How to Develop Self Discipline (Without Trying Too Hard)

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If you read my first post on how to develop self discipline without trying too hard through inner work, and now are ready for some action — you are in the right place!

You are halfway through! How exciting!

We already learned a couple of things:

that self-discipline is both self-love and self-respect;
how important self-talk is when it comes to improving your self-discipline;
that things you procrastinate with are the first and most important things you should be doing;
that you are on your own in this journey.

If you did it right and took your time to adopt the new beneficial beliefs above, you now have a whole new mindset.

And now when the hardest part is over, it’s time to put this new mindset into practice.

If you didn’t get to check out my first post on how to develop self discipline, I highly recommend starting with it:

Revealed: Self Discipline is Self Love

The inner work required to make self discipline feel easy and effortless is the most crucial part in mastering any aspect of your life is the mindset. That’s exactly what we are expanding on in that post.

Alright, let’s get into it?

Table of Contents

⚽️ How to Develop Self Discipline — Active steps

This post is all about how to develop self discipline without trying too hard.

⚽️ How to Develop Self Discipline — Active steps

In the following chapter I’m going to demonstrate ways on how to develop self discilpine.

Treat the following steps as new habits you are going to work on from now on.

Start with one habit, and once you feel comfortable with adding another, go ahead!

What I love about these tips is that none of them actually feel like self-discipline.

They feel more like some fun or self-soothing practices that are rather enjoyable than anything else.

So don’t rush, don’t push yourself too hard, and just show up every day.

Cool fact: if you do something uncomfortable, even if it’s something very small — like cold showers or social media detox — every day for a long time, you’ll get used to that feeling of disciplining yourself. And all the other tasks, even big, will come much easier. It’s a self discipline muscle!

And remember, training any muscle takes time, so go slowly. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

The results won’t take long. 🙂

🎯 Set a goal exciting enough to motivate you & focus on your “why” (+ bonus trick)

The key word is exciting.

If you can figure one out — amazing!

But if your goal fails to give you a magic kick, it means that it’s not important enough for you.

I got you.🙂

What I do in this situation, is trick my brain to focus on another very exciting goal instead, but I choose the one that has my initial goal as a transition point.

I use my “WHY”.

Let me explain.

Imagine a situation. Let’s say, I am trying to lose weight, tone up my body, and get into my best physical shape possible.

I’ve been trying to do it for YEARS. It would be on and off, I would get closer and then get distracted or unmotivated and lose the result, and all over again. Overall, I am right now at the same point where I started.

Initially, I’ve set looking good, being confident, and feeling attractive as a goal.

Clearly, that goal never made me excited enough because I am attractive enough even in my current body shape. I was frustrated but still wanted to figure out a way to accomplish my goal of getting in my best shape.

I was only able to develop and maintain the habit of working out every day successfully once I decided that I wanted to start a YouTube channel, and for THAT I wanted to be in my best shape — to be confident on camera and so on.

This is my “why I want to be in my best physical shape”.

By distracting myself from the initial goal which I didn’t see as stimulating enough, and focusing on a more fun bigger goal (that in my vision requires me to be in my best physical shape) I managed to finally break through this endless cycle.

As a result, I started working out every day and counting calories, which made me tone up a lot and get much closer to my initial goal.

Another example: You want to get rid of social anxiety and become confident. You could set a goal to become a TED Talk speaker to network and hang out with other successful speakers. For that you not only have to have something interesting to say, you would also want to work on your speaking skills.

There is another trick you use: you can focus on others (I know a few people who find it the most effective motivational hack).

For example, you might want to be successful for your partner because they chose you, and you want them to enjoy their choice every day.

Or you might want to achieve this or that goal for your future kids so they have what you’ve never had, or so they are proud of their parents.

Self discipline exercises: Write down your goal and your “why”. Review three times a day to remind yourself of the reason you are working so hard.

📝 Start journaling as a habit

Journaling is one of the best everyday habits I have ever implemented.

No matter what it is you are working on — calming anxiety, self-discovery, setting goals, manifesting your dreams, checking up on yourself, mood tracking, improving creativity and focus, practicing spirituality, even learning how to be disciplined and consistent — journaling will bring a huge difference in your practice.

There are four ways that I like to use my journal as a self-discipline tool.

Setting intentions. This is a great way to remind yourself what you are doing and why. I recommend doing it in the morning or any moment when you feel like you need some extra encouragement. Write down why you are going to be disciplined today. Why you are going to keep pushing. Why you are going to show up no matter how you feel about it. These reminders will drag your mind into a productive mode.
Celebrating achievements and practicing gratitude. The more you focus on something, the more you attract it into your life — this is a very well-known, and scientifically proven fact. Might as well focus on something nice, right? So this is what I would do (and I actually do): write down three things you are grateful for and three today’s achievements (even the smallest ones, like “didn’t feel like working out but forced myself to”) every day before going to bed. After a few times, you’ll see how many wonderful things you currently have, and how many things you actually get done every day without even acknowledging it. That should make you enjoy being disciplined and getting things done.
Scripting. My favorite! As you probably already figured, I am a strong believer that no matter what you are trying to do, the right mindset is half the battle. The abundance mindset is one of the most powerful ones when it comes to working on goals or pursuing dreams. You can make it work for you through manifestation practices — scripting, visualizing, affirmations, and many more. And from my experience, scripting works wonders! The point is simple: describe your dream life in the present tense, like it’s already happened. The goal is to get you feeling like it’s happening, as in blissful and happy. Not only do these positive emotions raise your vibrations and speed up your goal accomplishments, but they also give you a motivation boost to not give up and keep going.
Braindump. This is used to let bothersome thoughts out, and free your mind to have it clear for all the tasks and work that needs to be done. It’s more like a distraction-remover kind of thing. You know sometimes you just can’t focus because you keep thinking about an argument that you had with your partner this week, or what you should eat for dinner tonight, or where to celebrate your next birthday… Just dump it all on the paper. Forget about trying to make it some good writing, you don’t even have to finish a sentence if you don’t feel like it. Just write down whatever it is that is bothering you, and do it until your head is empty. That’s when you can get down to carry out the tasks of the day.

By the way, it’s totally okay if you skip a day or even a week of journaling, as long as you get back to it once you need it.

If you want to try to build some connection with yourself and your creativity through journaling, check out my selection of amazing journaling prompts for creatives.

Self discipline exercises: Try each of the journaling methods I listed above for a week. Decide which one is the most effective for you and implement it in your daily routine, or use them all in a combo.

💩 Learn to do a bad job first — and show up every day

One more powerful way to learn how to develop self discipline is to learn to do a bad job first.

If you are trying to be disciplined with practicing a skill or working on your craft, learn to do a bad job first.

It’s another secret way to learn how to develop self discipline in life.

Amateurs rely on inspiration. Professionals work on a schedule. So even if you don’t feel like sticking to your routines today, and you fear that you might end up creating some crap, do it.

I’m serious. Show up and create a really bad piece of art.

Fine, let’s assume it doesn’t even look like art. Still do it, finish it, and embrace it. Sooner or later you’ll see some good stuff slipping through.

At the end of the day, it is your creative journey.

I love this quote from the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert:

The only reason I was able to persist in completing my first novel was that I allowed it to be stupendously imperfect. I pushed myself to continue writing it, even though I strongly disapproved of what I was producing. That book was so far from perfect it made me nuts.

(Check out my selection of quotes from Big Magic, they are a real inspiration.)

So, briefly speaking, done is better than perfect.

When you practice the same thing every day, even if the outcome is not worth it (in your opinion), your brain realizes that you are going to do it anyway, every day, no matter how bad it is, so might as well do it well.

Self discipline exercises: Choose a day and set a goal to create a crappy result that day (whatever your craft is). Write a crappy story, draw a bad picture, write an awful song, have a lazy workout. Repeat a few times until it feels more effortless to get to the task without forcing yourself to.

🤜🏼 Challenge yourself

Are you a competitive person?

Then this step is essential for you.

I loooove testing my limits and what I’m capable of. It’s incredibly motivating and once you get into it, it’s hard to let it go and you want to push it to the finish — otherwise, you’ve wasted time and proved to yourself that you actually cannot keep your word.

The gist of getting into a challenge it is to show yourself that you are able to do all these hards things.

I tried the challenge approach multiple times and it just works every time.

I would doubt that I can write a whole 2,500 blog post in one day, for example, and one day I suddenly did.

How? I gave myself a strict deadline: 10 PM that night. And then I pulled myself together and got to writing.

And then what happened? The words just poured out without me really trying.

And that is because our mind is the strongest tool we have.

And if our mind decides that we are sitting down right now, and only getting up when the work is done, the body is like “Fiiine… Let’s finish this as fast as possible so that I can do whatever I want”.

Anyways, what I’m trying to say is: Really push your own limits.

You’ll see that you are capable of much more than you thought.

By the way, here’s one of the challenges that I created to get into a closer connection with myself and bring more self love into my life. Loved it!

Self discipline exercises: Look up some challenges related to what you are trying to work on — like 30-day or 15-day ones or selections of challenging everyday tasks. Decide how you are going to reward yourself (it has to be something exciting!) and get to work. Track your progress in a journal every day.

🎬 Figure out what helps you start

Well begun is half done!

In other words, if you know what makes you skip that “writer’s block” moment, use it!

Yes, I am talking about deciding to scroll on Instagram, check out some very useful productivity YouTube videos, organize the drawer that you organized a couple of days ago… Just to not get to work.

These are two steps I usually go through to start me going:

Create a plan. New things, big tasks, important projects — all these are usually pretty scary to start. Chunk it down. Write a very meticulous plan of how you are going to be doing it. Cover every aspect, all the steps in their particular order. Write the names of the steps or things to consider first, and then expand on each of them briefly so that you have a clear picture of what you are going to be doing. Half work done! You only have to fill in all the gaps. After that, start with the first step and focus on it until it’s finished — and that is your first milestone! Then, move on to the next step, and so on.
Start with the most fun part. If the specifics of your task allow you, start with the most fun part — the one that seems the most exciting at the moment. Let’s say, if you are writing a book, you can start with the chapter that feels the most interesting to meditate on. If it’s a workout, start with an exercise that you like most. If it’s working on a daily meditation practice, start by lighting a candle or burning some palo santo to create a soothing environment. From my experience, the easiest way to actually start completing a task is to start with the most fun part of it.

Self discipline exercise: Write a list of things that you think can help you start with less resistance (think of your own routine, research, consider the methods I demonstrated above). Try out each of them and figure out which ones work best. Implement the best

🫂 Surround yourself with people who have the same goal as you

We all heard a lot of times that…

You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

Let’s use it in our own favor!

Here’s how to develop self discipline by surrounding yourself with right people:

Find an accountability partner. Another option is an accountability partner — it can be your life partner, friend, or coworker. Set goals and deadlines together, keep each other accountable, and celebrate each other’s wins.
Be around people who already achieved your goal, or are on the way to it as well. Find a community of people who are doing the same thing as you. It can even be a Facebook group. Become an active member of the community, asking questions and helping other people. You can also joining a coworking for a working atmosphere, or try Focusmate — a virtual coworking.
Be around kind, supportive, positive-thinking people. There is nothing better than a supportive environment where you don’t need to be afraid of judgment or pessimism.

And don’t forget to interact! Don’t just sit in the corner quietly (even if it’s a Facebook group).

Ask people questions and if you are lucky enough, at some point you might watch them get vulnerable and share about their journeys so that you see what they’ve gone through and where they are right now — it’s an extra boost of motivation!

Self discipline exercises: Find an accountability partner, community or group of people who are aiming for the same goals, or already achieved them, or hang out with supportive, kind people.