless thing on amazon.
So the more your brain practices doing these two actions, the better it gets at doing them, kinda like building a muscle right?
Guess which activity is REALLY good at training your brain to do this?
Meditation.
Why?
During meditation you have to both make your brain do what it DOESN’T want to do, by meditating.
Then you also make it STOP doing what it WANTS to do, by forcing it to stop following thoughts down rabbit holes.
The result?
After meditating about 15 minutes per day for ~60 days, you begin to unlock monk like discipline.
From my own personal experience, after I hit the stride I literally felt like I was on adderall for 4 hours after meditating for 20 minutes in the morning, it’s insane.
If you want to learn exactly how to meditate correctly, peep this:
The Third Habit: Whypower
Let me tell you a story.
A few years back I’d been trying to get into the gym consistently but I failed over and over because I honestly couldn’t care about getting into the gym.
Why?
I knew it was healthy for me but my health was fine I’d start doing it when I was older.
Then one day I caught my girlfriend cheating on me and so I called up my dad and asked him for advice right?
He said,
“son, it’s time for you to go to the gym.”
And ever since that happened I’ve never skipped a gym day.
Why?
Because I intimately associate laziness, and being out of shape with getting cheated on.
Is it the most healthy approach?
Nope.
Did it get me into the best shape of my life, and is it keeping me there?
Yep.
Point being is, once I got a strong WHY I stopped listening to all the fake excuses I’d come up with.
David Goggins’ why was to take care of his family as it was his last chance to become a Seal, after he became a seal his why was to honor his fellow soliders.
Hamza’s why was because he hated his life so much he’d literally rather die than continue his life the way it was.
Once you know your why, it will pull you towards whatever goal you have and will punch through whatever excuses you come up with.
The fourth habit: Maximizing Motivation By Minimizing Stimulation
When I was reading the book dopamine nation by Dr.Anna Lembke I learned a pretty startling fact.
The MORE stimulation you get, the more you NEED to maintain the same level of stimulation and arousal in the future.
Translation?
The more you consume, the harder it is to become motivated to go do anything… at all… period.
Pleasure is literally making you so depressed you can’t motivate yourself to do anything.
Think about it.
If you just ate a huge dinner, are you going to want to go out and hunt for your dinner tomorrow?
No.
If you just scrolled a ton of instagram, are you going to want to go out and make new friends?
No.
Why?
When you’re getting satisfaction from artificial stimulation, you reduce your biological drives to get the REAL VERSION.
And with no biological drive you have NO MOTIVATION to become disciplined.
Discipline to me is just motivation matured over time, so no seed of motivation means no eventual tree of discipline.
Porn makes you lose desire to go find a girlfriend, you’re already satisfied.
Social media makes you lose desire to go find friends, you’re already satisfied.
Drugs make you lose desire to go find solutions to your problems, you’re already satisfied.
The worlds most disciplined people don’t stimulate themselves.
They MINIMIZE their stimulation so they can channel ALL of their energy to one thing.
Their goals, or solving their problems.
The Habits Of Highly Disciplined People In A Nutshell
Becoming disciplined isn’t hard if you know how to lay a good foundation.
After years of studying what made the worlds most disciplined people who they are I’ve identified four common habits among them.
These habits are:
Habit #1: The 3 G’s Of Willpower (Gym, Good Food, & Good Sleep)
Habit #2: Vitamin M: Meditation
Habit #3: Purpose Aka WHYpower
Habit #4: Maximizing motivation by Minimizing Stimulation
If you want to become disciplined, master these first and the rest will come easy.
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