How to Master Self-Discipline: Working WITH Your Brain (Not Against It)

👉🏼 Do you find yourself starting strong only to fall off and wonder what happened? 

👉🏼 Do you struggle to stay consistent, question your motivation, or feel like you just can’t get it together no matter how hard you try? 

👉🏼 Maybe you’ve told yourself you need more willpower, only to end up frustrated, stuck, and starting over again. 

What you really want is to feel in control of your habits, to trust yourself to follow through, and to finally create the consistency that leads to real results and a life that feels aligned.

In this episode, you’ll learn how your brain is wired when it comes to self-discipline, why it can feel so hard, especially when you’re tired, stressed, or overwhelmed, and why it’s not a personal failure. When you understand the neurological patterns driving your behavior, your struggle starts to make sense. And from that place of clarity, you can begin to work with your brain instead of against it building discipline in a way that feels doable, sustainable, and empowering. If you’re ready to finally follow-through so you can experience the results you’ve been wanting, this talk is for you!

 For FREE Resources, 📖 Book Link, 📝 Quizzes, 👚 Self-Love Merch Shop, 🗣️ 1:1 Mentoring and more: https://www.linktr.ee/kristenbrownauthor

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Transcript

Opening thoughts

Kristen 0:01

Ho ho ho. Self-discipline. I believe that self-discipline is something that we all grapple with from time to time. Do you have anyone in your life who appears to be just so great at self-discipline? And you might have thought, why aren't I like that? Well, I'm sure at some point in their life they weren't like that either. In fact, I'm thinking of somebody in particular right now in my life who, truth be known, was very lazy. In fact, they called themselves lazy. And they were chasing distraction and dopamine hits. But there's something that I see in this person, and it happens every time I've watched it, and it blows my mind. And that is when they make a decision to do the thing that they've been putting off or distracting from. They get to it and they prevail. So I've often thought about self-discipline, what it means, where it comes from, why are we sometimes more disciplined than other times? What's going on within the brain? Is this really about willpower? Is this about a propensity to just be lazy? That's just part of who we are. Or is there something else going on here? Hello, everyone, and welcome to Empower Hour with KP. I'm Kristen Brown, a personal development and self-healing author, healer, and mentor. And I am the author of the international number one bestseller, The Recovering People Pleaser, a spiritual guide to reclaim your true worth and attract the love you deserve. Through a blend of lived wisdom, neuroscience, and universal truths, I help people rediscover their true worth and reclaim their personal power. My motto is simple: all change happens on the inside first, and when you change your inner world, you change your life. And that's exactly what we're going into today. How many of you notice that you'll do something for a period of time and then you fall off? Or you just stop completely. And at that point, you might beat yourself up, or you think there's something wrong with you. You might even throw in the towel and say, forget it, I just can't do this. You're probably feeling frustrated, maybe ashamed, or just plain stuck. Like something about you is a failure. Something is wrong with you. What if consistency wasn't all about willpower or the idea that we're just being lazy? What if there is something deeper at play here? Something that's going on behind the scenes, that's quietly running the show, that is shaping your habits and my habits and our choices without even realizing it. But here's the relief. Those patterns aren't permanent. They are not proof that you're broken, you're weak, you're lazy, or you're incapable. They are simply information. They are data about how your brain and nervous system has been wired over time. And that means they can be changed. And once you start to see it and understand it and work with it, a new sense of ease will begin to show up. And then all of a sudden, following through doesn't feel like such of a battle such a battle. And you can start to feel like you're capable, and you can feel that you can trust yourself. Self-discipline isn't just a personality trait, it is a brain-based skill that we train over time. And when we understand what our brain is doing, self-discipline stops feeling like a moral issue or a worthiness issue. Like, why am I like this? And starts becoming more strategic. And that is, how do I work with my wiring? So, what is actually happening in the brain when it comes to self-discipline? You guys know I geek out on this stuff because I love how the brain works. And I also love that the brain is neuroplastic, which means we can rewire that little bugger. We're not done, we're not stuck. We do, we think we are, we do. We organically think we are stuck. This is just the way that we are, until we start to realize that we have a say in all of this and that the brain is neuroplastic. It is actually changeable, it is rewirable. So, at a simple level, self-discipline is basically a tug of war between two systems. The first part is the quote-unquote, do what feels good now system. And I am guilty of this, and I know many other people that are guilty of this. In fact, the motivation and inspiration for this talk today came from a conversation that I was having with somebody who is struggling with self-discipline. And I thought, you know, this is really a worldwide thing. This isn't just, you know, four people in the state of Arizona that are dealing with this. This is all over the place. And then I went within and started asking myself the same thing on my walk this morning. I was like, where are you not disciplined? Because I consider myself, interestingly enough, a very self-disciplined person. And then I thought, well, there's this and there's that, and well, and there's this over here. So, you know, even those of us who pride ourselves on being very disciplined individuals doesn't mean we're perfect. It means there might be certain areas that we're getting it done, certain areas that we have learned to override, or we have now developed the wins and it just feels good. Like we're getting the other side of it. We're getting the pluses and the bonuses from the thing that, you know, the discipline that we put into place. So it kind of keeps that train rolling, which is a really good thing. But then there's other areas that we haven't. Maybe the stakes aren't high enough. Maybe, you know, we just override it for certain reasons, which I'm gonna get into, by the way, because they're very powerful reasons why we tend to override this. And they're very quote unquote normal. We're all experiencing this, you guys. All right, so the first system is the do what feels good now system. And this involves our brain's reward circuitry. And this is especially the dopamine pathways. A lot of people are following things that feel good, and these things push you towards comfort, which is kind of the stay stuck feeling. We just keep doing the same thing over and over again because there's a comfort involved in it. It could also be that it's not just comfort, meaning that we're not stepping into the unknown, but also it's just a way that we actually comfort ourselves. We are self-soothing in a way that is not serving the long-term goals. It's keeping us stuck. It can also be about immediate pleasure, right? Especially if we're feeling emotional, or we got a lot of things going on, or we're tired, or exhausted, whatever. It's like, I just need to feel something good right now. And this is not always conscious. It's not like we sit there and say, I need to go feel good right now. Let me go find something that feels good. It's that the brain just is going to that. Remember, it's a system. The brain's going to how can I feel good right now? How can I have immediate pleasure? And by the way, this is where a lot of addictions come from. Okay, think about that. They come from that just that knee-jerk response to go feel good right now. So we pick up the beer, we go pick up the porn, we pick up, you know, we get on Amazon and shop, you know, whatever it might be, food. So this is where this can happen. The feel-good system can also come into place by avoiding effort or discomfort. So if we know that this thing is going to take a quite amount of effort and it might be uncomfortable, and we're not going to like it. Maybe even like lifting weights, you know, that can be uncomfortable to people. Then by the way, you guys, I don't love strength training. I've done it since I'm 21, 2, 3, somewhere in there, years old. It's the first time I ever joined a gym. And it's not my favorite thing to go push weights, by the way. Like, yay, I get to go push some heavy weights and make these ridiculous faces in the gym because I'm not a person that can lift heavy weight and then sit there with this like beautiful smile on my face. I'm grunting, my face looks all screwed up, you know, especially now post-menopause when it is really encouraged to lift heavy. So now I'm lifting heavy and it's not pretty. But at any rate, that's another story. I do it. So this system is fast, it's emotional, and it's automatic. It's like a boom. I'm gonna go chasing what feels good now. And there's a lot of reasons why this can come into place, which I'm not gonna get into all the reasons, but this could be from traumatic experiences, it could be the way the brain is wired, and it is basically the self-soothing that they're looking for. There's a lot of reasons why this comes into place. The second system is, because remember, this is a tug of war between two systems that are happening within the brain. The second one is the quote, do what matters long-term system. Now, this is largely governed by the prefrontal cortex. And this handles planning, it handles decision making, it handles delayed gratification, it handles staying aligned with our goals. And this system is slower, it's more thoughtful, and this requires energy. So, this is a system that we actually have to put into place. We got to be conscious about this part of the system. Where the first one is that knee-jerk response, autopoly, automatic response to I don't like the way I'm feeling, I'm gonna go do this thing. That's very, very simple terms. So the second system is to do what matters long term. And like I say many times, and I think I actually said it yesterday, short-term gratification equals long-term pain. Okay, that's the first system where delayed gratification equals long-term gain. I'll say those again for anybody who wants to write them down. Short-term gratification equals long-term pain. Delayed gratification equals long-term gain. So when we delay that gratification, we can use eating as an example. When we can delay the, you know, I want to have some sweets and or we delay having the sweets or stop having the sweets, well, we're eventually going to get the long-term gain, right? We're gonna start to drop some pounds. But when we do that short-term gratification, I'm just gonna eat these sweets, then you know what happens is we have long-term pain. The weight stays on. That's just a really short example. But this can go all over our life. It's not just in one area. So, self-discipline is about strengthening our ability to let the prefrontal cortex override the impulse system. Now, did you hear the key word here? Strengthening. I want you to look at this as strength training. So we go into the gym, first time we haven't been there in a long time, and we're weak. When I first start doing lunges, you guys, because you know, you've done lunges, you know. You know that you do some lunges and you can't sit on the toilet for two or three days afterwards. It is so painful, right? Well, when I first start doing lunges after it's been a while in the gym, I don't use weights. I just do two passes of lunges and call it a day because I know what I'm gonna feel like. The next time, you know, I do that for a while and then I start using weights. I use five pounds, nothing much. And then after a while, I use more, and after a while, I you know, I increase them. Eventually, I build up the strength to handle whatever size weights I'm using at that time. And I'm using this as an example because recently, upon listening to just some weight loss experts and menopause experts, and they keep pushing the heavy weights. I was always in that question mark area of, well, how many reps does that mean? Because I'm still old school doing the the three sets of 10 to 12 reps. And they said, six to eight. You should be able to do six to eight. Eight is failure. And I was like, oh, and guess what, you guys? I kind of like that more. Because 10 to 12 reps like 11, 12, you know. And I thought, well, this is great. I can just use heavier weights and I can do less reps, but they're gonna matter. They're gonna matter more. But the thing here is that there's this, I'm we're strengthening, right? We're working towards something. That's the same thing that's gonna happen when we start wanting to train our brain. So give yourself grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, grace, grace. Because it's not gonna be super easy at first. It's gonna start slow, it's gonna start small, and I'm gonna get into all that. I'm gonna share that with you guys. So this is allowing and connecting with the prefrontal cortex to override the system. But here's the catch. And this is a big catch. And this catch matters, and this catch has mattered to me, and it has changed things for me and made me feel I'm gonna say, quote unquote, weaker, weaker in the moments that I needed to choose something or I wanted to choose something better. And that is parts of our brain are gonna get weaker when we are tired, we are stressed, we are overwhelmed, or we are emotionally triggered. I want to let that sit with you. Parts of the brain get weaker when we are tired. Actually, that part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, gets weaker when we are tired, stressed, overwhelmed, or emotionally triggered. So when people say, I just need more discipline, what's often happening is their brain is in a state where discipline is biologically harder. Please hear that. This is why the self-care aspect, this is why emotional health, all of these things work cohesively together. This is what I've noticed about me. And this is why I'm such a what I call sleep Nazi. That's probably not PC to say the word Nazi, but you guys are getting the gist of what I'm saying. Hey, Seinfeld called it the soup Nazi, okay? So don't throw tomatoes at me. When I'm tired, yeah, I do not make good choices when I'm tired at all. I will just like, ugh, I'm just gonna eat a half a box of gluten-free cookies. You know, it's like there's a DGAF, if you guys know what that means. Feeling that accompanies when I'm tired. When I'm overwhelmed, when I'm emotionally, I'm gonna say triggered, I'm gonna say emotionally heightened. Okay, because it's not necessarily that I'm triggered, I've had a trigger. It's that I'm just, I'm done, you know, I'm done emotionally. These things can definitely impact the way I make decisions in my life. I will tend to look weaker or uh lazy, if you will, and you know, being lazy with my food choices or whatever it might be. So super important for us to understand that there are reasons that this comes into place. All right. This is not just you suck. It is not just I suck, or that we are undisciplined. There's reasons why this is happening, and this is just one of them. All right, we're gonna take a little break. This is perfect. We're gonna bring up our beloved sister, Amani. Thank you for joining, sis. Welcome, welcome. Glad to hear from you.

Imani 15:43

This is a great conversation, um, especially when you're also used to overcompensating, or you're the overachiever, or you're trying to people please. The same thing comes into effect too, is like, well, I'm just not disciplined to say no, or I'm just not disciplined to speak up for myself, or I'm not just disciplined insert statement here. And I know for myself that was true. You know, when I was doing things in the vein for other people, or because I thought that's what I needed to do, I wasn't really disciplined. I really wasn't structured. I really wasn't fully present because I'm still fighting with myself in my mind of why are you doing this? You know, your your ac capacity, your plate is full, you got all this going on. Why? But once I started slowing down and really listening to my body, and that is key when you're dealing with chronic illness like myself, is that you really have to be in tune with your body because we get into that chronic state because we're not in tune with our body, we're not listening to it because we're in the hustle and bustle of society, we're in the you know, FOMO, you know, subscription, and we feel like we have to be present, we've got to be available, we've got to do this, we've got to be over here, you know, we'll sleep till we die. That's a favorite term I hear lately. Or I've got six jobs, I don't get tired. Yes, you do.

Kristen 17:10

You're just not in touch with it, like you're saying.

Imani 17:13

Yeah, but we don't even realize because we're on that hamster wheel of routine, that we don't even realize we're doing it until our body sits us down for us. Because it's gonna be nice to us for a while. Like, okay, I'm sending you this yellow flag, sending you another yellow flag, hey, hey, filing for red flag. Nope, you're not paying attention. Hello, sit down. And that's when you have no choice but to focus, but to listen, but to be in tune with what your body has been trying to tell you all that time. And the thing about that is don't be ashamed of that point. The thing is now you realize it. And then it's like, now what are you gonna do differently so that you don't get to this position again, that you don't get burnt out, that you don't get overwhelmed, that you don't get frazzled and ready to burn the bridges down. What is it that you're gonna do differently? And I think when we give ourselves more grace, like you're saying, we're better able to open ourselves up to go through trial and error to figure out what that looks like for us. Instead of looking at it from the viewpoint of, well, what is society telling me? What are my friends telling me? What is my family telling me? What is it that yourself, what are you telling yourself? What is really within your bandwidth? And I know especially for me, my thing was still looking back at who I used to be before my first diagnosis. Well, that was over 20-something years ago. I'm a completely different person than who I was back then. I wouldn't have looked, I didn't like myself back then when I reflect on it. I'm like, yeah, I wasn't a very nice person 20-something years ago. I was very toxic, I was very negative. I made Eeyore look nice. That's just how negative I was because I was holding on to everything that happened to me, all the drama, all the relationship pitfalls, all of that. But I didn't work on it, I just kept amplifying it until finally someone had to ask me, Don't you think of anything nice in your life? I said, No. And that was a wake-up call. Wow. So when people meet me now, they could not believe I used to be that type of person. And like I was, but I had to figure out I was the common denominator in every situation. It was me.

Kristen 19:31

It was so Mani, how did the discipline, self-discipline come into play? Because obviously it did, because breaking the habit of being what you're calling, you're calling toxic and negative, that was you had to break that. You had to override that, and there was discipline involved. So you're gonna time out. You want to come back in and answer that question? Yeah. Pop off, come back. Yeah, we're gonna pop her out and pop her back in again to answer that question because this is not something that all of a sudden she made a decision and it was there. This required her to work with herself on some capacity. And I would love to know maybe some systems you put into place, or did you leave notes around your house? What was a prayer? What you know, what worked for you to help you override that negative programming that you had, because it is programming, and to to bring you to where you are today. I would say the first step is I had to stop being defensive.

Imani 20:28

Not all of the input I was receiving from others wasn't negative. It was insightful because they could see in me what I didn't see in myself yet. They knew I could get better. They knew that there was greater for me, but I had to come into that for myself.

Kristen 20:48

So how did that happen for you? Because it was an automatic reaction to be defensive. So, what did you say to yourself when the information started coming?

Imani 20:57

Well, the wake-up call was when my pastor had to tell me my life wasn't about me and how my life was about the other people who are tied to me, waiting for me to get my break so that I can help them get theirs. And I could not have any excuse to put up with if I was to go back to glory that day and tell God why I chose to stay offended, you know, jealous, bitter, all of that, and cause all those people to perish because I did not allow myself to be free. And so I was holding up their freedom. That was the big wake-up call because yes, I had a chip on my shoulder. So I had to start slowly catching myself when I would start talking. I had to get to a place when I actually stopped being defense mode. Like I'm I'm thinking up my answer. I'm not really listening to you. I'm thinking about my comeback on you. It is gonna be fucked. I had to learn to slow down and actually listen to what's being said and not get defensive and emotional and reactional. Because, like you said, that that short-term gratification is going to cause pain because you're going to say things you don't mean, you're going to do things you don't mean. And now you got to do damage control because you are going off that that just quick reaction. But when you become intentional and slow down and actually don't think about what your statement's going to be, but actually listen to what that person is saying. And then also look at the nonverbal cues too. Which is what we used to do. We sat we sat and talked to people in person. We didn't just talk to them on the phone or through a text. Look at all the nonverbal cues too. And more often than not, they're not trying to be intentional to make you feel bad. They just want better for you. And now it had to become, did you want also better for yourself? I didn't like being negative, but that's all I was used to. That's all I knew. When people come into your life to show you, well, what if it's different? What if it's better? We have to give ourselves permission to take that chance. A lot of times we're so afraid to take that chance or do something different because we're comfortable. It's what we're used to. It's like that fuzzy blanket that Linus walks around with on you know peanuts because it's what's so you're used to. But something new pushes us into the uncomfort zone. And human nature is I'm running from anything that's uncomfortable. I want to be safe. I'm going to stay over here. I don't want to deal with it. But I've learned that when I've opened myself up to those opportunities to try something new, I actually became better.

Brain first approach to self-discipline - #1 Regulate NS

#2 Use dopamine strategically

#3 Shrink the gap between intention and action

#4 Make decisions ahead of time

Kristen 23:36

Mm-hmm. Yes. Thank you, Amani. Thank you so much for that share. Awesome. Appreciate that so much. Okay, we have a back channel message from Sally. Sally said, When I'm stressed or overwhelmed, my body begs me for junk foods and sweets, things I ordinally can easily avoid. Like right now, tax time. I always put it off because I hate it so much and suffer the consequences. Yes, I think that is a completely raw, real, and vulnerable share. And I sure there's tons of people that can relate to that. Oh, yeah, I can for sure. All right, you guys. So we're gonna dive into how to cultivate self-discipline. And this is through the brain first approach. Okay. This is not just, hey, this is what we're gonna do, rah-rah. We're gonna do this and do that. No, no, no. We're gonna talk about really what positions us in a fabulous place to really be self-disciplined because you know there are things that are contributing factors. Number one, what am I gonna say, you guys? You know, if you've listened to me for five minutes, you know. Regulate the nervous system. Regulate the nervous system. If your body feels unsafe or overwhelmed, your discipline will drop. It's not a question, it's going to happen. That's because your brain is shifting into survival mode, which is the fight, flight, freeze mode. And our long-term thinking goes offline. We're only in right here, right now. That's what it does. All of that future stuff that could possibly happen, all those goals that we have, everything is out the window because what is survival mode? It means something your nervous system is activated, something is threatening right now. So the brain doesn't think about those other things. And it just goes into instant gratification. So the foundational discipline to this looks like getting enough sleep, eating regularly, taking breaks, and calming your nervous system through breath work, walking, presence, and meditation. This is neurologically preparing yourself for self-discipline. You guys know that sleep is my huge thing. Eating regularly is a huge thing for me, which what that means is don't let yourself get overhungry. Don't like go so long that now you're starving and you're just gonna grab whatever. This is means about taking breaks and resting and about breath work, walking, practicing presence and meditation. I really try to meditate every single day. If I don't for some reason get to it in the day, I will do it before I fall asleep at night. Sometimes I take 15 minutes in the middle of the day and just kick back, and there's just several things that I do in that regard. I I repeat mantras, sometimes it's breathing, sometimes it's just sitting there listening. You know, there's all kinds of ways that I do that. But knowing when I do that, I am slowing things down and I can make the best possible choices. All right, the second thing is the brain first approach is to use dopamine strategically. Strategically. Dopamine isn't just for pleasure, it's for motivation. Your brain is always asking what is worth the effort. If scrolling or snacking gives faster dopamine than your goal, you're going to lose that battle. So pair hard tasks with small rewards. Okay, whatever that reward might be. And I'm even going to tell you if it's a hug or a pat on the back that you give yourself, your brain is going to register that. You know, the other day my husband did something. It was uh, I don't want to say how'd he's breaking. He's he's just uh shifting in a certain area in his life and growing in a particular way. And he told me the thing he did, and it was on the phone. I said, Wow, great job, hon. I'm like, no, did you hug yourself? And he's like, Well, I'm driving. And I said, Okay, you know, then he puts what he said he put one arm up and I said, Now be intentional. Really let yourself know. Tell your brain, give your brain a reward for that thing, because that thing was out of his programming. It was out of his comfort zone, also. But he did it. And he did it because it was the right thing to do and he knows it's the right thing to do. So this is also about celebration, saying, wow, I really kicked some booty right there. This is what kudos to you is all about. Celebrating all your wins, all your small wins. You are giving yourself hits of dopamine in the positive way. And that is going to motivate you to want to continue to do the thing that it feels good. Because sometimes we'll do something and we don't even congratulate ourselves or say, great job, or even notice. We just go on to the next thing. Well, the brain didn't register it as this is something that is pleasurable. So make it register in your brain. You are training your brain to see effort as a reward. It's going to be rewarding, all right? And this also means to reduce the cheap, the cheap dopamine before important tasks. So this is, gosh, we've heard about this a lot in the world, but those small hits of dopamine, whatever they are for you, just reducing them, limiting them. I think I told you guys this before that my daughter has an app on her phone that only allows her to get into social media. How she has it set up is like 15 minutes a day, or she can only get into it when she goes and finds this particular card, and then you have to tap it on the phone, and that will let her into social media. How cool is that? Because she had a social media addiction. And she was like, I'm doing this way too much. I'm wasting too much of my time. I need to figure this out. She found a way. That was the way for her. For me, it was moving the, and you know, when you open your phone, you have all of your apps on the front page, and you can scroll to the left, and then there's other apps and scroll again. There's more apps. I put my apps not on the first page so that I don't see them. So if there's not a little red circle with a four in it or something, I just move it. I've also turned off sounds to it. This works for me. This works for me. I also don't really have a social media thing. I've really not been, I think I've said this before. It's for me, it's kind of like, let me go make sure, see if anybody sent me a message. But that too was working against me because it wasn't about dopamine. It was about, I don't want people to think I'm ignoring them. So then I said, you know what? Let them think I'm ignoring them. I'll get to it when I can get to it. So we're gonna reduce the cheap dopamine and we're gonna start moving in purposeful dopamine in a rewarding kind of way when we're doing the things. Now, I remember back in the day when my daughter got a good grade, or you know, it was spring break, or I don't know, something would happen. One of her friends' parents would always take that child to go get sugar. And Remy, my youngest, wanted that. And she kept saying, Well, so-and-so's mom does this. And I said, But that's not how I do. Because I didn't want her training her brain, which it was kind of already trained that way from my mom. My mom was a sugar junkie. Her brain was already kind of trained that way. Let's go get a suite, let's go get a this. Like that is the reward. I wanted her to be rewarded a different way. I wanted her to reward herself. And so we worked on that. That, you know, no, the the reward is I did a great job, or this is over, or it's completed, or it's was fun, whatever it might be. Okay. The third thing is to shrink the gap between intention and action. This is really good. This is a biggie. The longer you wait, the more your emotional brain interferes. So that's why acting quickly matters. Count down and start. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Mel Robin says this. Doesn't she have the 54321 method, something like that? I think I heard her say that once. And what I think she was in a place, again, paraphrasing, I could screw this up, you guys, don't quote me. But I think she was in a place, something to the effect of where she was drinking too much and she wasn't getting at getting out of bed, or something to this capacity. And then she just had to start. So she gave herself a countdown. Am I correct? Send up emojis if I'm correct. If I'm not, feel free to correct me on the back channel. Okay. Thanks, guys. So she started the 54321 method. And this is this really works because you're actually giving yourself a countdown and then you're doing the thing immediately. The longer we wait, the more the emotional brain is going to interfere, the more that we're gonna talk ourselves out of it, the more we're gonna say, why bother? Or I'll start tomorrow or the next day, or what have you. What's interesting about this is it takes some discipline to formulate the discipline. So the discipline is when regulating your nervous system. Yeah, it's gonna be gonna need to be disciplined to do that. You're gonna have to start somewhere using dopamine strategically. These are systems and tools and practices that we can put in place and then shrinking the gap, giving yourself the 54321. I feel like that also works when we're doing the delay of the gratification. Like right now, I'm really feeling I want to get on. I'm not an avid shopper, so this is not me, but I'm I'm feeling the desire to get on my favorite shopping websites and start shopping. Okay, sit with it. Count down from 20, count down from 60. I don't know, figure it out for yourself what works for you. You know, let that initial feeling pass and ask yourself, is this what I really want to do? Is this gonna be helpful to me? Or what can I do first? And this is this leads me into number number four, which is make decisions ahead of time. Your brain uses energy to make decisions. So the more you leave to the moment, like right now, right now, right now, knee jerk, knee jerk, the more you're likely to default to some type of comfort. It's how we're wired, guys. I know it's crazy that we have to do all this. But again, Earth school, we wouldn't learn anything in it if it was really easy, right? So the more you leave to the moment, the more you're gonna default to comfort. So you can pre-decide things like I am going to work out at 8 a.m. I'm not gonna do anything else until I get my walk-in. Or I'm going to write this proposal or return all my emails before I check my phone. Just add in something that you're going to do first. And this reduces the load on your prefrontal cortex because you've already made a decision. If you leave it to the last second, then the decision might come through stress, through overwhelmed, through tired, through instant gratification, whatever it might be. So make those decisions ahead of time. This does me well. This serves me well when it comes to, let's say, going to bed earlier because I like to get up early. I love mornings. Boy, do we have a gorgeous morning. Ah, it was 61 degrees, low humidity. Wesley and I walked for three miles. Husband caught up with us at some point. It was great. It was so beautiful. But that's my thing. This is what I'm gonna do. I'm doing it now, and this is how it's gonna go. And then the reward is how I felt afterward. It was like, oh, this feels so good, et cetera, et cetera. So, number four is to make decisions ahead of time and reducing the load on your prefrontal cortex. We're bringing up our beloved truth. Thank you, Truth, for joining us. Welcome.

Truth 35:57

Um, I love this topic and everything that you're saying in it as usual. And it's interesting because I've had a really like interesting reaction that I just want to share in case anybody else has felt it. So, like yesterday we were kind of talking about the message and how like you have to get it from the right person in the right way, all that stuff. So, like when I saw the name of your talk today, something kind of got tight in my chest, but I wasn't sure what. But I was like, oh, but like, you know, I want to hear what Kristen has to say. Obviously, I'm gonna get on the call or on the talk. And then, like, I'm listening, I'm listening, I'm loving everything that you're saying. And then I realized every time you say the word discipline, my chest was tightening. And so realized for me the meaning that I have associated with the word discipline. Like when I kind of went inside, it's like my inner child is like over in a corner crying, basically, like as the real goal of that word. And so, like, as you've been talking, I've been butterfly tapping on my chest to help like regulate my nervous system, to like assign kind of like the a new like neural pathway or association with it. And like, I haven't been like forcing like you have to listen to this. It's like I want to listen to this talk. And the word discipline I've realized is slightly triggering for me. So now it's like, okay, how can I reframe that? How can I calm my nervous system? How can I be okay with this word that doesn't have the same meaning for other people? This is just the meaning that I personally attach to it. So, how can I restructure this meaning in this moment? And I also, what I did in my brain is I was like, I'm gonna change it to enhancement in my mind. The brain and cultivating self-enhancement. And so, like every time I've looked down at the screen, it's like I'm reading cultivating self-discipline. And then, like, in my mind, I just mark it out and like rewrite enhancement. Just because, and like I guess the biggest like lesson in it is just because I have a meaning attached to a word that brings up something negative for me, I could have missed the opportunity for this wonderful talk because every single point that you were bringing up, I'm just like, yes, yes, yes. But instead, I got curious and I explored and I was like, oh gosh, like what is making that feeling happening right now? How can I regulate this? What can I do about it? So if anyone else has had that reaction to that word, I just wanted to share that and also just like maybe if you've been feeling that tension, try to reframe it and go back and listen to the talk again because like the quality of this talk is so, so good. So thank you for that.

Kristen 38:58

You're welcome, Truth. And I love that you brought this up because this talk or any other talk, there's sometimes words that are going to give us some type of emotional or somatic reaction to the word. And I think it's um so important that you brought this up because first of all, she noticed, truth noticed that she's feeling some kind of way about this word, even though she's enjoying it, but she's like, What there's something going on here that's opposing, what's happening? And then she chose to tap through it so she could regulate it, and then she chose to change the word. But her other choice would have been something doesn't feel good here, I'm out. And that tends to be what we do automatically. You know, a lot of the times we'll be like, Oh, I don't like this, and we're gone. We the the brain just moves us away from the situation. But this is what I was talking about in the beginning is we got control of this stuff, you guys. We just have to be aware. And then we have to make a better choice for ourselves.

Truth 39:53

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for this talk. I'm like loving all the gems that you're sharing. And the like not giving up, still trying, being curious, knowing that like just because you try something once and it doesn't work, it doesn't mean that it will never work. It might mean that it doesn't work right now, in this moment, in this whatever. It might mean that you just have to like give it some time to set in. Like it might mean a lot of different things. And obviously, like if you have that strong, like, this is not for me intuition, then yeah, take what you need and leave the rest. But like it's definitely like worth continuing to like try and be curious and explore. I think like when it comes to any technique, especially the ones that you're suggesting.

#5 Train discomfort tolerance

#6 Reinforce identiy

#7 Expect lapses and recover quickly

Actionable strategies to start

Closing thoughts

Kristen 40:41

I agree. Thank you so much, Truth. I appreciate you. You know, she's reminded me of something when she was saying that just try it, just keep trying something. I sent a meme this morning to one of my groups, and it was two bullseyes, like two targets, you know, like arrow targets. And the left target had a bunch of arrows in it, but nothing in the center. And the right side, the right target was blank. It had no arrows in it. And it says, it's better to do this. I'll find the meme so I can read it to you guys rather than try to figure it out. Let me just scroll very quickly here. It says, on the left side where all the arrows are on the target, but they're not in the center, it said, This isn't failure. And then on the right side, which is the empty target standing there, it said, This is. Now, you guys know how I feel about failure. All right. I don't like the word failure, but I liked the picture that it was depicting. Basically, it was saying, just try. Just try something, just get moving a little bit in some direction. That's all. That's it. It's better to try something and not hit the mark than to not try. Okay, the next one is number five. And again, these are the the brain first approach to cultivating self-discipline. The next one is train discomfort tolerance. This is a big deal. This is at the core of discipline. Hold on, you guys, I need to put my turn my notifications off because uh family group chat is going a little wild right now. Okay, there we go. The brain sees discomfort as something to avoid. We just talked about that, didn't we? Hey, by the way, truth, you obviously have some discomfort tolerance because you wouldn't have been able to do what you did with changing all that around. So good on you, sis. Um, the brain sees discomfort as something to avoid, but growth requires staying with it. Okay. So, in the example of what Truth was saying, is that she's listening, she's loving it, she's all in, she's like, rah-rah, this is great. And then uh there's that little discomfort that is coming up. And she sat with it. She sat with that discomfort and she's like, What is this? I got curious. I asked what it is, where it's coming from, where it's related to. She found it, she recognized it, and she started working with it. So, this is what it is: it's build some discomfort, some tolerance to discomfort. I have to tell myself, I'm not gonna die, nothing's gonna happen here. I'm just a little bit uncomfortable. There's nothing weird, it's all good. So we do this, we tolerate this, or I'm sorry, we build this by doing things when we don't feel like it. And we're feeling that ooh. Now, of course, this is always gonna throw in the disclaimer to trust your intuition, trust your instincts, whatever. Am I meant to be here? Am I not? Okay, this is not all-encompassing. We're talking about in the form of self-discipline right now. That's it. There's things that are in context and to certain situations that we need to keep that in mind. So this doesn't mean you call tolerate discomfort to everything in your life, because sometimes discomfort is telling you, get the heck out. Talking about in self discipline, it's gonna be a little uncomfortable. So it's doing the things we really don't feel like it, like. I'm getting up at 6 a.m. and I'm going on a walk. You don't really feel like it, right? It's uncomfortable. You want to stay in bed. It's cozy in there. It's going to be a little uncomfortable. Do it. Get up. Go. It's sitting with our urges instead of reacting. And this is what I kind of mentioned earlier about doing the countdown. I'm going to start doing this when I'm tired and it comes to sweets. I actually have started doing this, just not super intentionally, because I can feel myself at times. I'm relaxed in the evening or watching some type of show and I just want to go to the kitchen. I think I like chewing also. I've come to notice it's chewing. It's not necessarily sweets. I just like the act of chewing, or maybe it's a hand, you know, hand-to-mouth fixation. I don't know. So I've decided, okay, well, if I really feel this and I really want to chew, is it because I'm hungry? What's going on? What's really happening here? I have organic papitas that are roasted and salted. And I'm funny with salt, you guys. So you you can imagine. I have a towel with me and I wipe the salt off. I rub it between my fingers of papitas. I don't mind a little bit of salt, but darn, I don't want to be three pounds heavy the next day because I retained water. Oh God, I know I sound gross right now. I'm sorry. So this is what this is really about. This is about um sitting with the urge and going, what is it that I want? Is this because of hunger in this particular case? What's happening here? Is this self-soothing? Do I want to soothe? I have even gone as far as to say, I'm gonna go get papitas and you know what? I could use some extra fiber. I haven't really had much fiber today. I'll bargain with myself to make it okay. Now, papitas are low in fat and calories and all those type of things, unlike some nuts are, but they are a seed and you know what have you. So sometimes I'll I'll work with it myself. But the point is that I'm slowing down and I'm not just knee-jerk responding and going and grabbing something. I'm proud of myself for that. I'm gonna work more on that with for myself. And this is also about the discomfort of finishing tasks, even when they're boring or they're hard or they're tedious, whatever it might be. Just allow it to be. There's things that I do with my business that are not my favorite things. Let me tell you, when you when you own your own business in the way that I do as a uh content creator, influencer, whatever you want to call us these days, I've gone to so many webinars that they're like, oh yeah, you're the tech wizard, you're the graphic artist, you're the copywriter, you're the the um, what do you call it, the website designer. We become all of those things, okay, when you're building your own business in the beginning. And, you know, it not all that's comfortable. And some of it's boring, and some of it is I have to research the hell out of because I'd how what? The other day I said to my husband, he's like, What did you do? I said, Oh, I did a bunch of new stuff on my um website. And I said, Who knew, Doug? Who knew that I was gonna become a website designer? Like, not something that I would ever think, but guess what? I'm kind of enjoying it because it's creative. Isn't that interesting? Anyway, I digress. Every time that you do things and you don't feel like it, you sit with the urges instead of reacting and you finish tasks, even when they suck. You're teaching your brain that this is uncomfortable, but it's okay. It's uncomfortable, but you're safe. And then I want to circle back to giving yourself that reward. Giving yourself that I sat with the fact, I looked at my website several times afterwards and said, Oh, this looks good. I like this. And then I sat with it. Really sat with it and felt the reward from it because there was times and this was not rewarding, you guys. It was so tedious, it was so hard. I didn't know what I was doing. It took days to figure things out. Look at me now, look at me now. Okay, number six is to reinforce identity. Your brain builds patterns based on identity. So every time we follow through, we are strengthening the identity within ourselves that I am someone who does what I say. And that's integris. I am an integrous person. I follow through, I do what I say. Over time, discipline becomes less effortful because it becomes who you are. Remember when I said that I'm a person who I see myself as a very self-disciplined person. I really do. And guess what? I don't even know. I can see it in my book if I looked. But I have a chapter in my first book or a subchapter in here that talks about self-discipline. I don't remember where it was, and I don't know if I can find it quickly. But I actually talk about discipline. Like that we're going to need the dis, I think it's a subchapter somewhere. Anyway, I'm not finding it really quickly. But that's because that was really up, disciplining the mind. There we are. It is, yep, that was chapter nine, page 211. I have disciplining the mind. Because what did I have to do to heal my self-worth? To heal myself. I had to practice discipline. This is something that I am good at. I've done in many areas in my life, and I feel good about that. And there's some areas that I'm just not, or I'm working on it, or I'm getting there. We want to reinforce that identity. I am a disciplined person. With all those other places that I had to really work to be disciplined in, they're just remember, you guys have heard me say this so many times. They're just part of me now. They're just part of me now. I go to bed early, I get up, I go on my walks, I do this, I meditate, talk to God, I clear my mind. I win all the things that I talk about all the time. They've just become natural for me now. This is what's going to happen for you. It can't not. It's part of the brain. Number seven is to expect lapses in self-discipline and recover quickly. All right. Missing something once doesn't break your discipline. The story that you tell yourself does. If you go into, I failed again, I suck, this is never gonna get any better, why is everybody better than me, etc.? You name it. When you go into that, you're going to reinforce your old pattern. P Shaw. Don't do that. Instead, say, oh, this was just a lapse. Normalize it. Make it okay. Make it part of the system. Make it part of how this whole thing works. Then restart quickly. And the most important thing is to stay out of shame. You start beating yourself up, you're working against you. Shame contributes to our disempowered patterns. I say this repeatedly. When you shame yourself, you are actually creating more of what you don't want. Because it's going to reinforce the old pattern. Stay out of shame. Recognize it, normalize it, just the lapse. This happens. It's normal to all people. And then restart again. So let's say you slept in one morning and you didn't want your and you didn't go on your walk. And now you're like, oh, I slept in, I suck. You go down that hole, I suck, shame hole. What if you just say, you know what? I just think I really needed to sleep in today, but tomorrow I'm going to set my alarm again. I'm going to walk. I'm going to put myself to bed early. I'm going to walk. That's it. Don't add more to it. Don't make it more crazy. Don't blow it up. Leave it just as it is. Shame shuts down the part of your brain you need to move forward. Like I said, it will keep you stuck. So the deeper, long-lasting truth here is that a lack of discipline is often protective. It's not lazy. It's also programmed in some capacity. Your brain is trying to protect you from failure, judgment, burnout, or old emotional pain. Sometimes the real work isn't forcing the discipline. It's making yourself feel safe to do so. It's understanding how this works. It's understanding the pattern, it's understanding the brain. And it's putting things into place that will help you be more successful. How to start. These are actionable strategies to start to develop self-discipline. Start extremely small. Don't try to change everything at once. Focus on one small, tiny habit, such as doing the thing for five minutes. Okay? You do five minutes of work or you read one page. You just work on building consistency. That's it. First stop. The next one is to set non-negotiables, define small, mandatory daily actions that you will not allow excuses for, such as I will work out for 10 minutes every morning. Ten minutes. So small that you can't not do it. Okay. When I remember when I first started walking or started jogging, I've told you guys about this, I can't call it running. I don't let myself call it running because it doesn't look like running. It looks like a kind of a shuffle. When I first started, I was like, I'm gonna run to the to 100 feet. That was it. Done for the day. I walked the rest. That's it. Super, super small. I got to the place where I was running 5Ks consistently, doing them all the time, and doing them on the treadmill. And it was, it became easy and effortless because I allowed myself to start small. And this is utilize time blocking intervals, which means setting timers for 10 to 15 minutes. I'm going to do this and focus entirely on that. Then take a break if you need to. What I have noticed when I have, I've not set timers, but when I say, okay, I'm just going to go work on this for, you know, 30 minutes. Sometimes I get all involved in it. It gets really exciting and it gets fun and I'm thinking it's productive or I feel better or whatever it might be. And then I end up doing the thing longer. Next one is to identify your why. Yesterday I answered a question here on Noom Vibe that said something like, How do you practice mindful eating? I think it was. And I said, Well, I had to determine what my why was. My why was I wanted to lose weight. I had gained weight and menopause, period and menopause, and I wanted to lose weight. I determined what my why was. And then I started to implement things that supported that why, like being mindful of the portion size and how many sweets I was having a day, whether or not I was having a mocha in the morning, taking my time chewing, counting while I was chewing, sometimes to the point that the food's disintegrated. I don't have a big mouth, I don't take big bites. So, at any rate, identify your why. Remove temptations. This is very, very helpful. This is creating an environment where distractions are minimized or they're not easily accessible. Like my daughter did with getting that app on her phone because she had a huge distraction, addiction, if you will, to social media. So she got an app on her phone. She made it harder for her to get to do the thing. So removing temptations, practice self-compassion. Huge, huge. If you break your routine or you slack or you stop or whatever, don't quit entirely. Acknowledge that you slipped up, acknowledge that you messed up, learn from it, give yourself a whole lot of love, a whole bunch of grace, a whole bunch of self-compassion, and then get back to your routine. That's it. These things don't have to be big deals. Don't make them big deals. Because then you're gonna slip into the emotional response to the whole thing. And the next one is to establish routines. And this is to create consistent daily schedules for whatever that looks like. Like for me, in the wintertime, it's getting up at X amount of time and it's going to the gym. And in these months where it's lighter earlier, I'm going to bed earlier because it's getting lighter earlier and I love my morning so much. I'm getting up in my mornings, I'm going on my walks. I'm establishing routines. Then I come home, then I plan my noom vibe talk, then I give my noon vibe talk. And then after lunch, I either have a client or I have work that I do. That's how the whole thing works for me. I have like a little schedule. And if that schedule gets boring to me, I switch it up a little bit somehow. Thank you guys for listening today. I really truly appreciate Amani coming up and truth coming up and sharing everything that they had to share. I love when guests come up and share their insight and their truth and their experience with certain topics. So thank you so much for coming up and sharing today. Also, I want to let you guys know that if you are trying to build some habits in the self-love arena, then definitely go check out my self-love checklist. This is a really good checklist to have because, first of all, I explain all the things that are on the checklist. I give them little explanations, little definitions. And then it's a checklist that you can print out weekly. You just print it out, throw it up on your wall, put it on your nightstand, and just go through and check. What you're doing is one, is it's keeping it top of mind to love yourself because you know I believe self-love is the miracle cure. That's how we heal that inner unworthiness foundation that we have. That's how we build that foundation up and fill our worthiness cup is through self-love. Can also heal a whole bunch of trauma and other things as well. So by being mindful and saying, okay, I'm going to do this checklist, you read down it, and then you think during the day, have I done this? And then afterwards, you go and you put the little check marks in for your day. This is not about perfection. This is about accountability. This is about building a habit to love yourself. You can find the self-love checklist by clicking on my profile picture here, going where my link tree is, and it's on that list. There's also other free resources there, my book as well. The Empower Hour Survey. If you haven't filled that one out yet, I would love to hear from you. It is anonymous. If you're listening on another podcasting platform, it will be in the description. So go check that out, everyone. Big shout out and thank you to all of you who joined this conversation today, who tuned in, even if it felt uncomfortable, even if you felt your ego kicking up a fuss in some way, even if you thought, you know, maybe there's nothing in this for me, you stayed anyway. And that is something to be extremely proud of. Give yourself a hug, squeeze yourself hard, pat on the back, tell yourself with intention, you did an amazing job. I am here to help you get yourself back in the power position of your life. This is about you becoming sovereign. This is about you loving and trusting yourself so well that you will never allow others to ever treat you differently than that. And so that you can make empowered choices and decisions throughout your day for the highest good for everyone concerned. So much love to each and every one of you. Remember, you matter. Now go love yourself.