The Diary Of A CEO Clips - How To Actually Become Disciplined WITHOUT willpower… | The Leading Behaviour Expert Chase Hughes

how do I fix my discipline if I'm an ill disciplined person understanding what discipline is is the most critical element and I Define this differently than most people so I Define discipline as your ability to prioritize the needs of your future self ahead of your own present self and that's it that's all the discipline is I'm prioritizing the needs of future me you're trying to think think of a I was thinking no I was thinking of two scenarios the scenario one is I go home tonight right because I go to sleep I get to bed early and there's this other thing I'm thinking about doing after this which is going to the gym yeah and I'm like I was just as you're saying that I was thinking both help future me yeah I was proud I was like which one is disciplined I think they would both be disciplined okay so the moment that we start understanding that if I could just make decisions that are priori future me then we go back to where am I getting my dopamine from and I want past tense me to be a source of dopamine for present tense me because most of us look back with regret I shouldn't have drank that much I shouldn't have mouthed off at the family reunion you know whatever it is I shouldn't have overslept if I can start looking backwards with gratitude that's the fastest way to make discipline dopamine generating so the tricks are to start small so like when I go to bed at night I will pop open the little Keurig coffee thing and stick the pod in there, put a cup under there, everything's ready to go so when I wake up in the morning I just go bam and everything's ready. I'll get my clothes out, everything lined up ready to put on for the next day, so I'm lowering the threshold of how much attention I'm spending. So I'm going to set my life up in every single way that I possibly can as if I were a butler for future me. So when I wake up in the morning, all this stuff is set out: my laundry laid out, my checklist for what I need to do for the day, all the stuff I've got to take on a plane laid out by the back door so I can grab it and jump in the car. Everything that I could possibly do to make my future self go, oh man, that's awesome, and look backwards with gratitude, I'm going to do it. I'll take a $100 bill, or maybe a few $1 bills, every spring or summer and stick them in a jacket pocket that I'm not going to use until the winter, and I'll forget about it, and in the winter I'm looking and now I become a source of dopamine. Past tense me is becoming a source of dopamine for present tense me. That forces me to look in the future, along with printing that old me photo and putting it all over the house. Everything that I can possibly do to make myself look backwards with gratitude is what I'm going to start doing, but you have to start small. It's like just going overboard is going to be crazy. Even writing a little Post-It note to yourself and sticking it in a jacket or maybe a dress shoe that you're not going to wear for a few months means so much to find. And it's from you, it's not from a loved one, you did it, so you're looking backwards with, wow, that's amazing. So you're now getting in love and sending gratitude backwards, which automatically means that what's going forwards is concern and care. The moment I'm always looking back with gratitude, the concern is always going forward in the future, and the concern for present goes away, and I'm going to push that concern to the right, out in the future. People struggle even with the small things, right? Because, yeah, it's funny, because I watched a video last night about a lady who went to YouTube and started her journey of weight loss and whatever, and she was very, I think, 400 pounds or something, and she was trying to get down. In the video, you watch some people, you'll know who I'm referring to, over the space of a year or two years she actually just gains weight. So she gets to, I think, 500 or something. And as I was watching it, you're watching someone who's saying I want to change my life, but then is coming on every day and saying I've just gained three pounds, I've just gained another three pounds. There's almost this visible dissonance that you're observing between this person saying they want to change their life, but clearly the actions that they're then taking are different to that. And many people can relate to that feeling of, I want to be this person. We're coming up to, for anyone that doesn't know, we're recording this in December, so New Year's resolutions are around the corner, and everyone's going to say to themselves who they want to become, but it's easier said than done. I think seven, eight, 9% of New Year's resolutions will stick. So is it just a case of starting small, or are there any other tricks to discipline that you can offer? It's starting small and realizing that all of our lives are about habits, not goals. But what are the habits that make my goal a byproduct? Everything is about byproducts in your whole life, whether you know it or not. So instead of setting goals, set the byproduct. What are the byproducts I want to have for this year, and then what are the habits that make that up? The big mistake most people make is they see somebody like you. You go to the gym very often, you probably eat really clean. I know you don't drink alcohol, because I brought you a flask and gave it to your team. No, they took it. They did, yeah. Somebody who doesn't live a very disciplined life would look at you and say, God, I want to be like Stephen, he's got all this discipline, going to the gym. But they don't understand that you going to the gym isn't disciplined, it's a habit. So you're not forcing yourself to go do something; you're doing something that's a habit for you. The discipline is only necessary at the very beginning. You only need like a teaspoon of it at the very beginning to get this habit started. So start micro habits first, and then bigger habits. The discipline is not something that you should be seeing if you're seeing someone eat healthy and go to the gym and do all the stuff you want to do. Those are habits, and with that person you're not seeing discipline at work right there, you're seeing a habit. The discipline was just at the beginning. I think if more people knew that you're just exercising a little discipline at the very beginning, and then that's just what you do. It's like somebody who sees someone brushing their teeth every day and thinks, wow, that's so much discipline. It's just what we do. It's a habit. There's an interesting part of this habit equation, or discipline equation, which is the why part, which is why does this matter to you, and is it important to get really clear on why this thing matters to you, whether it's the gym or anything else? When I was playing around with this discipline equation idea from my last book, the conclusion I landed at was that to be disciplined you have to understand the reason why something matters to you. You could say that in other words, yeah: the why, plus the psychological reinforcement you get from the pursuit of the thing, minus the psychological or perceived cost of the pursuit of the thing. So in the context of brushing your teeth, I think I know why it matters, because if I don't, then I have to go to the dentist, my teeth fall out, I look ugly, whatever it might be. Is it rewarding and fun to do? No, not really. And minus the cost of the pursuit: it takes two minutes, it's not that bad. But when that nets out, the why is stronger, thankfully, on net than the cost, so the behavior happens. The key part of this equation is the why part. It's not the only key part, but it's the central part: why does the thing matter to you? And how big is the why? Because if the why is, I need enjoyment in the present moment, then no other why will be bigger. No discipline why will ever be larger. The only why will be, why am I eating these Cheetos right now, or why am I drinking 20 beers every night, because that's the only why. So I think once the why starts edging its way into the future, that's the moment where you break the discipline spiral and get out of it, because your why is extending into time that hasn't happened yet. Does that equation stack up for you? I like it a lot, because I've been saying it, and I wrote about this in my book. The whole idea is why plus, we could say, reinforcement, minus cost, just to simplify it. But is there anything missing from this equation, do you think? I said it to Simon Sinek, and he went, let's try it out, and he talked to me about taking his bin out in the morning, like taking the bin out for the bin men, and it kind of holds up. The why is, if I don't take the bin out, then I'm going to get fined, and my bin isn't going to overflow. Pretty strong motivator. Yeah. The reinforcement there is nothing; getting out of bed at 7 a.m. to take your bin out isn't nice. Yeah. The cost is also significant, getting out of bed, but the why still wins. So it's why plus, you could say, the psychological reinforcement from the pursuit of doing it. DJing is really fun for me, so I would say there's, you know, it would be divided by the cost of inaction. The cost of inaction would either add to it, but it's always going to be your perception of the why, your perception of the cost, and your perception of the cost of an action. And all of that is going to be about: can I leverage my focus, the mammalian brain's focus? Can I leverage authority over myself in some way, over that mammalian part of my brain, to force myself out of bed, force these habits to start developing? Are my friends involved? Have I made a public agreement about something? And then the emotion, which I think would be the why. Yeah. That's the emotional driver that the animal brain can understand: visualizing yourself, looking with a six-pack or whatever it is, and printing it on a vision board. This is why I think vision boards are so important. Not because we're manifesting something out of the universe, maybe it is, but we are definitely showing something that a dog can understand. It's imagery. A dog can understand images. So we're routinely exposing ourselves to these vision boards on a very regular basis, and if you follow the brainwashing formula, which is focus, emotion, agitation, and repetition, it spells FEAR, and that is the best way to brainwash yourself to form these new habits and goals. So how can I get myself to focus? How can I build the emotion, which is the why, as a recurring emotion, not just one at the very beginning? How can I continue to make it emotional? And maybe I can make the cost of inaction emotional. Maybe I can buy the app that makes me look fat, or one of those things. Then agitation: habituation, which you just talked about. If I'm waking up with the same routine every day, let's say I wanted to lose weight, the same hallway every day that I've lived in, I'm seeing the same hallway, same rug, same couch, everything looks the same. My brain says, oh, I'm here, I'm going to follow that script, because our brain writes scripts for us to save us time. So agitation means I'm going to disrupt my environment so much and so often that my brain has no chance to default to an older script. I have clients who repaint their house, they rearrange their furniture, they change up their wardrobe a whole lot, they get a completely new haircut, so they're not even looking at the same person in the mirror anymore. They do everything they can to disrupt that rhythm. It's exactly what we would do with a detainee if we were trying to brainwash someone in an intelligence interrogation. So I'm disrupting the environment like crazy. And what would we do with a dog? Are we going to let it do everything it's always done? No, we're going to change that environment, we're going to change the behavior, change the leash, change the collar, so it's not everything exactly the same. And then repetition, which is just repeating the same thing over and over. Even just coming back to the vision board: the last client I had, I had them go to Best Buy and get a 70-inch TV, and then get one of those cheap tablets, the $200 or $300 tablets, and just duct tape it to the back of the TV, and put his vision board on that thing. It's about 900 slides of non-stop photos, and it runs 24 hours a day in his office, even if he's not there. He walks in in the morning and it's on, nonstop repetition. Him having to turn it off at night means he's got another point of discipline: I've got to turn that TV on, start that little PowerPoint thing. But that's nonstop, and it's non-stop exposure. So can I generate focus? That's a lot of focus on the goals. Then there's emotion, and you're seeing agitation, which is disrupting my life patterns, and repetition, which is just over and over and over. How can I re-expose you to the same stimuli, or re-expose myself to the same stimuli? 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