Stop Wishing, Start Doing: Your 2024 Self-Discipline Blueprint Awaits! Forget willpower woes! Our game-changing guide unlocks the 5 keys to building unshakeable self-discipline & transforming your dreams into reality. Say goodbye to excuses & hello to unstoppable progress!

We are less than a week into a new year, and as usual, you have made some New Year resolutions without considering Self-Discipline.

Possibly you have created some targets for yourself, and possibly you have promised yourself that this time; it will be different.

Sorry to burst your bubble my friend; without self-discipline, it's will not even last a month.....

Now am not saying this to discourage you, but I have to be realistic and true to you.

Do you still remember the promises you made to yourself last January and the one before that?

How well did you keep those promises?

The truth is that most new year resolutions fail within a few weeks, simply because they were made “because you feel you need to improve this year, or because you feel that you do not measure up to some of your peers or family members”

You didn’t make the resolution based on fundamental reasons, but rather on superficial reasons, and also you are not thinking about the price you need to pay, only the changes that you want.

How do I know this?

Well, in the first place, if you wanted to make a life-changing decision, you wouldn’t wait for a specific time, like a new year, for you to make such a decision.

After all, every day is a new day and a new opportunity to change.

So someone who truly wants to become physically fit, or change their financial status, will not wait for a new year, to make such an important life-changing decision.

Thus, New Year’s resolutions are mostly superficial.

That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have a New Year resolution or resolutions, rather you should not focus on superficial changes that result in mere wishes.

Instead, you should sit down, and truly think about your situation, and what needs to be done to get your desired outcome, and then commit to doing it, every single day, for as long as it takes.

In Luk 14: 28-29, Jesus said,

“But don’t begin until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it? 29 Otherwise, you might complete only the foundation before running out of money, and then everyone would laugh at you.

For any project or transformation you wish to embark on, you need to first sit down and consider what it will cost you.

Anything worth doing will cost you something.

▶️ Can you commit to a daily exercise regimen, to build your dream body?

▶️ Can you commit to high-quality training, to improve your skills and thus your financial status?

You don’t just wake up on Jan 1 and decide that this time it’s going to be different.

According to Veteran Investor, Sir John Templeton, “this time it’s different”, is the 4 most dangerous word in investing.
And as an experienced Trader, I know that this is true.

Nothing is going to be different!

The same cycle keeps repeating over and over again, and those who have learned to improve their skills, learn from their mistake, and improve their risk management, will make a fortune, while those who simply believe in their luck and refuse to pay the price of self-improvement, will get ruined.

Now, this is a universal truth and does not just apply to trading and investing, but to every facet of life.

I mentioned in my last post, that the market is resetting this year, and that it will offer all of us a rare second chance to recover missed opportunities and recover from past mistakes and losses.

But if you think you can achieve this without improving your skills, committing to a higher standard, and a higher level of discipline – Self-Discipline.

Then you are about to repeat your previous mistakes.

I don’t say this to dampen your spirit, but I say it, so you learn to first consider the price of your desired outcome and then commit to paying that price if you want real changes this time around.

I am excited about the great opportunities that I foresee this year, and I hope everyone is ready to make the most of them.

Level Up Your Life in 2024: Unlock Your True Potential with These 5 Self-Discipline Hacks!

In my post yesterday, I said that every dream has a price and every desire will cost you something.

The most important price of success in anything is not real money, but rather self-discipline.

If you desire to be physically fit, hiring a good coach will help, but if you’re not disciplined to show up regularly for your exercise routine, even your coach will not be able to help you.

You can take a camel to the stream, but you cannot force it to drink.

So, to realize your desire for this year, you must work on your self-discipline.

By the way, what is self-discipline?

Simply put, Self-discipline is the ability to push yourself forward, stay motivated, and take action, regardless of how you’re feeling, physically or emotionally.

As we go through this year, you’re going to pass through periods of stress, depression, and cloudy and sunny days.

If you have set your goals for this year and you have decided on what you must do every single day, to reach those goals, then discipline demands that no matter what you’re passing through, and no matter the kind of day you’re having, you just have to do what needs to be done.

You just have to complete each step that you have mapped out for each day.

So, the beginning of Self-Discipline is to first decide on what must be done, and then commit to doing it, irrespective of whether you just had an earthquake in your home and everything is falling apart.

Commit to self-discipline today, and you will surely experience a great turnaround this year.

Step 1: Know Thyself

In my post yesterday, I said categorically that success is not possible without self-discipline.

I trust you already know this, so instead of just telling you what you may already know, I think it’s best to help you develop your self-discipline this new year.

We know many things that we should do, but we often don’t do them, because we may not know the right steps to follow, or we may lack the internal motivation to follow through.

In this post and subsequent ones, I will map out a solid step-by-step strategy that you will follow, and cultivate extreme self-discipline.

So let’s start with the first step.

Know Thyself

2400 years ago, the great Greek philosopher Socrates said,

“Man know thyself”

These 3 words are so full of meaning, that one can write an entire book on them.

The mathematician, inventor, and philosopher Pythagoras went further to say,

“Man know thyself, then thou shall know the universe and God!”
Hmmm

Well, I don’t have time to go into philosophy right now, but this statement has both psychological and philosophical implications.

For this article, let’s stick with the more mundane meaning as it concerns self-discipline.

You cannot be self-disciplined if you do not know yourself well enough.

The better you understand yourself and what makes you tick, the better you can handle yourself.
For instance, Knowing how you react positively or negatively in certain conditions, will help you create or avoid such conditions

Remember that we defined self-discipline as the ability to push yourself forward, stay motivated, and take action, regardless of how you’re feeling, physically or emotionally.

Now, unless you understand your character and emotions, and learn to master them, it will be impossible to operate under certain circumstances.

Let me break it down further.

You need to do a SWOT analysis for yourself.

SWOT stands for STRENGTH, WEAKNESS, OPPORTUNITIES, AND THREAT.

• Create a mantra to help you focus on your daily plans. Repeat this mantra to yourself every day.

To build your self-discipline, you need to understand the first two – STRENGTH AND WEAKNESSES.

• What are your strengths?
• What is your weakness?

The purpose of identifying your strengths and weaknesses is to allow you to focus more on your strengths and develop or delegate your weaknesses.

There is no need to lie to yourself.
If you hate what you’re doing and you’re terrible at it, how do you expect to maintain self-discipline in that area of your life?

It is better to maintain self-discipline in your area of strength than in your area of weakness.

So start by ensuring that your desire and dreams in life, are in line with your key strengths as a human being.

A dog should not try to beat a fish at swimming, and a fish had better not try to beat a monkey in climbing trees.

We all have unique talents, which are our areas of strength. You must align your goals in life, with your core strength.

Of course, this will not turn you into a self-disciplined monk律‍♀️, but it is a start. The last thing you want is to be fighting against your spirit and soul.

Talking about weakness, if you know you have a weakness for excessive drinking and you wish to stop, does it make sense to keep meeting with your friends in a beer parlour?

Exercise:
💎 Make a list of your passion, the things you love doing maybe several years ago.

💎 Write your long-term and short-term goals.

💎 Now compare these two together, does your passion align with your goal?

This is just the first step.

Step 2: Remove Distractions and Temptations to Boost Self-Discipline

In my last post on building self-discipline, we talked about the importance of Knowing yourself and identifying your strengths and weaknesses.

In this post, we will build on the last step by learning to remove Distractions and Temptations for us to be able to Self-Discipline.

Building self-discipline is almost like building a strong tower.

We don’t build Self-Discipline from the top, rather we first build a strong foundation and then move up from there.

This second step of building Self-Discipline is a follow-through from the last one.

Now that you know your weaknesses, it’s time to eliminate them or at least strengthen yourself in that area.

One effective way of strengthening yourself is to eliminate the little things that weigh you down.

The holy book says in Hebrews 12: 1

“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us.”

Without getting religious, this quote is extremely vital to building our strength in areas of weakness.

Many times, it is not really that we are weak, rather we give attention and energy to many little things, which distract us and sap our energy.

To be massively successful in life requires a huge amount of focus and energy, which the creator gave us in abundance.

A righteous man will fall 7 times, but 7 times he will rise again.
No matter how many times I fail, I will rise again.
I forgive myself for my failures, but I will not remain down.
I will rise again…
I am rising right now!

However, as we move through life, we pick up many little distractions, challenges, problems, worries, etc, that consistently feed on our reserve of energy, and perpetually keep us in a state of low energy, which we interpret as weakness.

Thus, many of our so-called weaknesses, are not inherent, but self-inflicted.

Let me give you a simple example.

In a single day, the average young person spends 3 to 4 hours browsing aimlessly on social media.

This means that they waste 3 X 365 or 1095hrs a year (or 1095hrs / 24 = 45.6 days a year wasted). If they live for an average of 80 active years, that amounts to 45.6 X 80, i.e. 3648 days/365 = 10yrs of life spent watching cats, bad jokes, and fake lifestyles!

How much more could you achieve with 10 years of additional life?

Have you noticed that high-performance individuals are very conscious of their time?

Steve Jobs is known for wearing only one black T-shirt and blue jeans, every day to the office. He did this because he didn’t want to waste precious time and energy each morning, thinking of what to wear to the office.

Mark Zuckerberg and many top CEOs and founders have also picked up this habit.

So, by eliminating little things that distract you and sap your energy, you will increase your focus and your energy level.

Exercise:
1️⃣ Make a list of all the little things that distract you and begin to eliminate them one by one. Do not attempt to completely stop them at once, but instead start by reducing the amount of time and energy you give to them. Also, by removing one little distraction, you acquire a little bit more energy to deal with bigger distractions and weaknesses.

2️⃣ Identify and remove the biggest temptations from your environment. If you watch too much TV, remove the TV from your bedroom or living room. Turn off all social media notifications on your phone, and create a fixed time for checking your messages, preferably after work. If you want to eat healthier, eliminate junk food from your house. Cut off every bad influence that drags your bag to your vomit.

As you eliminate your distractions and temptations, you will increase your clarity of vision, focus, and energy, which will lead to a more disciplined life, and help you achieve your goals this year and beyond.

This is the second step….

One more thing, PROCRASTINATION is one of the most dangerous weaknesses that robs you of success. Maybe you have missed many wealth-building opportunities in crypto because of this. The good news is that 2022 will be a great year for the crypto industry.

Step 3: Establish a Clear Path

Imagine a scenario where there is a big match in the ongoing African Cup of Nations between Nigeria and Egypt.

Yeah, I know you already watched the match, but just take yourself back to that match again.

Now imagine that the organizers decide to remove the goal post, and just ask the two teams to play against each other.

How do you think the match will go?
How will you know who won?

With no goalpost to score, the players will lose motivation, and even the spectators will lose the tension that makes football addictive and exciting.

Such is life…

To build strong discipline and achieve your dream this year, you need to have a clear vision of what you want to achieve, and also a clear plan for achieving it.

Everyone has wishes, but few have goals, because a goal without a plan, is just a wish.

Self-discipline starts by knowing what you have to do to get your desired outcome.

One of the techniques we taught in Millionaires Academy Business Class, is the benefit of breaking huge goals into smaller time-bound steps.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by your audacious goals, but when you create a strategy that breaks it down, into clear smaller daily steps, it becomes achievable, and you will be able to maintain the discipline required to achieve it.

Exercise:

• Create a step-by-step strategy for accomplishing your major goal for this year. Take time to break it down into daily actionable steps.

Step 4: Start Small and Create your ritual

So far, we have gone through 3 essential steps for building self-discipline.

• Know thyself
• Remove distractions and temptations
• Establish a clear path.

If you have already done the exercises attached with these 3 steps, then you are ready for the 4th step.

I mentioned earlier that building self-discipline is like building a strong tower. You have to take it step by step, and you have to build a foundation before you can move higher.

So the first 3 steps, are the foundation.
Let’s now begin to build higher.

Start Small

The easiest trap that people fall into, is having a huge goal, without breaking it down into baby steps.

Your brain is the most powerful weapon you have, but it can work for you or against you if you don’t understand it.

The brain aims to preserve you at all times, and the major way of doing that is to keep you within your comfort zone.

Over millions of years, it has learned that danger can lead to instant death, and so once the brain interprets anything that stresses you as a potential danger, it will do everything to pull you out of such a situation, and back into its comfort zone.

This is why many people are afraid of confrontation. Millions of years ago, the outcome of the most confrontation, is a physical fight and usually a major injury that leads to death.

The brain has evolved to shield you from such situations, even though the circumstances are no longer the same.

When you start a new exercise regime, and immediately decide to run 20 kilometres every day when you’ve not done it before.

You normally will not exceed one week with your new decision. Why?

Once you successfully push yourself to complete this strenuous task, your brain will be so stressed out from all the pain you managed to go through, that next time, it will do everything possible to stop you from going through such stress ever again.

It will magnify the pain, and tell you that you could break a bone or even get kidnapped. It will tell you to look at the weather forecast, and by the way, why are you making a fool of yourself, running half-naked across the entire neighbourhood?

Your brain is not a tool you can afford to neglect, it has stopped you from achieving great things, and it will continue to do so, as long as you fail to understand why it acts the way it does.

What you would have done in the case above, is to simply tell yourself, that you’re going to take only 10 steps today.

Keep doing this, until it becomes normal.

Your brain likes routine. So once 10 steps become a habit, push it up a bit further, and keep increasing over a long period until you finally hit your goal.

One trick you must remember is that your brain loves routine, so try to break down your goal into small steps, and then create a ritual or routine that you have to do every day until your brain accepts it as normal.

For a better understanding of what is going on, let’s go to physiology.

Habits are traced to a part of the brain called the basal ganglia – a portion of the brain associated with emotions, patterns, and memories.

Decisions, on the other hand, are made in the prefrontal cortex, a completely different area of the brain.

Making decisions requires serious work by the brain, and takes a longer time, but habits do not require decision-making skills, they need little energy and function on auto-pilot.

So the brain will always revert to habits and instinct, over reasonable decisions.

When a behaviour becomes a habit, we stop using our decision-making skills and instead function on auto-pilot.

Imagine learning to ride a bicycle or a car for the first time.

It is extremely hard to handle all the controls at the same time, but once you master them, the skills are filed into your basal ganglia.

At this point, you can ride your bicycle or car, absent-mindedly.

You can be talking or thinking about something else, while effortlessly cruising to your destination.

It is no longer active work, but instinct and habit.

Step 5: Give Yourself Advance Forgive

Ok, now you’re moving ahead with your new plans and strategies.

You are confident that you will succeed this time. You have religiously followed the 4 steps of the process we’ve been going through the past few days, so what could go wrong?

What will stop you from achieving your goals this year?

Well, Nothing…
Nothing, except yourself!

I know you’ve heard this before, but let me explain what I mean.

Yesterday, I told you that your brain does not like stress and that once you take it out of its comfort zone, it’s going to fight you and do everything possible to return you to familiar territory.

We also learned that the best way to succeed is to work with your brain instead of against it, by starting small and turning your actions into routines or rituals.

Now despite all these, your brain is not dumb.

You may think that you’re not too smart, but whether you believe you’re smart or you’re a dummy, I can tell you right now, that your brain is extremely intelligent irrespective of your opinion of yourself.

When you don’t realize the power and ingenuity of your brain, your brain will become your master.

Let me digress a bit, have you heard about the woman who lifted a car, all by herself, because her son was trapped under it?

Seems impossible right? Well, google it…. Let me save you the energy, here’s one link to check….but wait till you’re done with this post!

Humans don’t understand their power until they face a life-and-death situation…

So back to the topic, do you know that your brain is more powerful than any computer in existence today? Again, google is your friend.

Now tell me whether your brain is smart or not and whether you by extension are intelligent or not.

So anyway, you won’t deceive your brain for long.

Soon it will realize what you’re doing and it will move into action subtly, to fight the upcoming stress that it can see…
(success is stressful, although poverty is worse, poverty requires no effort – Do you see?)

So in another post, I will show you how to start training your brain to love your new goals and the stressful process of achieving them, but in this post, you’ll learn to just give yourself, advance forgiveness!

What do I mean?

Well, I can already tell you, that you will fail many times.

You will miss some of your daily routines.

You will stumble lots of times.

I say this confidently because I know the power of your brain.

So the only thing you can do now is to forgive yourself in advance for your failures and resolve that stumbling on the way, will not stop you from pushing ahead.

That you failed, does not mean that you cannot achieve anything or that you’re a failure.. NO… Stop telling yourself that lie!

You are working against the most powerful machine created by God, and until you can convince this machine of your genuine desire to succeed, and the benefits thereof, it will not let you move out of your comfort zone.

Didn’t you read what the wise King Solomon said in Proverbs 24:16

“For a righteous man falleth seven times, and riseth up again”

Not once, but seven!

And note, he said, A righteous man…

So what makes you think you won’t fail along the way?

What makes you think you won’t face stumbling blocks?

What makes you think the road to your success will be paved with gold?

Sorry to burst your bubble…You will fail many times, but you will rise again and again

Maybe you’re already down.

Maybe you’re losing faith in yourself already.

In that case, I have a simple exercise for you.

Exercise:

Get up right now and repeat after me..

A righteous man will fall 7 times, but 7 times he will rise again.
No matter how many times I fail, I will rise again.
I forgive myself for my failures, but I will not remain down.
I will rise again…
I am rising right now!

Hey, my friends, this particular step, maybe the most important step in this whole process.

I do not know what you will face as you pursue your goals in life.

But resolve right now, that even though you get knocked down flat to the ground, you won’t stop fighting, and you will continue to forgive yourself.

When Peter came to Jesus and asked,

“Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? Up to seven times?

Jesus answered,
__“I tell you, not seven times, but seventy times seven.”

So if I am supposed to forgive my brother 70 X 7 times,  Then why shouldn’t I forgive myself for all my past errors, mistakes, and failures?

Learn to forgive yourself and you will have the grace and peace of mind to continue your great and beautiful journey..

Have a Blessed Day