Biggest lessons from Power of Discipline - Daniel Walter

Some people would argue that self discipline is inherited and I'm sure there are genetic links like with most things however its definitely a skill you can improve if you're willing to put the work in - just like a muscle.

Delayed Gratification

I think one thing I wanted to highlight is the importance of practicing delayed gratification which is the ability to be able to resist potential temptations which provide instant or quick reward in order to gain long term rewards for example the difference between saying no to a piece of cake which will be nice in the moment in order to reach your goal fitness in 12 months time. To get really good at self discipline I think understanding and appreciating delayed gratification is key. Read about the marsh mellow experiment if you want to learn about a study based on this but these two things self control and delayed gratification often come hand in hand.

Willpower fatigue

This book mentions the idea of willpower fatigue or otherwise known as decision fatigue which is a very interesting concept and one I've seen countless times in my own life. It's this idea that when someone is faced with situations where their self control is tested many times consecutively they will eventually find it very difficult if not impossible to use will power. The will power muscle if you will is getting exhausted just like your biceps if you were to keep using them continuously. For example if a person had to make a lot of decisions at work on a particular and then was faced with using their willpower to not select a unhealthy lunch at the canteen and then had to use willpower to hit the gym after work and then after this had to use willpower again to visit the shops to pick a healthy dinner they may begin really struggling to use their self discipline on those later tasks. Even though the tasks themselves will drain you and picking the gym over the sofa and tv is a test of willpower, it's actually making the decision in the first place which leads the most of will power fatigue.

So what can you do to help yourself achieve your daily goals and decrease the chance of willpower fatigue is to:

• Plan your day in advance and have a commitment not a decision ie 'Im going to the gym at 6pm' not 'I will probably go to the gym after work' - don't put yourself in a position where you are having to make lots of decision over insufficient things ie what to wear, what to eat

• Do things that take the most willpower first

Get used to being uncomfortable

One of the best ways to improve self discipline is to practice being uncomfortable. Regularly putting yourself in uncomfortable situations can really help you to build your willpower which is very needed if you're going to build new habits into your life. What makes an individual uncomfortable will be completely subjective, you may find waking up at 6am uncomfortable and another person may find social situations uncomfortable, but one thing I took from this book is that self discipline is just a brain training, habit building exercise that you can only build if you're constantly, actively and consciously working on it.

Focus on the system not the outcome

Another lesson from this book is how important it is to set yourself goals, which I think we all know, but more specifically, how crucial it is to establish a good system, let me explain. When you set yourself a goal, whether broad or very specific, whether its new years day or on...the 4th June...you only see your end result you want to get to and where you are now, which is often a long way away from where you want to end up. Now of course, you could be smart and think about exactly how you are going to achieve your goal, like if your goal is weight loss you might think you will cut your calories by 500 per day and exercise 3 times a week, but research has shown that the people who are successful in achieving their goals, are instead focussing on the small, daily habits and changes required to get them closer to that end result. So this all comes down to treating the symptoms not the cause. The book gives a really simple and powerful example for this and that is, if you keep getting headaches, it's easy to take painkillers to make it go away, but this is temporary, the headaches keep returning, because you haven't dealt with the root cause of the headaches. You need to find a way to stop the headaches from returning that may involve making other small changes to your lifestyle for example, not just taking painkillers. What I took from this is instead of thinking of your ultimate goal and what you can do to quickly get there, focus on what you can actually change every single day that will slowly get you towards your ultimate goal. I feel like its really important not to see your goal as ' when I achieve that, I'll be happy' and instead look at things you can do every day that have a positive impact.

Mindset

The final lesson from this book and in my opinion the most important is all about mindset. I was feeling in a bit of slump in terms of motivation and mental capacity when I was reading this book so for me it really helped. This book focuses on your attitude and philosophy towards goal attainment and discipline for a few chapters and they were my favourite ones of the book. It talks about how important the way you speak to yourself in your head and out loud is when it comes to achieving goals.

One thing this book has taught me is to swap the phrase 'I have to' and 'I need to' to 'I get to' ' I want to' and be grateful for what you actually get to do. So where you think or say ' I have to clean my house and i don't want to' to 'I get to clean my house and feel happy with a clean and tidy home' I have a place to call home and thats great. I know it sounds cringy and silly but honestly its pretty powerful!

I'm notorious for self doubt but after reading this book I'm trying so hard to not use the words can't and not be negative about my abilities. one sentence that was powerful was ' the limiting beliefs you have about yourself are not facts, you can change them if you want too.' It's a difficult task for sure because you would have spent years and years subconsciously building up this 'you cannot do this' voice in your head but with practice you can change that. Additionally, I'm someone who worries... ALOT... one of my strongest abilities is to panic and worry about things that haven't happened and come up with the worse possible scenario about what could happen. but this books says that by worrying and obsessing over what could go wrong is just unnecessary suffering because we are living in the present not the future. I'm trying to live more in the present and focusing on what i can change, letting go off what i cannot and being grateful with what i have and knowing that if i put the time and hard work in each and every day I will be seeing results. I'm constantly visualising the best outcome and its really helping with self discipline and motivation!

This book is really short, easy to read and does include some useful information. I would say you have to pick the good bits out as some chapters are quite obvious and not life changing information in any way but definitely give it a read!

Thank you for reading,

Hayley