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Introduction
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“With self-discipline, all things are possible. Without it, even the simplest goal can seem like the impossible dream."
~ Theodore Roosevelt
My Personal Experience
“Hey, it’s already 7:45, and you’re still at home. You’ll find the school door closed for sure today, and we’ll have to apologize the school principal to let you in,” my wife screamed at my daughter again in the morning. “Why don’t you get up bit early, despite me trying to wake you up ten times?” she continued with frustration.
Quite frankly, this wasn’t the first time for us. It happens quite often, as my thirteen-year-old daughter needs to wake up early in the morning to reach her school by 8 a.m.
When I dropped her off for school, my daughter was sad about the morning’s scolding.
“Hey Dad, why does mamma get angry with me only in the morning? It spoils my day. And it’s really difficult for me to wake up in the morning despite trying hard,” she complained.
As any father would, I tried to explain her, “Don’t think negative about your mamma’s words, rather try to understand that it’s not a good idea to be late for school, and then request school authorities to let you in the building. The best thing to do is to go to bed earlier, get enough sleep, and then wake up in the morning refreshed. It is all a matter of maintaining some discipline in your sleeping schedule. That’s it.”
She retorted, “Come on, Daddy. None of you at home sleep early, and I am told to sleep early. How can I do it alone?”
Her answer hit me like a ton of bricks. I suddenly realized that I was expecting my thirteen-year-old daughter to wake up earlier, while there was a lack of discipline on my and my spouse’s part as parents. I was not creating an environment where lights would switch off by 10 p.m. every night, so my kids could get enough sleep and start the next day better.
This is nothing but a lack of self-discipline. And I assume this might be an experience common among most parents.
In case you don’t have children at home, or live alone or with your friend or better-half, you might have a different situation that requires exercising some kind of self-discipline.
Maybe you prefer sitting in front of the TV watching late-night shows until 2 a.m., despite having to wake up at 6.30 a.m. and get ready for work. Even if you know that you have to prepare for a Monday morning presentation for a crucial meeting with one of your firm’s important clients, and you are stressed too, still you stay up late Sunday nights binging on TV shows.
Perhaps you are overweight but unable to resist your temptation to chow down on giant-sized burgers, pizzas, or sweetened highly-carbonated beverages, despite being aware that lack of control is only adding to your woes.
Or in case, you smoke, you already know (in fact, every smoker knows it) that cigarette smoking is injurious to health. Even cigarette companies are mandated in most of the countries to put a big warning sign on each pack, stating “cigarette smoking is injurious to your health”, with images of dreadful consequences, people suffer. Or maybe your doctor has told you to avoid smoking or drinking for the sake of your health, but despite your good intentions, you generally give in—merely at the sight of cigarette or alcohol.
One can go on and on and cite many such instances, where people lack self-control. They don’t have the willpower to resist the temptations of eating, drinking, and entertaining, which may put all their future at a stake.
Lack of Willpower- Barrier to any Change
American Psychological Association conducts an annual nationwide survey to examine the state of stress across the country and understand its impact on its people. In 2011, this survey reported[20] that 27% of the respondents complained that a lack of willpower was the most significant barrier to the change.
So the big question is, why aren’t we able to resist temptations, despite being rational and grown up people?
What You Will Discover in This Book
This book is all about explaining the human psychology and neuroscience behind our irrational behaviours and actions, triggered by our emotions, and how can we use different strategies to mould our behavior with a few simple tweaks and improve the quality of our days and lives.
You will understand the power of self-discipline in accelerating your growth to shape your future for better, as has been proven by scientific studies conducted by researchers.
You will explore deeper into human psychology to understand why you do what you do. The book will explain you why people get tripped off and succumb to temptations despite being aware of consequences of their self-defeating behaviours. You will then learn how certain extraneous factors are responsible for draining your willpower and the ways to overcome them.
If you are sincere about mastering self-discipline you will learn the four key tenets followed by Navy SEALs to build mental toughness. You will also learn how by only instilling only a handful of mini habits, you can start working without any need of willpower—and be on autopilot mode.
This book is not merely a general advice book; rather it is filled with psychological research conducted by renowned researchers, who spent decades in researching the concept of willpower. Also, the scientific studies in this book will help you to understand the root behind your particular behaviours, and how you can build self-discipline with proven principles and by implementing effective habits.
And now without further ado, let’s get started.
Chapter 1: Self-Discipline: The Engine of Success
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"The one quality which sets one man apart from another—the key which lifts one to every aspiration while others are caught up in the mire of mediocrity—is not talent, formal education, nor intellectual brightness—it is self-discipline.”
~ Theodore Roosevelt
WILLPOWER AND SELF-Discipline Defined
Let’s start by understanding the concept and meaning of willpower and self-discipline.
While willpower is the ability of your mind to keep itself under control, self-discipline or self-control is the action of consistently doing or avoiding something despite distracting temptations.
According to most psychological scientists, as reported by the APA[21], willpower can be defined as:
Collins Dictionary defines self-discipline as the ability to control yourself and to make yourself work hard or behave in a particular way without needing anyone else to tell you what to do.
To put it in simpler terms, self-discipline helps you take control your thoughts, emotions and behaviour, and empowers you take action in a particular way (that directs you in a positive direction or stops you from going in a negative direction).
Roy Baumeister, a social psychologist at Florida State University and a researcher on willpower, describes three necessary components for achieving your goals:
1) First, you need to establish the motivation for change and set a clear goal.
2) Second, you need to monitor your behaviour toward that goal.
3) The third component is willpower. Whether your goal is to lose weight, kick a smoking habit, study more, or spend less time on social media, willpower is a critical step to achieving that outcome.
How Willpower can Change the Trajectory of Life
As we all know, a solid building requires a rock solid foundation. That applies to planning and structuring our lives, too. The robust foundation of our childhood ensures that we become smarter and stronger adults. Self-discipline is one of the most important skills, which, if developed sooner in life, will help in almost all areas of life, be it health, finance, relationship, or career. One study conducted decades back has already shown how self-discipline mastered in early childhood helps to achieve growth in all areas of one’s adult life.
The Marshmallow Test
If you are not brand new in your exploration of the concept of self-discipline, you might have already heard about the famous marshmallow test case study. In almost any discussion on the willpower and self-control, you will invariably find this research and discussion, as this research showed some powerful effects of self-discipline on the overall well-being of humans. This test was conducted in 1960s by psychologist and researcher Walter Mischel, who did a study on school kids to test their self-control. Here is how the test was conducted:
A group of pre-schoolers were made to sit in the room. The researcher offered each of them a marshmallow. But before they could gulp that sweet candy, the researchers offered them with two simple choices:
It seems like a rational choice to wait just twenty minutes and then get two marshmallows instead of one. Looks like a simple maths, isn’t it?
But here is what actually happened.
After giving this choice, the researcher went out of this room, leaving children with their marshmallows, but he started watching the kids from a one-way glass window to see how the children would react in this situation.
As you might have guessed already, kids are kids. Some of them couldn’t wait and instantly swallowed their marshmallow and were very happy. But there were few others, who behaved more rationally. These children calculated: two marshmallows merely by a wait of twenty minutes. They resorted to focusing on other things to divert their attention from the one marshmallow lying in front of them in order to resist their temptations. These children exercised their willpower to delay the instant gratification in order to get a bigger reward.
But this research did not end here.
Researchers continued to follow these pre-schoolers not for years, but for decades. In a 2011 study[22], they tracked the 59 subjects, then in their forties, who participated in the marshmallow test as children. It was noted that the children who were able to resist their temptations and had delayed the need of instant gratification were able to score higher SAT scores, get better grades, were more focussed, and were way more successful as compared to those who failed in the marshmallow test.
You can see how inculcating self-discipline from an early age helps to create a better future in adults in almost all areas of their lives.
Additionally, the researchers tested the brain activity in the subjects by use of function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technique. When presented with tempting stimuli, individuals with low self-control showed brain patterns that differed from those with high self-control. The researchers found that the prefrontal cortex, a region that controls executive functions, such as making choices, was more active in subjects with higher self-control. And the ventral striatum, a region that processes desires and rewards, showed boosted activity in those with lower self-control.
Let’s also look at a few more studies conducted that also showed how delaying instant gratification proved to be a real game changer for people.
Get One Dollar Now or Two Dollars Next Week
This study[23] was conducted at the University of Pennsylvania by psychologists Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman on a few eighth grade students. During the test, the students were given the option of receiving one dollar immediately or waiting a week to get two dollars the next week.
This was again a test of how the students can delay their instant gratification and control their temptation for a larger reward in future. The researchers noted that the students who demonstrated more self-discipline had performed much better in their studies, got good grades, got admission to highly ranked universities, as compared to their counterparts who had lesser self-control. In this study, the researchers also concluded that self-control was more important than the IQ of the students in getting into good schools or getting better jobs.
A New Zealand Study
Another study[24] conducted in Dunedin, New Zealand that also demonstrated that the benefits of willpower extended well beyond the college years. In this study, researchers took a control group of 1,000 people for a long-term health study, who were tracked from birth until thirty-two years old.
The researchers noted that by ten years old, many children had mastered self-control, but others were failing to achieve this skill. Then, researchers followed them over a period of thirty years and traced the consequences of their childhood levels of self-control on their health, wealth, and possible criminal offenses.
The research concluded that individuals who had a higher self-control during childhood, as reported by their teachers, parents, and the children themselves, became adults who had much better physical and mental health. They were also better off financially. They also concluded, based on court convictions and police records from New Zealand and Australia that children with poor self-control were more likely to be convicted of a criminal offence.
All of these studies are clear evidence that resisting short-term temptations, and overpowering the desires for instant gratification for a better future by exercising willpower proved to be highly advantageous in the lives of people.
Strengthen Willpower to Redesign your Life
Let’s list down some of the key benefits that you can get by strengthening your willpower muscles:
And this was rightly said by a wise philosopher, Aristotle:
“Through discipline comes freedom.”
In this section, you learned about why self-discipline is such a powerful weapon in your armoury that can help you win any situation of your life. It is an engine for your success. But despite knowing that we can improve our lives through self-discipline, why do we often get tripped up and lose discipline?
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[1] https://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/a20954821/born-to-run-secret.s-of-the-tarahumara/
[2] https://www.bbc.com/sport/48702452
[3] This story was captured by Joe De Sena in Spartan Up.
[4] http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/39/2/120.short
[5] http://www.businessinsider.in/Elon-Musk-has-published-an-outline-of-his-audacious-plan-to-colonize-Mars-with-a-million-people/articleshow/59166030.cms
[6] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMmka9cVFWc
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Waitzkin
[8] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNHBMFCzznE
[9] https://www.theconfidentteacher.com/2017/09/a-new-school-year-and-a-new-start/
[10] http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Twenty_Statements_Test
[11] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26746580
[12] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201504/7-scientifically-proven-benefits-gratitude
[13] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/02/09/7-ways-meditation-can-actually-change-the-brain/#78bd55b31465
[14] https://www.samharris.org/blog/item/how-to-meditate
[15] http://apt.rcpsych.org/content/11/5/338.full
[16] https://tim.blog/2016/03/23/josh-waitzkin-the-prodigy-returns/
[17] https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-athletes-way/201404/physical-activity-improves-cognitive-function
[18] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-merle/the-reading-habits-of-ult_b_9688130.html
[19] https://www.livescience.com/7312-study-reveals-learn-mistakes.html
[20] http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2012/02/willpower.aspx
[21] http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/willpower.aspx
[23] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01641.x
