Erling Haaland speaking at the Ballon D'or after having won the Best Striker Award

How to build Unbreakable Discipline

updated on December 1st 2023

8 mins read

By now, you probably already know that the secret to achieving your goals in life is not motivation but discipline.

But what actually is discipline? And more importantly: how do you build the kind of strong discipline that all successful players seem to have in common?

That’s exactly what we’re going to answer in the next 5 minutes. So, let’s see if you already have enough discipline to keep reading.

What is discipline?

When you ask Wikipedia, you get the following answer:

“Self-discipline refers to one's ability to control one's behaviour and actions to achieve a goal or to maintain a certain standard of conduct. It is the ability to train oneself to do things that should be done and resisting things that should be avoided.”

In other words, discipline is the mental strength to choose "the right/important thing" instead of the easy, comfortable thing.

And in order to choose them, you first need to define the “right/important things.”

This means we need to set specific goals and define clear action steps to achieve those goals.

Set Goals & Define Action Steps

To avoid diving too deep into this topic, let’s start with a simple goal.

“I want to gain muscles and lose some fat.” To turn it into a smart goal, let’s define some metrics here: Time Period: 12 weeks

Metrics for success: Reduce body fat from 18% to 15% and be able to complete 3 sets of 50 pushups.

With this information, it’s now time to define clear action steps that will allow us to accomplish this goal. Depending on your current situation, this could look like this:

Cut out sweets, junk food, and fizzy drinks
Drink 3 litres of water a day
3 sets of X pushups; X = the maximum number of pushups you can currently do
Get 8 hours of sleep per day
Go for a 30-minute run every day
Do one extra individual training session per week

Perfect! We have now not only set a clear goal we can work towards but also defined clear action steps to achieve this goal!

All we gotta do now is execute on those things … and that’s exactly what we now need discipline for.

Train your Discipline

Now we’re at the core of the problem that so many people struggle with! We know that we should eat healthier, work out more, and drink more water. But why is it so hard to actually do it?

That’s because discipline/mental strength, is like a muscle that you need to train! You also don’t try to run a marathon without any training and then wonder why you’re only able to complete 10% of it.

And with discipline, it’s exactly the same!

If all you have done in the last 6 months is choose the easy option (TikTok vs. reading a book, delivery pizza vs. cooking something healthy, etc.), you can’t expect that you will automatically choose the “right things.” Especially not if they’re even more difficult and require even more willpower than the things before!

You’re simply TOO WEAK for that.

So start simple: begin with easy decisions and then make them increasingly harder over time.

Tricks to make it easier for you

And now some good news! There are actually a few tricks that make it easier for you to choose the right things!

Tip 1) Turn your action steps into a schedule

Instead of always having to remember what you were supposed to do, try turning the “right things”/action steps into a clear schedule.

So before school, right after breakfast: 3 sets of Pushups

After school, before homework: go for a 30-minute run

Sunday Afternoon: Individual Training session

All you gotta do then is look at your schedule every day and do what you’ve written down!

Tip 2) Build habits

To make it even easier for your brain to choose the right things, do them always at the same time of the day/week! This way, you will start to develop a habit.

Habits are actions that we do over and over and again until they become natural to us.

Does brushing your teeth in the morning & evening require discipline for you?

No, it already became a habit for you because you’ve been doing it always at the same time, every day, for years!

Tip 3) Use your goal to kickstart your motivation

It might be that - even if you’re already 6 weeks into your routine - there will be one day where you “just don’t feel like training.”

And that’s okay; you’re human - not a machine!

In those moments, it helps to envision yourself achieving the goal you have set yourself.

And hopefully, it will give you just enough motivation to at least do the first action that’s necessary for the next right thing. When you have to go for a run, that could be changing your clothes and putting on your running shoes.

If you’re feeling really lazy, you can even tell yourself: “All I’m gonna do now is putting on my running shoes.” Once completed: “Okay, now I’m just gonna step out of the door.” And then “Okay now I’m just gonna jog until the end of my street.”

And before you notice, you’ve completed the task that you just didn’t feel like doing today!

Tip 4) Remove temptations & facilitate good behaviour

You know how it becomes easier to eat a banana as a snack instead of a chocolate bar?

BUY BANANAS - NOT CRISPS! (Or ask your parents to do so!)

Try to make it as easy as possible for you to do the right thing - while simultaneously making it as hard as possible for you to make the wrong decision!

Look also at the 5 people around you that you spend time with the most. If all your friends do is watch Netflix and go to McDonald's - it’s very hard to constantly make the right decision. So try to have people in your life that have a positive influence that helps you achieve your goals!

Tip 5) Get some additional help

We know how hard it is to do the right thing. We all went through the same process that you’re about to do.

This means we also know exactly where this plan of building discipline and achieving your goals can fail!

It just needs one or two days where you let it slip a bit, not go for a run, only do 10 pushups and call it a day. And before you know it, you haven’t trained for 4 days and are watching Netflix at 2am with a pack of chips in your hand.

And to avoid precisely that, we have built the Train Effective app and added a ton of features:

Schedule your training sessions for the day / week with our training scheduler
Stay motivated with our daily motivational push-up messages
Stay consistent with your personal Train Effective Streak 🔥
Get inspired by other players in our training feed
Remove the excuse “I don’t know what to train” with our 150+ drills and workouts
Keep developing your mentality with 100+ mentality masterclasses

and many other features that will help you build unbreakable discipline and achieve any goal you set yourself! Try it now for free by clicking on the buttons below!

Train Effective Success Stories

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JOHAN BAKAYOKO

PSV EINDHOVEN, EREDIVISIE

EMIL KONRADSEN

US SASSUOLO, SERIE A

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