Recently, I was having a discussion with my wife about the difference between discipline and willpower. And I actually told her that I, I’m aware of how limited my willpower is, which as why as much as possible, I tried to live a life where I’m not using willpower, I’m using discipline.
Let me distinguish between discipline and willpower. If you have developed a habit of waking up at 5:00 AM every day, you don’t need to have willpower to wake up at 5:00 AM. If you haven’t got the habit, then you have to use willpower in order to wake up at 5:00 AM in the morning and it’ll take you 21 days to develop the habit.
You will have to use willpower for 21 days to get up at 5:00 AM until your mind and your psyche are conditioned and, programmed with that habit. And once it gets programmed with that habit, you no longer need to use your will power. It becomes habit and discipline. What very successful people have is a series of habits built into the discipline.
They don’t need to use the will power in order to use those habits they have developed. When you’re meeting with an expert, like an engineer, an architect, a physician, an accountant, and you see their very skilled approach to their problem solving, you are actually looking at their discipline. You’re not looking at the willpower because if it was all about willpower, it will not go very far.
Why am I making this distinction? Because in my overview of looking at how people succeed, struggle, and fail, I have found that becoming aware that you have a problem and whether you can take the requisite steps to solve the problem and be successful in solving the problem will depend on whether you have the right habits in place.
The evaluate phase of designing your life is so crucial. If you don’t do a thorough job here, then later on other pieces, other things are going to come up and it’s going to get really difficult to move on. So the first issue is become clear about the priority in your life. What is the most important priority you right now in your life?
And what will this priority be? Pick a priority that is going to be important enough for the next 12 months to at least 24 or maybe 36 months. Then, you’re going to use that priority to design the rest of your life. Only when you’re successfully use that priority and you have designed your life and you know what’s working and what’s not working, then you can decide to go and do other things.
If you just have cognitive awareness that you have a problem and you are emotionally involved, you have the means to solve that problem, you can do something about it. When you do not have the requisite habits, then the steps that you take to solve the problem will not be consistent and will not be long lasting.
To give you a very specific example, when I need to develop a habit, I spend 21 days doing it and then it becomes automatic. Now, there are things I’ve done in my past, so I have the repertoire of habits, locked away in my mental arsenal, so as to speak. All my clients follow this protocol find that the routines become automated and their respective problem-solving habits improve.
I may not be doing those habits now, but every time I require them I can pull them up. So last year I decided that I would fast do a water fast once a week and when I started doing this water fast, because I’ve done so many years of fasting from ages 20 to 30, I have the necessary skillsets. So every Tuesday in the morning, I would take, herbal pills to make sure my bowels would remain open, and drink water the whole day. I actually know exactly what are the times I will feel a rumble or something, and I need to make sure I got enough fluid throughout the whole day. And of course, I’m working in my practice now, some people looking at me will say, oh wow, that’s a lot of self control. And sure, I’m going to tell you there’s no self-control involved.
If I have it, it’s instant discipline taking in because I do not have that much self control and I know that. So why am I saying this over and over again? You need to consider your life and you need to evaluate what’s really, really important, and then you can pull in the right habits.
So why was fasting once a week important to me? Apart from the physical benefits, losing the weight, autophagy, making sure that any toxic molecules are metabolized is also part of my spiritual practice. It also helps me reflect on my life. I made it a part of the discipline and the discipline took over. The moment I’m approaching Monday, I know on Tuesday I’m going to be fasting. By Monday evening, I make sure that my meal starts shrinking so it’s easier to go into the next thing. Now, I’m not suggesting that anybody else do this.
I’m not even saying it may work for you. But the point here is you want to look at your life, you want to evaluate your life, you want to look at your physical habits, your exercise patterns, your nutrition, your diet, your sleep and your water habits. And then you want to look at the clutter in your life. What do I mean by clutter in your life? The cluster in your life is whatever it is, the extra weight you’re carrying, the extra unnecessary weight you’re carrying needs can be habits, it can be relationships, it can be the way you connect with things or people that actually don’t serve you.
So if you do not plan to have a, you know, a deliberately designed life where you have habits to fall back on and the habits are the basis for your discipline, and you are constantly relying on willpower, what will happen is most of the things you want to do, you will not do the way you want to or it will not be done to your satisfaction.
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Yours in Health,
Prof. Sundardas D Annamalay