The Property Unleashed Podcast

5 Steps To Build Your Self Discipline

• Mark Fitzgerald • Episode 294

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Uncover the secrets to mastering self-discipline and transforming your life in ways you never imagined. 

Imagine the power of understanding your own energy patterns and turning that awareness into unstoppable momentum towards achieving your goals. In this episode, I promise to guide you through a journey that surpasses mere willpower, offering insights into setting short-term checkpoints alongside ambitious goals to keep your motivation thriving. From recognizing the importance of finishing what you start to setting manageable daily tasks, you will learn to harness discipline as a tool for both immediate accomplishments and long-term success.

Embark on the path to successful execution with practical strategies and motivation. We'll explore how planning ahead, simplifying your environment, and surrounding yourself with supportive people can help eliminate distractions and maintain your focus on what's truly important. 

Drawing inspiration from stories like "Alice in Wonderland," you'll see how having a clear direction can propel you forward. Celebrate the small wins and understand the essence of resilience and grit, as these are the cornerstones of embracing real progress. This episode is dedicated to helping you set goals, review habits, and take actionable steps toward a disciplined and successful life—because self-discipline is not a destination but a journey to be enjoyed.

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Speaker 1:

The five steps to be more self-disciplined. Hello and welcome to the Property Unleashed with me, your host, mark Fitzgerald. It's great to have you joining me here today. So, as I promised at the beginning of the episode, I said I would help you with five steps to help you be more self-disciplined.

Speaker 1:

Discipline is a massive, massive thing in anybody's world and anybody's life. You cannot achieve anything if you do not have the right disciplines in place as you're working through whatever goals you're trying to actually achieve, whatever vision you have set yourself. You see, self-discipline isn't just a good trait to have, it's the key to personal growth and it's getting what you want out of life. It's about sticking to your goals when you set them and, of course, following through even when it's tough. You have to make those choices that can help you in the long run, and good discipline will do that. But being more disciplined isn't just about willpower. A lot of people think when they're starting something new, I can do that, I can become disciplined. It's like going to the gym. I always look at the gym. Why? Because I'm terrible at it. I discipline on it. I have to work out all the time and build up habits, and there's a certain little thing that I've started to incorporate and do now. That really does help me with my discipline, and I'll share that with you a little bit later in this episode. But it's about understanding yourself, it's about practicing and it's definitely about not giving up.

Speaker 1:

At its core, self-discipline is like showing yourself some love. It's about knowing what's best for you, it's about choosing and making the right choices and, of course, it can support your long-term happiness and successes. What you've got to look at is how you can prioritize your goals over a short-term desires. What do I mean by that? Well, a lot of the time, we set these big, lofty goals that we all want to get out there and achieve, but they seem so far away that our discipline, our willpower, everything runs out before we're ever going to get near to them. So you've got to start setting those big, lofty goals, of course, but you've got to have some short-term checkpoints along the way as well, things that you can hit even if they're weekly checkpoints, because it's the small actions that will get you the best results. But by having a disciplined approach to these and making sure that they are non-negotiables in your life, that will really help you, because you've got to be looking at how you can become more disciplined and of course it will really help you, because you've got to be looking at how you can become more disciplined. And of course it starts by knowing yourself.

Speaker 1:

I know when I'm not going to be very well disciplined, and that's normally actually later in the daytime. In the morning I have great discipline, I have a lot of willpower. Everything is on fire, but of course that can disappear throughout the day. You might find yourself starting to, you know, slack off with certain things. You might say, oh, I won't do that today, I'll sort that out tomorrow. Why? Because it just feels in the moment easier to do tomorrow and of course, that can be a massive thing that holds you back.

Speaker 1:

If you've set your clear goals, you know these goals should be matching what you really want out of life and by breaking your disciplines you are setting yourself backwards towards your goals. You want to be starting to make smaller steps each and every day and tackling what comes in front of you each and every day when best suits your energy levels. Now, some people will be very good in the late in the day, in the evenings. Some people are more morning people. I used to think that I was an evening owl. It turns out I'm not actually, I'm better in the mornings, but I never really wanted to get up and test. That Doesn't mean you've got to be a member of the 5am club, although of course that can help, but most of the time it's about making sure that you are getting out there. So what are the steps that you can take? Well, one of the steps is to start challenging yourself to finish what you start.

Speaker 1:

I am terrible at this. I come up with great ideas, I come up with great concepts, I start them, and then I get bored very, very quickly. If that's like you, then you're like me, so to speak. It's very, very easy to start getting bored when it comes down to the daily grime of doing something. It's all great when it's exciting, but it can become difficult. So, by building up great self-discipline, it's about setting those goals. It's about sticking to them, no matter what. Like building muscle, self-discipline gets stronger when you practice it each and every day. That's why the first step to getting better at self-discipline is making sure that you finish the tasks that you set yourselves. You see, it doesn't matter if a task is big or small Finishing it makes you more disciplined and keeps you moving forward.

Speaker 1:

If you listen to the podcast or YouTube or whatever before, you'll have heard me say set yourself out a task, even if it's just one task each and every day that you can hit. This is at the very beginning. Set yourself out an easy task that you know for a fact that you can hit each and every day. Why? Because you'll start to enjoy the feeling of hitting that task. It could be just to make a phone call to ring somebody, to ring an agent each and every day, to send out a marketing piece or a marketing letter each and every day, to just go to the gym, working on your health, or to just eat healthily. Set yourself out something that you can do each and every day, that you can tick off.

Speaker 1:

One of the problems that I see a lot of people do is we set ourselves too many tasks, we have too many goals, we're trying to do them all, and then we can't do one, we can't do two, we become demoralized and then we start to say, well, I can't do this, it's just too tough, it won't work. Set yourself out some easy tasks to get yourself moving. Also, then, as you start to progress, you can challenge yourself to finish what you've started, to start building a mindset, that one of determination and, of course, building your confidence as well. Tackling a tough project or finishing a simple chore each and every day is a win, and that will help to boost your self-belief in the most important person in your life that is you, and this, in turn, will help you reach your goals.

Speaker 1:

Finishing what you start isn't always easy. Trust me on that one. I'm still working at this myself, but this is what I do to help myself get the results that I've been getting. It's essential for you to become more disciplined. Okay, it takes effort and it takes persistence. Consistency and persistency is something I'm always on about. You have to push through the obstacles and you must keep going. Okay.

Speaker 1:

The next one, the next step, if you like, is to make sure that you plan ahead. Okay, if you haven't got a plan, well, you don't know where you're going, do you? There's a great little caption out of Alice in Wonderland, and she meets the Cheshire Cat on a road and there's a fork in the road and the Cheshire Cat is sat on I think he's sat on a tree at the end of the day but she says to him which path should I go down? And the cat says to Alice well, that depends on where you want to end up. Alice says, well, I don't really know where I want to end up. And the Cheshire Cat says, well, it doesn't really matter which path you take. Then does it? Why? Because she's got no plan.

Speaker 1:

Have a plan, people, please. Your goal is your destination. How are you going to get there? Take a bit of time to work this out, but it'll help you to build in good disciplines as well. Why? Well, because planning ahead is key to staying disciplined. It's getting things done. When you have a plan in place, you know exactly what you need to do and when you need to do it.

Speaker 1:

I live by my plan, I live by my calendar, and this not only helps you to be more productive, but also strengthens your determination to stick to your goals, even when things don't go as you had planned. You do this by scheduling scheduling the tasks that you need to do. You also set aside time for focused work, things that are non-negotiable, things that have to happen to help you move forward. This will set you up for success. Planning ahead breaks your goals down into smaller, more manageable steps, making them easier to accomplish. This will boost your productivity and keeps you committed to, of course, your goals, and it'll ensure that you stay on track when faced with obstacles. We all have obstacles and that can come in a lot of different ways. It can come with kids throwing a spanner in your day. Why? Because all of a sudden they decided that they don't want to do exactly what you want, or they're not going to sleep in the way that they normally do, or things like that. But by planning ahead, at least you have the plan. If it's delayed for a day or two, fine, but make sure that you stay on track with it. Okay, get yourself as disciplined as you can to make sure that you're scheduling things in.

Speaker 1:

The next step is to make it easy on yourself. Do not schedule in things if you cannot do it. You just think it might mysteriously appear and happen is not a good plan and you're setting yourself up for a fall. I don't schedule anything into my diaries now and say to myself well, potentially I'll just try and do that If I'm on the road, if I'm traveling, if I'm doing viewings or anything, I can't be scheduling Zoom calls or other things at the same time just saying, well, I'll sit in the car and make sure that that happens. I'll make sure that meeting finishes by then. That is no way to be living. You're setting yourself up for failure, and that is no good.

Speaker 1:

It's important to think about the environment around you, the places that you're spending your time and the people that you're going to be with, because all of this can affect how you stick to your goals, how you stick to your tasks. Okay, if you have the wrong surroundings, then that's not going to help. You need to make sure you are surrounding yourself with the right sort of people, with the right environment, and this all becomes much easier the more disciplined you can become. Okay, this might mean getting rid of a few things that tempt you, that don't obviously push you in the right direction. That can be people, that can be places, that can be food and drink. That can be anything like that. Make your space and your environment as easy to focus on what it is you need to do as possible and, of course, use friends, use families, to help hold you accountable to those things as well.

Speaker 1:

Keeping things simple is key when it comes to self-discipline. If we make it easy to make good choices, we are more likely to stick to them, and this could be as simple as keeping our workspace tidy or setting reminders on your phone or any other devices that you have, for the goals that you're trying to hit. Stick your goals on your screensaver, on your wallpaper, so as soon as you pick your phone up, you see your goals time and time again, hundreds of times a day. Now, none of this is going to happen overnight. To have yourself a supportive community isn't going to happen overnight, but make sure you're surrounding yourself with like-minded people, people you can tap into. Have a little WhatsApp group with people, or just have friends that you can text each day. These are the tasks and the goals, and I'm trying to hold me accountable to them. Please, I'll text you at the end of the day to say whether I'm done, and don't lie. Be true to yourself and be true to the people that are around you. Remember it's all about taking action and doing something.

Speaker 1:

Step four is to embrace the progress that you're making and realize that perfection does not exist. No matter how hard we try, we're bound to have setbacks sometimes. When this happens, it's important to remember that we're not aiming for perfection, instead of beating ourselves up, which I do a lot of. When I make mistakes and when I don't do things, I should, of course, make sure that I'm seeking out the chances to learn and grow. If I don't achieve something, review it. Why didn't I achieve it? What was stopping me? What could I have done better? Let's stop these things from happening again.

Speaker 1:

It's easy to get caught up in wanting everything to be perfect and wanting everything right now, and this is especially true when we're trying to build disciplines into our life. We can go on that diet we last two weeks and then we fall off the wagon and we go and set ourselves back and probably actually end up heavier than when we started. Why? Because we couldn't see things through, it was too hard, we hadn't planned and we hadn't embraced it and we didn't have checkpoints. So start to incorporate these things.

Speaker 1:

Real discipline isn't about being perfect. As I say, it's about making progress small, incremental, progressive steps each and every day. We should focus on the journey and certainly not the end. I always say enjoy the journey. I'm terrible at this too. I'm no good, you know. I'm always working at stuff like this, which is why I like to talk about it, because if I'm struggling, surely there's other people out there that are struggling with this as well that this episode will go out and they'll say do you know what? I understand where he's coming from, because I feel exactly the same and we all feel it. We're all working at it.

Speaker 1:

There will be some people out there that are naturally more disciplined than others. My sister says to me all the time you're so disciplined, mark, I don't feel like I am. I feel like I'm a little bit here, there and everywhere. That's why I'm always working at this to be as disciplined as I want. Is my body in the shape that I want it to be in? No, so that says to me my disciplines for my own health. I'm not quite there yet. I got to keep working at those Are my businesses, where I want them to be. Some are, some are. I'm not going to lie to you, they're doing very, very well. Others could be better. So discipline's there as well. What do I need to tweak and change to get those to perform that little bit better?

Speaker 1:

All right, it's a quest all the time. This is a quest, this is a journey. You know we're going to have setbacks, we're going to have failures, but also we're going to have opportunities and we need to make sure that we're seeking those opportunities, we're making sure that we've got grit, we've got resilience and we're not going to quit. We only fail when you stop. So make sure that you're embracing your progress, that you're patting yourself on the back and you're realizing it doesn't have to be perfect. In fact, in the beginning it's probably going to be very, very messy, but we have to stay focused on our goals because, ultimately, that is why we're doing what we're doing. It's our ability to embrace the progress, not the perfection, that propels us towards success.

Speaker 1:

And step five and this is probably the hardest step of them all, particularly when you're doing this for yourself is to reward yourself. Okay, remember to give yourself a reward for the things that you've achieved along the way. It's important to celebrate the small wins. I am really bad at this because I never think that I've achieved anything. I never think that I've actually, you know, had that step forward that I have, that people are noticing and witnessing and seeing, and it's my wife, which I am so thankful for that. I've got Lisa, my loving wife, lisa, who notices it, probably before I do, and she normally rewards me by, you know, planning stuff, by organizing things to say I only say, oh, how come we're doing that? Then it's to reward yourself. Mark, you've been doing well, you've been working hard, you've hit those targets. I'm terrible at doing it for myself. So if you are, find somebody else that can help reward you, that can help organize, you've hit those targets. I'm terrible at doing it for myself.

Speaker 1:

So if you are, find somebody else that can help reward you, that can help organize a nice outing somewhere or go for a meal, or just have some time together and things. You have to say thank you to yourself for the progress that you make. You've got to treat yourself with something. It doesn't have to cost you any money. You can go and do free things, but just do things. Take a moment, pat yourself on the back, even if it's just planning out some time to do exactly what you want. That could be sat on your couch with your feet up, scrolling and playing on your phone. These rewards you see that you're set out there will keep you on your journey of self-improvement.

Speaker 1:

By recognizing your accomplishments, which is so, so important, you can keep up the good habits and, of course, motivate yourself to push forward towards your goals. It is as simple as that, as they say. But it's not simple. It takes discipline, it takes grit, determination, and one major factor is you have to want to do it. If you don't want to do it and you're forcing yourself, it really probably won't work. Now, in the beginning, it can feel clunky, it can feel awkward, but trust me, over time this really does start to pay off.

Speaker 1:

Achieve your self-discipline, because this isn't about just reaching the goal, reaching the promised land. It's about embracing it as a journey. You've got to enjoy the journey as you're going. Far too often in the past, I've been so busy focusing on the goal that I haven't always enjoyed the journey. I haven't always been the nicest person to be around because I'm so driven and focused and that's not great. That's not the way you want to live your life.

Speaker 1:

Ok, you want to make sure that you've got the dedication and the determination out there. Of course, the resilience as well. But you also want to make sure that you're self-aware, that we are setting goals, that we are reviewing our habits. Our habits are what will help us have and reach those goals the self-discipline, the habits, the goals and that's how it works. So make sure that you plan this carefully, make sure that you tap in to any resources or any support and help that you need with this, because, as we go forward, we want to be looking at shaping our surroundings to help us to accept setbacks gracefully and celebrate the progress as we're moving forward. You want to be looking to change your life with the courage and conviction that we all have inside us, and we must believe we can shape our lives if we want to have good self-discipline.

Speaker 1:

So take a bit of time, take your journal out. I'm a massive believer in journals. I'll talk about those a lot as well. Take your journal out and make sure that you're journaling your goals, your roadmap and your disciplines and, of course, your habits that you're going to bring in with those disciplines to really start to nurture you and help you move forward. So I said at the beginning I'd help you with a little hack, which I've found has really, really helped me.

Speaker 1:

Now. I was talking about the gym and I struggle getting myself to the gym on a consistent basis. Now, if you don't, fair play to you, but I always seem to think that my businesses and work and everything like that is more important than my own personal health, which is absolutely crazy. So what I try and incorporate now to help and I'm building disciplines is make things as easy as possible. So I said to my wife I need to make sure that I'm going to the gym. I want to go to the gym early because I want to make sure it's done. If I try and go to the gym later in the day, it's definitely not going to happen. What can I do? So one of the things obviously is, when you get up in the morning is to put your gym clothes on straight away, have them ready. You're already dressed for the gym Rock and roll, baby, great stuff but that still doesn't always get me to the gym. Now I do have a mini gym in my house, so I have no excuses whatsoever, but I need to get out there, I need to go to a gym and I need to really be able to use all the facilities there and just really start to get that discipline going.

Speaker 1:

So the next thing is well, what's stopping you, then, from getting in the car? Ok, well, procrastination. Maybe I can talk my way out of that one. She said so why don't you drop Lewis at school again? Because at the moment you know he's a bit older now, so I don't always have to drop him at school and things. But she says either drop him at school or drop him at your mate's, because then that means that you have to get into your car and drive it, don't you? And once you're in your car, there is no excuse because the gym really is about five minutes away. If I'm quite honest with you, we're quite lucky. We've had a new one open up near us. You've got no excuse then.

Speaker 1:

So you're in your gym gear. You've got to take Lewis on a Monday to Friday and drop him either at his friend's house to walk to school or drop him just around the corner from school. You're in your car. You're literally less than five minutes away from the gym. Nothing's stopping you, nothing's stopping you is there. So that is what we've worked out. So as of now, I take Lewis to school or drop him at his friend's place and I carry on and I go to the gym and that has worked absolute wonders for me and it was really just planned out. Didn't take long to plan out. It was quite good fun as well, coming up with ideas of how to make sure that I cannot procrastinate, how I cannot miss a gym session because I have no excuse now. No excuse I'm wearing the right clothes, I'm in the car already on my way. It's actually his school and his friend's house is the direction of the gym. All I have to do is drop them off, carry on. I'm in the gym and I'm doing it, and that is something that has really, really helped me.

Speaker 1:

So, if you're struggling with any disciplines yourself, struggling with new habits that you want to bring into them, break it down. What are a couple of steps that you can do to make it a no-brainer, make it really, really easy for yourself to be able to do what you need to do and, to be quite honest with you, personal fitness. I've been doing on a new app actually oh, I don't know how new it is. It's called the Pump app and it's Arnold Schwarzenegger's app and I find it brilliant. You do have to pay like £10 or something for a month, but it's got loads of workouts out there and you've got Arnie, you know, motivating you, which, if you're in, I'm a massive Arnold Schwarzenegger fan always have been. It's worked very, very well for me actually using that app and, yeah, just start making life easy for yourself.

Speaker 1:

I hope this episode has helped you. You know, we always put episodes out there to try and help people, but self-discipline and procrastination are massive, massive things. The book the Power of Discipline by Daniel Walter is a fantastic book, a great resource, so I highly recommend it. It's only a small book but it is a good little book. I definitely recommend you get your hands on that because once you get the discipline, once you've got the habits, once your mindset's in place and you know what your goals are, you can go out there and you can achieve anything you want.

Speaker 1:

As I say, if this episode you've listened to and you think, do you know what my partner or my friend or anybody like that, I think they could do with hearing this. Please, please, please, feel free to share it. If you want to leave a five-star review on any podcast platform that you're listening to this on, it would be. You know, if you could take a minute just to do that and even leave us a little comment, it would be mightily appreciated. I would really, really thank you, and you know I've enjoyed and I do enjoy bringing these podcast episodes to you.

Speaker 1:

We're coming up to 300, soon, 300 episodes and what I want to do is I want to do a real mixture. I want to make sure that we're talking about property. We're talking about strategies different strategies, deal sourcing, rent to rent, serviced accommodation, hmos, creative strategies on how to buy properties, how to build your property business. But I want to also really make sure that we're working on your mindset, we're working on those skill sets of yours and we're making sure that you're incorporating good habits into your life as well, because that will all become part and parcel of your property investing journey.

Speaker 1:

It's a bit of a longer episode than normal, but I hope this has been a good one for you all. Thank you ever so much for joining me, thank you for listening and I look forward to you joining me in the next episode very, very soon. And if you need any help and support with any of this, then do check out the show notes, do reach out to us, follow us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook or just send us an email, and I'm more than happy to see if I can help and support you all. We've got big things coming in 2025, next year, and I'm looking forward to helping and sharing my successes, my results, my wins and my losses with each and every one of you. And, once again, if you are struggling, don't struggle in silence. Reach out to us, and if we can help you, we will more than happily do so. Take care, join me very soon, please, and bye for now.