Hacking Motivation The True Power of Discipline

Motivation: The True Power Behind Discipline

Still searching for consistency in working out regularly? Find out how you’ll discover your discipline by fixing your motivation instead…

I’ll bet you’ve had at least one fitness “influencer” shout “[expletive] motivation. Be disciplined!” at you on Instagram recently? It’s the popular new non-fix to an age-old fitness problem: consistency.

And it doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work for the simple reason that nobody has a magic on/off switch for discipline. We’re just not built that way.

We are magically disciplined about a few things; we don’t have to be bothered to breathe or convinced to keep our heart beating. But, your autonomic nervous system won’t stretch to getting your workouts done on autopilot!

What we need, for everything else we want or have to do, is sufficient motivation.

So I say, “Forget discipline, fix your motivation!”

We eat because we’re “starving” or crave a “reward”. We brush our teeth to avoid losing them. We work hard to achieve something or, to avoid losing everything!

We are the product of our motivations.

And, if we have something uncomfortable to do, we must be properly motivated!

Do you put getting your workouts done squarely in the uncomfortable box? I do! Comfortable is remaining sat in my favourite chair watching the Discovery Channel. I need some pretty solid motivation to achieve any level of consistency at working out. How about you?

Motivation is our “why?”. As in, “why on earth would I do that?!”

Where discipline mostly fails…

Discipline mostly fails in fitness (in my opinion) for one reason: a weak why.

What you are trying to achieve or avoid simply isn’t motivating enough. When push comes to shove, it loses out to things you want more.

Ergo, you’ll take feeling a bit more self-conscious on the beach, if it avoids you having to turn out in the rain to do your workout.

What I call “mirror goals” are proven to fail many tens of millions of times every year worldwide. Yet still we focus on them.

Are you working on mirror goals?

Mirror goals are short-lived wishes about appearance. Like wishing you filled your T-shirt more like Mark Wahlberg or wishing to fit in that dress for your niece’s wedding.

You probably know someone whose mirror goals have eluded them all their life? That someone might even be you.

(It’s not their – or your – fault. You just figured you lacked discipline!)

The fact is, if you want to achieve discipline, you almost certainly need to look beyond the mirror.

But, where?

Finding a Stronger “Why“

To build true discipline, you need motivation that is more fundamentally important to you. And, interestingly, that will almost always come from focusing on what you don’t want to lose.

Preventing the loss of something we already have and value motivates us humans far more than the prospect of obtaining something new of equal “value”. That’s due to a number of inescapable quirks in how our brains work.

Leveraging loss aversion

It’s a concept that I detailed in last week’s article: Leveraging Loss Aversion to Get Consistent

I outlined a four step process for setting a loss aversion goal in that article.

1. Know Why You WILL Lose: The unwanted processes that are, if left unchecked, stripping away your physical capabilities
2. Appreciate What It Will Cost You: What could life look like in 10 or 20 years time, if you don’t take action to stop the loss?
3. Believe In The Loss Prevention: You’ve got to believe strongly that if you take action consistently you will help prevent your feared loss.
4. Flip Every Goal Into Not Losing: Reword every positive benefit into a not losing goal! Not losing fitness, mobility, strength or confidence by taking action.

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What’s working for me (finally)?

If you’re concerned about staying the course, because you never found your magic “discipline ON” switch, know that loss aversion goals work for me.

When I’m struggling to get off the couch to workout, I only have to imagine the processes of systematic age-related decline rebooting; flickering back to life, like an inner Terminator set on self-destruction.

My goal is simple: to keep rebuilding physical capabilities faster than those processes can dismantle them.

Wrapping up

One thing we all know is that sticking to fitness isn’t easy. But, I hope you don’t waste any thought on where to find your discipline. Because, once you realise that failure is not caused by indiscipline and is simply a product of not being sufficiently motivated, you’ve a chance to succeed. Motivation – your purpose – is something you can work on and, until you fix that, discipline may always elude you.

Steve — MiniWorkoutDad