Pod Insights Change Wired How To Get Fit With Habits That Stick About this episode Discipline gets all the credit, but it is the wrong tool for the job of getting you fit for the rest of your life. If you have ever tried to “just be stricter” with workouts, nutrition, sleep, or even scrolling, you already know how it ends: a strong start, a busy week, then a full stop. I share a conversation sparked by a futurist friend who asked how I help my clients create long-term discipline for hard things. My answer is simple. I do not teach discipline. I teach habit formation and sys...
Transcript 0:09 Speaker 00 Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina, I'm your host, I'm your partner in personal and collective transformation, your executive master health coach 360, and just someone who is really passionate about every single day looking into all different strategies, how we can unlock and use more of our potential in our daily life to achieve our goals, to build our visions, so we get to live our most extraordinary lives, feeling the most alive, while also bringing the most value and service into this world.
0:54 Speaker 00 Today, guys, we're going to talk about discipline, we're going to talk about getting fit and perhaps getting into the best shape of your life physically, mentally, financially, and how most of it actually has nothing to do with discipline. A couple of days ago, I had a call with a futurist. I have a few friends who do this for a living, which I'm quite fascinated with, someone who has a profession of being a futurist. Sounds kind of cool. But anyhow, so the call, on the call, we discussed different ways how people approach
1:36 Speaker 00 future casting, future creation, or creating, building certain goals and visions, and what some strategies are, and where he considers future casting or future forecasting, where he considers it goes wrong and how to do it better. But then we switch to something that is more familiar to what I do, even though by the end of our conversation, I realized there might be this practical futurist, helping people to build and create the most profitable future through daily actions.
2:21 Speaker 00 And my friend asked me this question.
2:27 Speaker 00 Getting, I think, into the age where he has a lot of ambitions still, but his health is not necessarily as supportive as he'd like it to be. So he wanted to figure out how to improve his health, his fitness, to fuel his ambitions and the vision that he still wants to build for his life, for his career, for his impact. And he asked me a question, like, discipline.
3:00 Speaker 00 Is it really a thing? Is it really sustainable? Is this really what you help people to build, to achieve, to create? How do you help people to keep going day in and day out? Like that grind, that hard work? I don't think it's sustainable. What do you usually recommend people to do? And
3:23 Speaker 00 what I realized at this point, I think I realized it quite some time ago, that I don't actually teach discipline. The only time I talk about discipline is to say, I'm the least disciplined person you probably know. And when people see the way I look and that I'm so healthy or quote unquote strict with my diet, with my sleep regime, with my training. Some people assume that I'm disciplining myself into it or that I don't eat ice cream or sweets and don't do a lot of things that people consider temptations and vice. And again, people think that I somehow discipline myself into it. And that when clients come to me, working on their health and fitness,
4:08 Speaker 00 their eating habits, their drinking habits, sometimes all these habits that they would like to do less of or eliminate to move towards this aspiring vision of self and their life a lot faster versus getting in their own way of achieving their goals. So I never, like, never in my entire 18-year coaching career, any of my clients said, Angela helped me to become more disciplined. My clients say things like, it feels like cheating. They do all the work and it feels like cheating. Like, how is it? What kind of magic do I do?
4:53 Speaker 00 Discipline, you know, the discipline, the kind of discipline you think about when you think about forcing yourself every day to do something you don't wanna do. You can sustain it for a week, you know, with the greatest energy and motivation. January first or your birthday, especially if you are in your maybe thirty ninth year or forty ninth or fifty ninth, you know, in those numbers, people actually start doing all kinds of stuff and find discipline for things they didn't know they had. Or also at the turn of the decade, you're like, yeah, I'm gonna run marathons now and go climb, I don't know, mountains. But anyhow, eh, the discipline is not a sustainable thing in a way most people think about that.
5:38 Speaker 00 And I'm speaking from eighteen years again in coaching, helping people to achieve goal goals that they struggled with for decades and smart people, people who achieved a lot in other areas, but somehow thought they didn't have enough, quote unquote, again, discipline to achieve their desired fitness levels or health or energy or the sometimes even relationships and just sticking with the behaviors that they know are, that they know serve them the best or that vision of self. But anyhow, what science and research and every single expert on motivation and greed,
6:19 Speaker 00 what they all tell us these days, it's this forcing yourself to do every single day something, it's not sustainable. Your life, your energy, your mood, they fluctuate so much and you get overwhelmed and you're bombarded with so many things that to imagine that someone is gonna be disciplining themselves through all of that for years and decades needed to maintain, for example, the peak state of health that you wanna achieve. It's, I don't even know who really believes in that. You can't sustain it usually for even two months. The, the research shows that all new year resolutions, for example, are done or dead
7:04 Speaker 00 by February. People make them and have some discipline for sometimes even a couple of months. Usually, most people drop out actually by the end of January or even at the two week mark.
7:18 Speaker 00 Discipline is not sustainable. Habits are. And the difference between disciplining yourself into something and making decision every day about forcing yourself to do something and habits is that they live in different parts of your brain. Or habits live in the part of your brain that automates and makes things effortless. You become this kind of like Pavlov's dog. If you know who Pavlov was and he did a lot of experiments on conditioning of animals. When he would ring a bell and bring the, bring a dog food. And then he would ring a bell and do that again and do that again and do that again.
7:58 Speaker 00 And after a while, he would ring a bell and the dog would salivate and uh the sort of the almost predigest stuff and there was no food. But the dog behaved like the same way, whether there was food or not. But the whole point is, once something becomes a habit, whenever something triggers that or uh forces or there is a cue, reminder of some sort, it's kind of like pushing a button on your phone that activates a program. So habits work the same way. There is a trigger, you see something, you hear something, you feel something, somebody says something, reminds you of something. And you implement the program and then you get some sort of payoff.
8:41 Speaker 00 And that is done without your conscious awareness or making any decisions. And it feels, like my clients say, like cheating. And the whole difference between how I helped my clients to get into the fittest shape of their life when they were struggling with that for decades before. And they would go to this like intense springs of doing, I don't know, some seventy five heart or some other challenge, some diet challenge. And then they would. Something would happen and they would get more stressed, more overwhelmed, busy and so or just tired and they would stop it, right, and never to get back to it.
9:22 Speaker 00 Whereas habits, when you build them the right way, again, it's something that you do without even thinking about that and it feels really easy and does not require any of your conscious effort. And it feels again like cheating and therefore a lot of my clients would say, I feel like I'm living my life exactly as I would live my life. And I also do the things that I need to do to get the results that I want. And discipline is not a word ever that they use. But in order to build a habit, you can't build a lot of habits all at the same time. Unless you decide to only focus on building habits and you eliminate your work, your life, and you have no commitments.
10:08 Speaker 00 Maybe then you can build a few habits at a time. Or if those habits are more like one habits, like a sandwich of habits stacked on top of each other. Then you can build several habits in those conditions. But if those habits are still quite hard, quite different from what you're used to doing and they require a lot of change on your part, in your environment, and just a lot of still organizing and thinking. You still won't be able to build them. Or if they don't fit in the real, in the reality, in the context of your life, as soon as your motivation goes out of the window or something else becomes a priority, again, it becomes unsustainable because it becomes too hard.
10:48 Speaker 00 So the first thing, how I help my clients to get into the fittest self, that's mentally, emotionally improving your relationship or literally fitness, or going to bed on time, or stopping drinking, or studied learning, or stopping scrolling. Like how I help my clients with all of these behaviors that's supposed to be a
11:11 Speaker 00 I think that the discipline is needed for we build habits and we build habits the right way and the right way means A making sure that the kind of habit that we built actually fits into the life that you have, not the ideal life, the we build the habits in the way that survive your worst day, not just your best case scenario kind of day. And we build habits one at a time and we follow habit recipe that is, but besides, this is how our brain tends to automate things and make them into a habit. So then
11:52 Speaker 00 we can implement them without conscious thinking. Well, all that to say, when we start working on something A, I help my clients to start pacing themselves and focus on one habit at a time. So they can then focus on other priorities like their work, their relationships, their families, et cetera, while again changing this other area, like for example, fitness. So we choose one habit because one habit is usually what you can focus some of your attention, organize yourself. So then to make it automatic before building another habit. Now, before you build a habit, it lives in the area of your brain that still
12:33 Speaker 00 needed, that still needs to make decisions, that still needs some effort. You're kind of building a road for your neurons to travel along. So the action that you need to perform, let's say, working out is as fast and effortless and decision free as it possibly can be. But before that happens, you need repetitions. But in order to do repetitions, you need to make the process itself as decision and effort and discipline free as possible. And you do that by
13:09 Speaker 00 Creating by making the habit easy. Let's say instead of if you wanna start exercising consistently. You don't wanna be driving to gym for an hour. And then being stuck in some place and have to figure out all this complex equipment. And have to jump through so many hoops to just get the thing going. Now, the first thing you wanna do is to create a habit of exercising daily. In whichever the easiest way it is. So let's say you wake up at, I don't know, six. And you dedicate the next thirty minutes to your exercise in the easiest way you can possibly imagine. Maybe you put your shorts by the door with your shoes. And you have your T-shirt and you go for a run. Or you go and do some jumping jacks.
13:53 Speaker 00 Or what I usually give my clients who really don't have any exercise habit. And didn't have it for quite a while. I just ask them to do one hundred, which is twenty squats, twenty pushups, twenty jumping jacks, jacks, twenty burpees, twenty situps. Right? That is the workout. Six AM, you do the workout, you're done for the day. And you do that for two weeks until that becomes like the thing that you do. Every morning at six AM for thirty minutes, you do your exercise. And we repeat it, we repeat it, repeat it. So they wake up, they see their shorts, they put the shorts on, they put the shoes on, they exercise. They make themselves feel good by it, like, oh, high fiving themselves.
14:37 Speaker 00 And rewarding yourself, creating positive emotion around what you're trying to do often. And consistently is very important because the habit is a function of emotion, not a function of just repetition. The higher, the more positive emotion you manufacture, you engineer, you make yourself feel. The faster you're gonna wire the habit. That's why drugs are so addictive because they give you such a huge dopamine spike, which is a positive emotion, a reward for accomplishing, you don't think? So that, that's why again, drugs are so addiction, like one and done, and you're addicted. Now, exercise is not like that, but it does produce dopamine.
15:18 Speaker 00 And if at the end, you make yourself feel proud, you put some, you check some box. So you even more acknowledge the getting things done, the progress of the habit. And then you repeat it, repeat it, repeat it. There are two weeks for such a habit is a good. Way to wire initial habit now habits they say are formed somewhere between eight into two hundred fifty four days and I think it depends on how fast you automate it by making it as repeatable as simple as easy as possible and the intensity of positive emotion you make yourself feel like the more positive emotion you create around that thing.
16:01 Speaker 00 I believe personally the faster you're gonna wire it and the easier you make it to start it to do it. That also contributes to that. So we built one habit and then let's say you now wanna start working on your nutrition. And that's when you would start working on another habit, not like I'm gonna change my breakfast, lunch and dinner all at the same time. No, you're gonna take one action like I'm gonna eat three eggs for my breakfast to add protein nutrients and maybe I'm gonna stack it with protein shake, right? So my protein is on point every single morning because that is
16:46 Speaker 00 great for satiety, great, great for focus, great for not having cravings later during the day, great for maintaining stable energy and mood throughout the day, which all are important for improving all kinds of habits, right? Then you, okay, I'm gonna eat those boiled eggs and I'm gonna pre boil them for the whole week. And I'm gonna prepare my shake for the whole week. So the whole thing is super, super easy. And you do it every morning, right after you exercise, one and done, and you stack habits and you make yourself feel amazing, high five yourself again. And that is the second habit that you're gonna be working for another couple of weeks.
17:27 Speaker 00 And habit by habit, you develop this new routine, you different rituals in your day. And the more repeatable you make them, the less they're gonna feel like work. And the more and the less they feel like work, the less discipline is needed and the less discipline is needed, the less effort is needed. The higher there is a chance that you're gonna do it for your whole life. A friend of mine, we were driving from the gym and he
18:03 Speaker 00 Says something along the lines that when he gets injured and he noticed it with a few people, that people just stop exercising at all, like they didn't move much, they don't walk much, they just, you know, I don't know, sit at their, at their computer. If they have sedentary job, they drive where they need to drive and they do basically like zero exercise. And the reason why I wanted to tell you that is because for most of the habits, it is very important to continue the routine, even though sometimes you won't be able to do everything that you needed to do in the original habit.
18:43 Speaker 00 Like what I mean by that is if I don't have the opportunity to go to the gym in the morning, I go for a walk, right? And I can walk in almost any condition, even when I'm sick, I still go and can go for a very short walk. And so my routine still happens. I can still, I don't know, do yoga or some type of movement in the morning. So routine is there still and it becomes context independent. And I made decisions in advance, so when I can't do X, I'm gonna do Y. When I can't do Y, I'm gonna do Z, but I still keep the exercise habit going. Same with nutrition.
19:27 Speaker 00 If I can't get certain, I don't know, protein or vegetable or something else, I grab whatever is the closest thing. Because of my education, I know that how to substitute foods, for example, really well. And that's what I also teach my clients, like if you can't get, I don't know, your fish, you're gonna get whatever looks like meat, fish, chicken, like protein. If you can't get your broccoli, you're gonna get whatever else looks like vegetables, right? So we learn all these things, how to substitute foods. So you get to eat either a healthy diet or you get to exercise, no matter in what condition you are, whether you're injured or not. So you get to repeat the habit and the more you again, they repeat the habit, the less discipline you need and the less discipline then you need, the longer you're gonna maintain that habit.
20:12 Speaker 00 Even when you're tired, when you travel, when you don't have time, we're super busy, your brain will almost demand you to do the habit.
20:22 Speaker 00 That's again how my clients feel and my clients are super busy. They all, they have like zero time for things they don't plan. They don't have time to sit on the couch, do nothing. They just go, go, go, go, go, go, right? Because they love living their life to the fullest. And that's the only kind of client I, I work with. And in that condition, we still build new habits that they need to create a different state of health, of mental health, or they need to prioritize their work differently or relationships. So maybe they now wanna have more hobbies or have more fun, but still wanna maintain, you know, their performance at work, etc.
21:04 Speaker 00 The point is, I help my clients to build the right kind of routines in a smarter way. So their life feels like cheating and they still achieve the results. Because this is the only way that is sustainable, not just for a year or a couple of years that we are together, but for their entire life. So it's a combination of understanding things better, but then also getting really, really good at building habits, not through willpower and discipline, but by creating the environment, the reinforcement loops, the scaling up, scale down routines, understanding how habits work in your brain. So then again, those are like automatic programs, push a button, implement and get on with your day.
21:50 Speaker 00 And the reason, guys, why it's also so important to understand the,
21:58 Speaker 00 how you can achieve results without discipline is because most of long term, most of the bigger goals or something that you wanna achieve, you wanna write a book, you wanna build a multimillion dollar business, you wanna develop really great relationships that also takes time. You wanna build great, really great fitness and health that might take several years, right? Somebody wants, let's say, lose thirty kilos and I had those clients. It's a multi-year project. It's not like you're gonna do it in a, even in a year. Unless you really want to make yourself suffer and that's the only thing you're gonna focus for the next year. But it's a multi-year project.
22:40 Speaker 00 So those projects will require a lot of things done consistently. Whether you want to do it, whether you feel like doing it or not, just a lot, a lot of habits. I always say that
22:56 Speaker 00 everything you want in life long term is on the other side of habits.
23:07 Speaker 00 Because everything you want in life sustainably and long term depends on you doing something consistently. Day in, day out. It's like brushing your teeth. You don't choose to brush your teeth every day. You wanna have good teeth for the rest of your life, you brush it twice a day for the rest of your life. I also teach my clients to take the right kind of supplements and I explain the science, etc. And they're like, so do we now take my multivitamin to the rest of my life? I'm like, do you wanna feel good till the rest of your life? The science says that people who take that multivitamin feel better. Like, do you want this till the rest of your life? Do you want your healthy teeth till the rest of your life? Do you wanna stay fit till the rest of your life?
23:53 Speaker 00 Do you wanna have great relationships till the rest of your life? Yes, you kinda have to take it daily, to do it daily. And that is all about learning how to build habits, how to remove unwanted habits. And that's all there is to it. Yes, you gotta know like what what habit exactly you need. Like, for example, if you wanna build a business, there are multiple of the things you can be doing. You can't do them all at the same time. So the the first thing is to figure out, and that's where coaching also is super helpful. Because coach will show you, like, here is the thing that is missing that you need to implement first in order to get to the next stage.
24:36 Speaker 00 So then, through, again, a combination of different habits and actions then consistently, you actually get to reach your goal. And a good coach will Progress you through all of these steps from habit number one to the habit number two, to the habit number three, to the habit number four. They will help you to build skills through those habits and those skills. When done consistently, you're gonna create the result that you want. And usually, the result that you want still requires some sort of habit and consistent actions in order to be maintained. So that is a process of coaching, of achieving goals, of achieving results. And that is the process that does not require discipline.
25:17 Speaker 00 It requires understanding what you want in life and what the price for that price is. And the best hack I found to understand what you have to pay for the result that you want is to ask people who already got that and/or coaches who helped other people to get what you want. Because sometimes people get something that you want, but they don't really understand the whole process that got them there. And that's what teachers and coaches do. Like, again, this is the process. You do this and you achieve result. And when your coach or teacher gave this result to someone else, there is a very high
26:01 Speaker 00 probability they can teach you the same process. And if they did it with many people, there is even higher probability. And that's why people with more experience get to be paid a lot more because they have this guarantee, hey, I helped that many people to do this thing. The most probably, I can help you to get the same. But in any case, the most important lesson of today's podcast that you wanna get is discipline has nothing to do with maintaining long-term goal and well, getting the goal and maintaining it. It has to do with your ability of A, choosing the right action, B, making the habit of it.
26:44 Speaker 00 Because just like with brushing your teeth, if you want to get your clean, healthy teeth and you wanna maintain them, you kind of gotta do it daily. I hope guys you learned something on this podcast. I hope that it made you think differently about discipline. And if you're trying to get yourself more disciplined, please do understand it is not the discipline you're looking for. You're looking better systems to build the right kind of habits that will on autopilot give you as a side effect, the result that you want. And if you're still trying to get disciplined, I can tell you right away, you're gonna fail.
27:27 Speaker 00 Thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Please do share this podcast episode with at least one other person who you think will benefit from this podcast. This podcast is spread by people like yourself, who would like other people to thrive and do better. We share this podcast. We are in 11,000 cities plus around the world on four, four or five continents. I think it was five. So please do help this podcast to reach more ears eager to improve, learn and get better. And till next time, keep growing.
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