The Secret to Discipline
People say you need to go to school to succeed. You go to learn more about the world, how finance works, how cells reproduce , how to design a building - all so that we can effectively contribute to society. We learn about what’s around us. But what I don’t hear mentioned nearly enough is that you need to learn about YOURSELF too.
One arena of life that many have struggled with, including me, is physical discipline. Hundreds of thousands of Americans start a gym membership in January just to taper out in February or March. The lesson? Not so much that “you need to try harder,” but in my opinion, you need to be more realistic.
If you know from experience after multiple tries, as I did, that going to the gym every day fails after the second or third week, maybe it’s time to re-evaluate the goal. Why not save yourself tremendous frustration, and set a realistic expectation? Maybe you don’t enjoy the gym, maybe it’s a chore, like it was for me several years ago. Perhaps, playing a sport is a much more fulfilling activity, and that is a viable goal instead. For me, I really liked the idea of doing calisthenics - bodyweight exercises like pushups, pullups, situps, and pistol squats.
What did it for me was realizing this: some days I don’t feel like working out at all. How do I get past that?
Set realistic expectations.
“5 minutes of pushups is better than zero. Two minutes of situps are better than zero.” So I made a new goal:
“From now on, as long as I do 5 minutes of exercises, I will count that as a success”
Thus began the longest streak of working out in my entire life.
The funny thing is, my workout was almost ALWAYS longer than the 5-minute goal I had set for myself. I would start doing some squats or something, finish the 5 minutes, then realize I had so much left in me, or that I was actually ENJOYING the process. Starting, as they say, is the hardest part.
I realized I was onto something when I found a Youtube video of Terry Crews explaining his approach to discipline at the gym. His philosophy? Just show up:
“Go to the gym, and just sit there, and read a magazine, and then go home. And do this every day. Go to the gym, don’t even work out. Just GO. Because the habit of going to the gym is more important than the workout.”
So if you can realize that starting is the hardest part, and if you can change your expectations so that as long as you GET to the gym, or START doing pushups, or CHANGE into your shorts - THAT itself is the victory, you’ve already won. The rest is easy!
Terry Crews:
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2u4h7f/terry_crews_back_again_on_reddit_ama/co52d5s?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3