Strategy Nr. 10: Find Friendly Competition
Have you ever noticed how much easier it is to stick to your goals if you have a partner with similar goals? Whether it comes to going to the gym, losing weight or maybe you remember doing homework with a friend, it is easier when you’re in it together. Why is it easier to stick...
Strategy Nr. 9: Patience and Persistence
Wake up! If you have a 40k credit card debt, you will not be able to repay it all in a matter of weeks or months. If you are 20 pounds overweight, you will not be as slim as that woman on the cover of Vogue magazine within a year. Tell-sell programs, magazines and other...
Strategy Nr. 8: Find your Weaknesses
We have already started addressing this issue in technique Nr. 4. I ended by saying, ‘Identify and eliminate situations in which you are most likely to fall back into your old habits’. During the course of this strategy we are going to look at the best ways of doing this. Let’s start by defining what...
Strategy Nr. 7: Visual Reminders
Do you remember the last time you were extremely motivated to take action? You felt like you could take on the whole world out of a sudden and nothing could stop you. Whether it was for your work, personal studies, your body or whatever, what was the last time? Do you remember what triggered this...
Strategy Nr. 6: Your Future Self
I once had a dream, about a man. This man was no ordinary man; he was a highly successful man. I remembered everything about him. He had a green shirt, he looked like he was in an amazing physical shape and was well-groomed. I still remember the food and drinks that were in his fridge,...
Strategy Nr. 5: Reward and Punishment
Feedback is very important in life. Because the human self-reflection capacity is generally very limited, we need feedback from others all the time, in every area of our lives. We need our boss or peers to tell us which traits we need to change in our professional life. We need our significant other to tell...
Strategy Nr. 4: Using Peer Pressure
To ensure that you stick to your plans about the new habit you want, try using peer pressure to your advantage by making a public commitment and you’ll realise that there’s no turning back! Yes, that’s right. Post it on your Facebook page, tweet it to the world, send all your contacts an email, and...
Strategy Nr. 3: Eliminating Distractions
Eliminate all the things that distract you from doing what you are supposed to be doing. Several common types of distractions are such as the TV (turn it off!), your cell phone, email, other social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and going for a cup of coffee. The same goes for smoking, in case you’re a...
Strategy Nr. 2: Using Cognitive Dissonance
What we often do is to deceive ourselves into believing what we are doing is important so that we can pursue what is fun, while gaining a feeling of relevance. This is a form of cognitive dissonance reduction that goes on inside ours heads, that is meant to create consistency between our actions and our...
Strategy Nr. 1: Routines and Rituals
What is a ritual? The one important thing you should know about building self-discipline is that it takes willpower to do anything that is not yet a routine or ritual. Building self-discipline is therefore not only about finding ways to make yourself do what you are supposed to do, but about lowering the threshold to...
