You Can Build Discipline With a Split-Second Decision
All of your education, training and willpower can disappear instantly.
There are over 2.5 million seconds every month, and all it takes is a split-second to change your life for the better or worse.
It doesn’t matter who you are, what education you have or your previous accomplishments. The barrier to failure is the same.
It only takes one bad decision that screws up your diet when you eat that cookie or take a shot of tequila.
Likewise, if you’re rich, one bad call can ruin your net worth.
That’s exactly why self-discipline is a consistent work of art.
You make 35000 decisions a day
2024 is here and you’re working on your new goals.
Whether you’re trying to lose weight, save money for a downpayment on a house or simply read every day – whatever your goal is, you have to make the right decision every day to stay consistent.
This requires immense self-discipline.
Out of those 35,000 decisions, you just have to screw up one of them to ruin your progress.
You’ve been saying no to alcohol for days and then you said “yes” just once.
That single decision was one out of 35000.
But, that single decision killed your progress.
Once you poke a hole in your boat, water will start to come in.
The greatest self-improvement happens when you have the self-discipline to say yes and no to the right things 100% of the time.
Every day has 86400 seconds.
It only takes a split second to screw up and kill your progress.
You’ve been walking by donuts, cakes and chips for months, consistently saying no.
But, for just 1 second, you looked at one of those delicious treats, and said “yes”.
That’s all it took.
That single second poked a hole in your self-discipline.
You are now much more likely to say “yes” once again the next time you see cake.
You start to make exceptions and now every single one of those 86400 seconds a day has the potential for you to screw up your progress once again.
To successfully accomplish any of your life goals, you need to build the self-discipline to make the right decisions… regardless of how delicious a Dairy Queen Blizzard is.
It’s time to skew the odds in your favour
From the beginning of your journey, the odds are already stacked against you.
The fact that you are one decision away from screwing up 35000 times a day is not fair.
In any of your 86400 daily seconds, you can ruin your progress.
This is why you need to do whatever you can to skew the odds back in your favour.
Let me give you a little life hack.
If you want to be healthy, don’t even give yourself the option to be unhealthy.
Don’t buy any unhealthy food at the grocery store
Don’t go to unhealthy restaurants
Don’t go out drinking
If you buy cookies and have them in your house, instead of saying no once while walking by them in the grocery store, you now have to say no every single time you’re in your house.
Skew the odds in your favour.
If you want to work out more often…
Buy weights or workout equipment
Drive by the gym every single day
Set reminders on your phone every hour
You need to make these little life hacks a part of your daily life so that you create more opportunities for you to say YES to the right things.
This is how you skew the odds in your favour.
Conclusion
While you can ruin your progress in only a split second, you can also build on it in the same amount of time.
Remember, all of your discipline and training comes down to a few decisions a day.
Are you going to say no to unhealthy behaviours?
Are you going to say yes to the healthy ones?
Do you have what it takes?
That’s all self-discipline comes down to.
A split-second.
Thanks for reading