What Real Discipline is All About | Ep. 371
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What is real discipline and why is quitting habits cold‑turkey a mistake?
Real discipline is not about stopping a bad habit. It's about creating a realistic and better alternative. So if you want to build real discipline, this is a common misconception that you need to avoid at all costs. So I'll give you an example that's pretty morbid, but it always really resonated with me, which was my mother was an alcoholic when I grew up. And she quit drinking by smoking. Sounds crazy, right? But she went from drinking to smoking. Smoking, to vaping, to chewing gum, to eventually nothing. And so she didn't go from zero to perfect. She continued to replace her bad habits in with increasingly better alternatives. I know it sounds nuts, but too often people think that discipline means stopping a behavior immediately, but that almost always fails.
So you don't need to be perfect right away. You just need to take a step towards the next best alternative. What you wanna do is Is identify a realistic, better, not perfect alternative to your habit.
How can you replace a bad habit with a series of better alternatives?
So instead of drinking vodka, maybe you drink a seltzer. Instead of drinking a seltzer, maybe you have a craft beer. Instead of a craft beer, maybe you're gonna have a non-alcoholic beer. Maybe then instead of a non-alcoholic beer, then you're gonna have a diet coke. And then after a diet coke, you're gonna say, I'm gonna have a sparkling water. And then from sparkling water, you can Stick with that or go to a water. You see how it goes? It's like you take tiny little steps. You don't just make the big swing all at once. This can be done with food as well. Say you eat dessert every night. You're like, I eat a Sunday every night. It's like, all right, I'm gonna go from having a Sunday every night to nothing.
No, let's go from having a Sunday with caramel, with toppings, with hot fudge, to like, let's have a Sunday with no hot fudge.
Why do tiny, incremental steps lead to big long‑term changes?
Then two days later, let's have a Sunday with no brownie bites. Then two days later, let's have a Sunday with Half the ice cream. And you just continue to gradually swap out alternatives in stages. And so small steps in the right direction turn into big changes over time. It's just that most people are so impatient with themselves, they don't allow themselves to get there. And they stay stuck in this cycle of going big change and then back out. Big change again, back out. So here's the deal: if you want true freedom, you have to stop relying on how you feel. Feel each day. Freedom comes from following a plan, not your feelings. A good example of this is that every year I map out a 12 month plan for my business.
And now I do this because what it means is that I take some time. Maybe it's a week, it's two weeks, it's five days, and I put all of my effort into figuring out what's the plan going to look like to get me to my goal 12 months from now. Now, why do I do this?
How does planning a 12‑month business roadmap create daily freedom?
I do this because. I'm trying to get all the hard thinking done ahead of time so that every day when I step into my business, I just get to execute. I don't have to keep thinking. I don't have decision fatigue. I'm not constantly in this tear of like, what should I do? What do I need to do to grow my business? I just know. And I've been able to achieve that level of freedom through structure. Because without structure, I'm gonna constantly debate with myself and I'm gonna be exhausted because I'm gonna be in this cycle of like decision execution, decision execution. And that decision fatigue is gonna prevent any kind of meaningful progress because I'm gonna be stuck in the cycle of questioning what I'm doing.
But if I do all the thinking ahead of time and then I just get to execute, I don't think about it. I just say, you know what, I'm gonna play this out. I'm gonna see if I make progress. Another example of this is that every Sunday I plan my entire next week.
What’s the benefit of weekly “next‑week” planning for daily execution?
Why do I do that? It is another way of doing this on a micro level. Which is, I don't want to wake up every day and be like, what am I doing today? I think it's the biggest waste of my time and energy. And there's nothing I hate more than not knowing what I'm gonna be doing for the day. Now it doesn't have to be perfect.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is real discipline and why is quitting habits cold‑turkey a mistake?
0:00–0:55
2
How can you replace a bad habit with a series of better alternatives?
0:55–1:35
3
Why do tiny, incremental steps lead to big long‑term changes?
1:35–2:28
4
How does planning a 12‑month business roadmap create daily freedom?
2:28–3:17
5
What’s the benefit of weekly “next‑week” planning for daily execution?
3:17–3:54
6
Why are boring, consistent routines more effective than exciting new ones?
3:54–4:48
7
How do disciplined systems build self‑trust and shape the person you want to become?
4:48–6:08
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Build with Leila Hormozi
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