5 Little Traits Of Incredibly Disciplined People
Find your mental strength.
Juliano Ferreira | Canva Back in caveman days, being disciplined was so easy that discipline wasn’t even a thing. With a continual threat of death and starvation, there were genuine and visceral reasons for doing things with urgency, even if you didn’t want to do them. Now, most things are seemingly less urgent. Without pressing, visible, and tangible requirements for us to act in our comfortable, modern world, being disciplined is, well, bloody hard.
To live a good life today requires discipline for doing things that are good for us — for things that move us towards our full potential. And most of those things don’t feel urgent. All of it seems — at first glance — equally non-essential. But, here’s the thing: It’s not more discipline you need. Instead, you need to make discipline come easy.
We have the power and the strategies to make discipline effortless. We have enough discipline. We have plenty of discipline for watching Netflix when we’re bored, gaming, or eating doughnuts. That requires discipline, but it’s effortless. We need to apply ‘effortless discipline’ to those things that will make our lives amazing, and we can do so by implementing traits held by the most disciplined people.
Here are 5 little traits of incredibly disciplined people:
1. They take away friction in their environment
Most of being disciplined is about optimizing your environment:
- The people you hang around with
- Your mental blocks, fears, and doubts
- Your physical environment
They can all hold us back, and they can all be improved. List out how you might do this for each one. Easier said than done yes, but it can be insane when you think about all the things that are present in our lives that stop us from getting what we want.
2. They set themselves juicier, bigger goals
A lot of us either have no goals, or we don’t make them big and exciting enough. Big goals are more interesting. They motivate us to want to pursue them. Go for your dreams. Go for big goals. Think big and draw up a vision of what you want. Check-in with those goals every day and make an action plan that leads to daily action towards those goals. This makes discipline easier.
3. They're clear on why they must have what they want
Come up with a list of all the reasons why those above goals are worth pursuing, including why you can’t afford to continue the way you are going. This takes goal-setting a step further. Having clarity on why you want will take your motivation to be disciplined to the next level.
4. They're clear on the small steps they need to take
Most of us find discipline for the things that matter exceptionally hard. One of the main reasons for this is a lack of clarity on what to do.
We procrastinate because we just aren’t clear on the steps we need to take, from the year, down to six months, to thirty days, right down to each day. A lot of people, including myself, get excited about the idea of something they’d like to achieve but fail to create a plan to work themselves towards that thing, step by step.
They want to get straight to the juicy stuff. We give ourselves too big of a chunk to chew, with no smaller steps in between, and we inevitably fail and wonder why. The secret here is to work your way up to things. Identify the next small step, and take that step.
If, for example, you want to build a coaching business that earns $150,000 per year with each client paying $2000 per month. You would first need to get a handle on your niche, and the process you would need to take prospects through to buy a session. Then you’d set the challenge of landing a sale of $750 per month. And then $1000, and then $1500 per client, and so on.
Each time, the challenge is incrementally more of a stretch, but not so much of a stretch that you are incapable of dealing with it.
Shortcuts don’t work. Small steps make discipline easier. Build yourself up to things, and almost anything is possible. Having someone guide you or hold you accountable can take this even further. Investing in a coach could be huge for you as it has been for me.
Who is Danny / Shutterstock
5. They build successful habits
Habits are things you do all the time without thinking about them. Your brain is wired to do them automatically. Habits can be good for you, or bad for you.
Most people who appear incredibly disciplined just likely have better habits. Many famous writers, for example, have the habit of writing a certain number of words every day. They have built that habit muscle over time.
First, they take action, and then their brains adapt to the repeated action until it becomes easier to do. Your job is to build small habits that help you get to where you want to go. The hardest part about building habits is the first month or two.
To cement a new habit, whether it’s eating better, exercising, or creating content, you would do it for sixty days in a row or more. Once you’ve internalized that action, you’re flying, and suddenly discipline won’t even be a thing.
Alex Mathers is a writer and coach who helps you build a money-making personal brand with your knowledge and skills while staying mentally resilient.