Why Discipline Keeps Slipping Through Your Fingers (And The Surprising Way To Make It Stick)

The counterintuitive approach that transformed my life after years of starting strong and failing hard

I've got a question for you: How many times have you promised yourself "this time will be different" only to find yourself back at square one a few weeks later?

Maybe it was that workout routine you were so excited about. Or the morning journaling habit. Or the diet that was finally going to help you reach your goals.

Discipline isn't magic, but it leads to a magical life! And today I want to show you how you can hold on to that magic when it starts slipping through your fingers again. It's time to take back control of your life and be the best version of yourself.

I know you're tired of feeling stuck, tired of being average. If you're ready to make a real change, it starts right here, right now. Today is the day when everything is going to change for the better.

I know that learning more about how to become disciplined is something you're really curious about. And if you've been following my previous newsletters, I'm sure you've already picked up a few insights and tricks to help you move closer to a more disciplined life. However, there are still some strategies that you may not have heard about before, which I'll share with you in just a moment. These are the strategies that really help make a difference.

If you stick with this newsletter until the end, I'm confident you'll experience several eye-opening moments. And it's those moments that hold the power to spark real, lasting change in your life.

The Cycle of Failure That Keeps You Stuck

I'll be honest, I'm no stranger to failure. Not too long ago, I wanted to get my life in order and came up with this rule that I was going to run three kilometers every morning. The first four days actually went pretty well. It felt great to be getting my life in order. But you can already guess what was going to happen. Yep. By the end of the week, I started to hear this voice in my head...it was telling me "You can't keep that up for long." And as much as I hated to admit it, this inner voice was right, because I stopped running just a couple days after that.

All my life, every attempt to discipline myself has gone this way. Every time I imposed a rule on myself, I stuck to it for a week or two. But then I fell off the wagon, and now that the cycle was repeating itself, I was at the end of my rope. I felt so angry. What the hell had I done wrong here?

The days after I stopped running, I'd sometimes stand by my window, and watch the regular runners passing by my neighborhood. They'd be out and about with smiles on their faces, looking so cool and purposeful, and I was so frustrated by that. What on earth were they doing right that I wasn't? Why were they able to run every morning, and not me?

After failing what I thought was a simple goal of running, I sort of gave up. I started telling myself that discipline wasn't for everyone and that you had to develop it as a kid or you could never have it. But, I would soon realize that this type of thinking was complete nonsense. Because let me tell you right now, it doesn't matter how messed up your life has been until now—it's never too late to find and develop discipline.

The "Rules vs. Values" Breakthrough That Changed Everything

It was sheer luck that I found the first piece of the discipline puzzle. It was from a random two-minute conversation with a friend who asked me one day, why I'd stopped running. After I explained and vented to her about how I could never stay consistent with my rules, she said:

"Why are you thinking of it like a rule? When I run, I do it just because I wanna be healthy."

And it's crazy because this was an instant "Aha!" moment for me. Something just clicked in my head that made me realize I was simply being way too obsessed with following rules. All this while, I had been thinking that discipline was about doing this and this and this to the letter—zero exceptions. But it turns out, this approach just made relapsing inevitable, and it's likely doing the same for you too!

So, that weekend, I took a walk and started thinking about what running really meant to me. Why did I want to run every day so badly? In the back of my mind, I knew my goal was to lose weight and get fit. But along the way, I realized my obsessive approach had buried and overshadowed my true motive. I had lost sight of the "why" behind everything I was trying to achieve.

I needed to focus more on the why and less on the rules. This instantly gave me the power to get up every morning for my run. Yes, there were days when I had to skip it, like when I was late to work, but I never had that crushing experience of "I failed again, there's no point trying anymore." You see, when I abandoned that mindset, consistency became so much easier for me. It simply became a part of who I was.

"You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." — Marcus Aurelius

It's amazing because the more I started living through this new perspective, the more I got in touch with my value system. This was a whole new world for me.

And this is so important because almost every critical aspect of your life depends on how consistent you can be. If you have goals about a great relationship, a great career, or a great body, you need that damn ability to stay consistent. This can only happen when you have control of your mind.

Marcus Aurelius famously said, "You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength." But, you and me? I think we've forgotten about this, and as a consequence, we've lost our strength.

And that's the question you should be asking yourself right now. "How do you find the power to be in control of your mind? This is something I'm still working on, but based on what's worked in my life, the biggest thing you can do is...