Harsh Discipline vs. Loving Discipline: The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything

Redefining Discipline:
Embracing Loving Discipline for Sustainable Fitness Success

In this episode of the Muscles and Mindset Revolution podcast, host Anne Jones, a certified life coach and personal trainer, challenges the traditional notions of discipline and introduces the concept of 'loving discipline.' Anne discusses the importance of self-love, structure, and consistency over the fleeting nature of motivation to build sustainable habits. She emphasizes that discipline should be rooted in self-respect and flexibility, not harshness or punishment. Anne also announces a free five-day Loving Discipline Challenge starting February 10th, aimed at helping women create and maintain healthy habits.

Tune in to discover how loving discipline can transform your fitness journey and lead to long-term success.

00:00 Introduction to Muscles and Mindset Revolution
00:37 Redefining Discipline: Freedom, Not Punishment
01:40 Loving Discipline Challenge Announcement
02:03 The Misconception of Discipline in Fitness
02:54 Building Sustainable Habits
06:25 Embracing Imperfection for Long-term Success
07:35 Practical Tips for Habit Formation
11:57 Balancing Life and Fitness
14:08 Conclusion and Upcoming Events

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the muscles and mindset revolution, the podcast for ambitious women who want to build strength, feel confident, AF, and lose fat for good, without counting calories, doing endless cardio or BS quick fixes. I'm your host Anne Jones certified life coach, personal trainer and mindset expert. After over 15 years in the fitness industry, I know the real key to lasting change isn't just what you do. It's how you think. So Let's dive in. Welcome back to the podcast! If you are new here, welcome, welcome. And if you're back, thank you so much. What if I told you that discipline isn't punishment, it is not about rigid rules or being hard on yourself. It is about freedom. We need a structure. In today's episode, we're going to redefine what discipline means and show you how to build habits that you actually love sticking to and that feel life-giving to you. Most women think they need more motivation to succeed or be consistent, but the truth is; motivation comes and goes. It fades. But when you have a loving discipline and a structure, that's where the real magic happens. And the reason that I call this term loving discipline is because I strongly believe that we need some discipline. We need structure. I would love for you to do it from a place of self love because you do these things because you care about and value yourself. It is absolutely not push, push, push, no pain, no gain willpower. We need more willpower. It is not that kind of discipline. So that's why I call it loving discipline. If this resonates with you, do not miss the loving discipline challenge that we're starting next week. It is free. It launches on Monday, February 10th. It is all about creating sustainable habits that you love without perfection or burnout. I guarantee you'll be successful in this challenge. You can sign up in the show notes, but right now let's dive in. The misconception is that discipline equals restriction, punishment, harshness, more willpower society, especially in the fitness industry, it's getting better, but it really can glorify being hard on yourself to achieve results. This is a very masculine shame-based motivational style, which I have not ever seen to work long-term for women. It's just, we just don't respond to it. We can for a short period of time If we think of like yin and yang, it's like too much yang and it can't be sustained. It leads to burnout or other health issues. And so I want you to reframe discipline. Is self respect and freedom. It is not punishment. It is about showing up for yourself in a way that feels good and sustainable. For example, I know it's the lamest example ever, but like brushing your teeth daily is a habit, right? It's not a punishment. And the problem with, just relying on motivation;"I need motivation," it's fleeting, right? Some days you got it. And some days you don't waiting for motivation, always leads to inconsistency, always because we're not always going to feel motivated. I don't always feel motivated. I have found a program and a system that works for me. I have lots of fun in the gym. I enjoy the foods that I eat and I don't always feel like making... like for example today... I kind of have like a thing with myself to get my veggies in, if I don't have like the portion of vegetables that I want in my lunch or dinner, I will just make a side salad, that's something that I learned growing up. And, you know, when you're having leftovers, I had leftover chicken pad Thai that I had made. For lunch today. And I was like, I need some more veg with this. There's just a little bit of red pepper in here. I need a little side salad, but every time that happens or if I have a sandwich I'll make unlike, I don't really want to do it. Like, I'm like, it'd be easier to not do. But I do because that's kind of the structure that I've created. And I really don't want this to come off as like a rules thing. Like we can have guidelines and structure for ourselves, but when we put in rules and hard yeses and nos and black and white. It doesn't feel very good. That's why I like the term loving discipline. It's like we have a discipline. But it's with love, it's for us, we have a structure, the structure. Flexible. The plan is flexible. I always say we have a plan. The plan is flexible. We have a plan. The plan is flexible. We don't have no plan, but we don't have a plan that is rigid because that's not realistic. So this term loving.Discipline.. It's about showing up for yourself no matter how you feel, because you would love yourself. Not from a place of, I have to, or punishment. And this makes it easier to create small, consistent actions over time. the key difference, if we look at harsh discipline is where like all or nothing mindset lives coming from a place of guilt. I. That's where I have to burn it off'cause I ate this thing. That's harsh discipline. And perfectionism There's no room for me to go out for brunch, with my friends so this used to be me, right? There's no time. I can't go to the deli for brunch with my roommates on Saturday morning, because I'm going to spin at 7: 30 and that's what I do. I love the discipline of having a 7:30 AM spin class and if we make it so rigid that we can never opt out to have fun. That's not going to feel good after a duration of time. So that's why I say we need discipline. Plans got to be flexible. It's got to be loving. Loving discipline. It's more of a gentle consistency. Self compassion, flexibility. So harsh discipline is I'm missing one workout this week. I'm a failure. I'm starting all over. I never wanted to hear you say I'm starting all over. You were never starting all over. First of all, if you just keep going with small actions, you never have to start over, but starting over is just the perception starting over. Gives the impression that your health and fitness journey has a beginning time and an end time. And it does not. This is your life, my friend. So a more loving approach is like, I missed a workout. But I showed up twice for myself and that's progress and I'm going to put in a structure and a plan. So that next week I do three times, but I'm not going to like poop all over myself if I miss it. If we're being inconsistent. As a result of we're just never doing it, then we have to, re-examine the structure. It's not working, but if it's a one-off, you got to let that go because it's really progress over perfection that creates longterm success. So as usual, my recommendation to you is going to be to forget perfection. Just focus on messy consistency, do it messy. That's how I would literally get anything done. All the best things. because I know myself and I know I told you, I shared this with you guys before and in the all or nothing episode, that's what held me back from like making this podcast for five years. As I had all these beliefs about how good it had to be and what it had to look like and sound like, and what people wanted to hear and all these beliefs instead of just doing it messy and getting it done. So in a fitness context, This, you know, a 10 minute workout, five times a week beats aiming for a 60 minute workout and never doing it. 50 minutes versus the 60 minutes you never do wins every time. And not to mention, I always love this example; If you want to become a runner, right. And you have this plan to run. Four times a week. But you really only ever seem to get two runs a week. You are still a person who runs you are a runner. You are a person who runs two times a week. it's just the language and the thought behind it, which you are very much in charge of. Here are some ways to. Build habits that stick. And if you aren't already make sure you go to the show notes and get on the waitlist for the free loving discipline challenge. We're starting on Monday, February 10. Super simple challenge. And the whole goal is to make it achievable. I am personally going to hold you accountable to something that you do consistently over five days next week. There's no way you can fail. There's no, I'm not going to let you fail. And my high achievers, get to do two things. But here are three ways that we're going to do it. We're going to break goals into small manageable steps. We are looking for 1% improvement. Yes. A 1% improvement. And when your brain says that's not enough, that's cool. You just see that thought like, oh yeah, I know I hear you because I know you want really big things and this is how we're going to get there. I see it. I'm not going to fall for it because I know that going for a hundred percent improvement leads to paralyzing and no action. The second thing we're going to do is use habit stacking. there's a couple of ways in which you can habit stack. One of the habit stacking. Formulas is to pair a new habit with an existing one. For example, stretching while you're waiting for your coffee to brew, or I have clients who will drink their--I will do this-- I drink my lemon water or my apple cider vinegar, hot water while I'm waiting for the coffee to brew or I meditate while the coffee is brewing. I mean, coffee's always brewing. Or I will do my nervous system regulation when I'm waiting for my daughter to finish gymnastics, instead of trying to do one more thing, one more thing in I was in Las Vegas last week with my mastermind group. And we're talking about creating content, right? This is our job is to create wonderful content for y'all. And one of my lovely mastermind buddies was like, I just got to do it. She's like, I'm consistent with it when I do it right before I work out and she's like, I'm just going to make it a habit stack. Like I just post before I work out. So we do it, too. And all the ways, because for us working out is the thing that's going to happen. Right. Maybe posting is not. So for you, maybe working out is. I used to do it when I drove my daughter to daycare. And my life was set up a little bit differently. I would drive her to daycare. I would come home. I would work out, I would not get on my computer. Cause then I wouldn't start working out. That was just the process of things and it made it easy. I didn't have to think or negotiate with myself because that's what was happening at that time. And that's where the discipline and the structure is super helpful, but we do it in a loving way and a realistic way. the third way that we're going to help you to build habits that stick is by planning for obstacles. My clients know we always have a plan, a and a plan B. Sometimes we have a plan C so. It's great if you have this vision of exactly how you want your day, your week, your workout, your nutrition plan to unroll. We have a plan. The plan is flexible. So we build flexibility into habits to stay consistent. I always do this in my head when I'm traveling, because. It's helpful. So I'm like, okay. Ideal scenario is I get to eat this at this time, but if I can't find this or I can't do this. Then I'm going to do this, or I'm going to have this, I'll do it with workouts as well. I don't so much anymore because I'm pretty consistent now at getting my full workout in, but especially when my daughter was younger. I would have a 45 minute version, and then I would have the 20 minute version, which is if she wakes up early from nap, I also had two babies at one time cause I nannied a baby at the same time and they were very little and I worked out and ran my whole business. During their naps. So that was the discipline part, but I had to be loving because they were babies and sometimes woke up. So I would plan for such a thing. And if it was a 10 minute workout, it was a 10 minute workout, but it was not a zero minute workout. So literally plan for obstacles, have your plan, a, B and C. And as I was saying, we do this in muscles and mindset often for our clients who we have, we have worked with them and time is the obstacle, not mindset, not inconsistency, not excuses. because some of our clients are truly busy commuting kids they're executives like truly busy, not like we can make time and we don't. So often we will write them like a short on time workout option. So it's like, here's the workout we want you to do most of the time. And when that's not going to pan out, here's the short on time option, have a plan B. Do the same for your meals? Because the result comes from embracing imperfection. Before this podcast, I recorded next week's podcast with my husband. And one of the things we talked about was how we"do it all" because he works. Full-time shift work, plus he's gone on for his second job a good portion of the time I run a very busy business, we have a little girl who has her own activities, and we both work out like these are all important things to us. And so how do we balance all of that? Well we'll talk about it on next week's episode. As we were sort of talking about it and I was like, man, this really sounds like a lot. I kind of identified a couple of the biggest things that truly have been the most helpful for us. Aside from communication, having that meal plan and ordering those groceries is key. That is a dial mover. If that doesn't happen. That's okay. Like we'll figure it out. But that's one big thing. That's super helpful. But as I said to my husband, we were talking about it. I was like, we also have just had to realize that it's not going to be perfect. Our house is not always going to be perfectly clean. I'm not always going to wash the sheets on Saturday or Sunday. not, everything is going to be perfect all the time. You have to embrace that messiness for the sake of whatever it is that you're looking for. Joy connection, health, fitness. Sleep like. We can't do it all all the time. To get into the perfectionist thinking that we can is truly just to create our own suffering. Real life real results come from messy consistency. Embracing the imperfection. And then celebrating it, I have to say, I've come very far In terms of my domestic prowess in the past four years. Because I had to like, and it felt really bad at the time we had a toddler, my husband was gone 60% of the time I was in this big, new house with all these things going on. And it was really tough and I feel so good that I can say that I got through that. It was super messy and I learned so much. So celebrate the progress. That is progress. That was not perfect. It is not perfect now, but I'm happy to celebrate like, That woman who got through those years. every small step matters. next week, we are kicking off the free loving discipline challenge. It is a free five day challenge designed to help ambitious women like yourself to create habits that you love and stick with them for good. And as I mentioned, we're going to be with you the whole way, and there are prizes to be won. I'm giving away hundred dollars gift cards. For my local people here on the sunshine coast, I'm giving away a hundred dollar beauty gift cards. I'm giving away a one-on-one breakthrough coaching session. You're going to learn how to use loving discipline and structure to build a lifestyle that you love your way. And I'm happy to coach you through this. we're going to have a private community exclusive private community for this challenge where that's exactly what we're going to do. And I'm going to teach you how to focus on self love, self-respect and messy consistency for longterm success. I promise it's fun and this is all leading up to Valentine's day. So by Valentine's day, when the challenge ends, I want you to celebrate the progress that you've made. So join now in the show notes and take the first step towards building strength, confidence, and consistency that lasts. Discipline does not have to feel like punishment or torture and fitness should not either when it is rooted in self-love and self-respect, it feels like freedom. It feels easy. I promise you. So, if you are ready to stop relying on harsh discipline and willpower. Embrace messy consistency and build habits that truly work for you. Please join the loving discipline challenge today. Thank you so much for tuning into the muscles and mindset revolution. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share it with a friend, leave a five star review! that's free for you to do and it's super helpful. I will see you next week where my special guest is my husband Matt. Here for you, mean it!