How to Become a Disciplined Man

Whether discipline to you relates more to the physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual aspects of life, its value is difficult to overstate.

Discipline affects almost everything: your health, your work, your relationships, your finances, your ability to keep commitments, and ultimately, the kind of man you become.

Many men arrive at discipline out of desperation rather than willingness. That was certainly true for me.

Perhaps there is an advantage to that. Pain can be an incredibly powerful source of fuel when directed properly.

Regardless of what prompts you to take the journey, I believe developing discipline is one of the greatest investments a man can make in himself and his future.

The Paradox of Discipline

Who is freer?

The man who has no internal restriction and can eat however many slices of chocolate cake he wants?

Or the man who wants the cake but can choose not to eat it?

We tend to associate freedom with being able to do whatever we want. I've come to see it almost the opposite way.

If you cannot say no to something, how free are you really?

If you can't put down the phone, control your spending, resist an impulse, follow through on a commitment, get yourself to train, or do the thing you said you were going to do because you don't feel like it, then your choices aren't entirely your own.

You're being governed by appetite, emotion and circumstance.

Discipline isn't the opposite of freedom. Discipline is what makes freedom possible.

A free man isn't a man who does whatever he wants.

He's a man who has enough command over himself to choose.

The Compound Effects of Building Discipline

Once you train the discipline muscle enough, you start to see how transferable it is.

The discipline you develop through training begins showing up in your work. The discipline you develop around money changes your relationship with instant gratification. Keeping promises to yourself changes the way you carry yourself.

And perhaps most importantly, discipline builds self-respect.

There is a particular kind of grounded confidence that develops when you repeatedly prove to yourself:

When I say I'm going to do something, I do it.

That's integrity.

And unlike confidence built on praise, status, money, appearance or external validation, nobody can easily take that away from you because you know exactly where it came from.

Discipline can affect almost every area of your life:

Career and business

Relationships

Physical health

Decision-making

Saving and investing

Spiritual growth

Personal development

Your relationship with desire and impulse

But before you start building habits, I think something needs to change internally.

Step 1: Change Your Internal Narrative

Some men will need to focus on this part more than others. I certainly did.

Many people think discipline is something reserved for athletes, monks and elite military men.

It isn't.

It's a capacity every human being has access to. The difference is that some people have trained it more than others.

For years, I didn't see myself as a disciplined person.

More importantly, I didn't even want to be one.

Create Your Own Definition of Discipline

We all carry different associations with words, often without realizing it.

My association with discipline wasn't positive.

I saw disciplined people as boring, rigid and predictable. I thought of myself as more of an artist, an eccentric, someone who valued freedom and spontaneity.

Discipline seemed like the enemy of that.

No wonder I resisted it.

What I eventually realized was that I had misunderstood discipline entirely.

Discipline wasn't asking me to become less free.

It was giving me the capacity to actually live according to my values.

If you value health but repeatedly behave in ways that destroy your health, are you living freely?

If you value loyalty but can't govern your impulses, are you living according to your values?

If you value purpose but spend hours every day surrendering your attention to whatever is most stimulating, who is actually directing your life?

This is where discipline and integrity meet.

A man of integrity tries to reduce the distance between what he says matters to him and how he actually lives.

Discipline is one of the tools that allows him to do that.

Look for Proof Points

If you've spent years describing yourself as lazy, inconsistent, impulsive or undisciplined, your mind will conveniently collect evidence supporting that identity.

Start looking for the opposite.

Everyone can find moments in their life where they displayed discipline.

Maybe you trained consistently for something.

Maybe you showed up for someone when you didn't feel like it.

Maybe you worked through a difficult period.

Maybe you kept a commitment nobody else knew about.

Find the evidence.

Instead of constantly collecting proof that you're incapable of discipline, start collecting proof that you already possess the capacity for it.

I used to be a very harsh self-critic. Eventually, I realized that beating yourself into becoming a better person isn't necessarily the most effective strategy.

Accountability matters.

Self-contempt doesn't help much.

Build the Inner Voice

Throughout your journey toward discipline, you'll have to learn how to deal with the different voices inside you.

There's the voice that rationalizes.

I'll do it tomorrow.

One time doesn't matter.

I've had a difficult day.

I deserve this.

And sometimes those things are genuinely true.

The challenge is learning the difference between compassion and self-deception.

Because there's another voice too.

The quieter one that knows what you're capable of.

The one that remembers what you committed to.

The one that knows the man you're trying to become.

Discipline requires learning which voice gets the final vote.

Determine What It's For

Don't become disciplined simply for the sake of being disciplined.

Ask yourself:

What would becoming a disciplined man actually give me?

How would it change my life?

How would it affect my relationships?

What would it allow me to build?

What kind of man am I trying to become?

Where is my current lack of discipline preventing me from living according to my values?

Write the answers down.

Don't just think about them.

If you're going to commit yourself to something difficult, you need to understand why it matters.

Step 2: Start Small, Then Don't Stop

I read plenty of books about habit change long before I ever became disciplined.

Ironically, I didn't finish many of them.

Eventually, I learned far more by proving the process to myself.

Changing habits is difficult. Changing the way you see yourself can be even harder, but in my experience it can also be far more powerful.

Your environment matters too.

If everyone around you lives in a way you're actively trying to move away from, you're making the process unnecessarily difficult.

We're far more influenced by our surroundings than most of us like to admit.

Start With Something Almost Impossible to Fail At

For the first few months of my own journey, I wrote the exact same sentence every morning:

"I am a disciplined and routined person."

At first, I didn't really believe it.

But something interesting happened.

The act of writing it every morning became a tiny piece of evidence supporting the statement itself.

I was doing something I didn't have to do, consistently, every single day.

The evidence began catching up with the identity.

Choose something small enough that you can do it regardless of motivation.

Then do it again tomorrow.

And the day after that.

You're not only building a habit.

You're building evidence about who you are.

Make It Easier for Yourself

One mistake I made initially was choosing things that created unnecessary resistance.

Running was one of them.

I seriously didn't enjoy running, which made sticking to it considerably harder. Had I committed to playing football three times a week instead, I probably would have found consistency much easier because I actually enjoyed it.

In retrospect, though, I'm glad I chose something difficult.

It showed me that I could do things I didn't enjoy because I valued the delayed benefit more than the immediate discomfort.

There should probably be some resistance in whatever discipline you're trying to build. Otherwise, there's very little being trained.

But you don't need to make everything unnecessarily difficult.

The goal isn't suffering.

The goal is developing the ability to follow through.

Discipline Is Increasingly a Superpower

I genuinely believe discipline has become something of a superpower.

Our attention is constantly being competed for by platforms, advertisers and products specifically designed to keep us engaged.

There is always something easier, faster or more stimulating available.

Another video.

Another notification.

Another purchase.

Another person to look at.

Another distraction.

The ability to decide where your attention goes, and keep it there, has become incredibly valuable.

And this goes far beyond productivity.

A man who cannot govern his attention will eventually struggle to govern his life.

I sometimes think about how different my twenties might have looked had I developed discipline earlier.

I could probably have saved myself a great deal of unnecessary pain.

But I also know myself well enough to understand that I needed to learn certain lessons through experience.

I learned them the hard way.

And perhaps that was exactly how I needed to learn them.

Play the Long Game

You can sign up for a marathon, competition or challenge and use the external deadline to force yourself into discipline.

But what happens the day after?

I think it's far more useful to stop thinking about discipline as something you temporarily practise and start thinking about it as part of the man you're becoming.

That doesn't mean perfection.

You will miss days.

You will break commitments.

You will have periods where life knocks your routines apart.

The question isn't whether you execute perfectly forever.

It's whether you return.

Again and again.

Until discipline stops feeling like something you're forcing yourself to do and starts becoming part of how you live.

Choose Your People Wisely

One final warning.

When you genuinely change, some people around you won't immediately know what to do with the new version of you.

They may joke about your routines. They may tempt you back toward old behaviours. They may tell you that you've become too serious or that you should loosen up.

Not everyone who does this is malicious. Sometimes people simply become uncomfortable when someone else's growth changes the dynamic they're accustomed to.

You don't necessarily need to cut everyone out of your life.

But you do need boundaries.

The people closest to you should ultimately respect the direction you're trying to move in, even if they don't fully understand it.

Choose accordingly.

Discipline Is Freedom

The biggest misunderstanding I had about discipline was believing it would make my life smaller.

The opposite happened.

Discipline gave me greater control over my attention, my behaviour, my health and eventually the direction of my life.

It also taught me something fundamental about freedom.

Freedom isn't being able to satisfy every desire you have.

Freedom is being able to decide which desires deserve to be acted upon.

That's why discipline sits at the heart of what I now think it means to become a free man.

Not rigid.

Not emotionless.

Not perfect.

Simply capable of choosing his actions instead of being endlessly pulled around by his impulses.

Start small.

Keep your word to yourself.