Unleashing Willpower: Strategies to Boost Your Self-Discipline

Ever wonder why self-discipline seems like an uphill battle?

Join me as I reveal the personal journey behind building self-discipline and how you can transform it from a daily struggle into a powerful habit. I'm laying it all on the table: from my own battles with procrastination to the determination that fuels my goals. Equipped with insights from Forbes, Calm, and Score, we're turning self-discipline into an approachable and achievable part of your life.

Get ready to uncover practical steps to harness your strengths and address your weaknesses. We'll explore how setting clear, attainable goals can make a world of difference in your journey to self-discipline. This episode is packed with relatable stories and invaluable advice designed to inspire you to take control and become the disciplined individual you aspire to be. Buckle up, passengers, because the Self-Growth Train is on its way to making self-discipline not just a necessity, but a daily triumph!

Resources used today:

8 Powerful Ways to Cultivate Extreme Self-Discipline
How to Become More Disciplined
7 Simple Ways to Develop Daily Discipline Success

Transcript

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 0:07

Hello, my dear passengers, and welcome aboard the Self-Growth Train, a podcast that combines personal stories, opinions and research in order to better guide you through your self-growth journey.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 0:17

My name is Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco and I am your tour guide. First, I want to say thank you for tuning back in into the podcast. I am so excited. It's been a month since the relaunch and you guys have been so supportive and just present and so nice and I just I really, really, really appreciate all the kind words that I've received over the last couple of weeks and also guys. I'm just so excited because I feel it in my bones that there's so many more cool things coming my way and I'm just so ready for the blessings and so grateful for them and I just can't wait until you guys see everything that is coming. Well, my dear passengers, the time has come for you to buckle up your seatbelts as we head into the first stop of the day.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 1:04

That is the topic of the day, and today's topic is self-discipline. Self-discipline is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as the regulation or correction of oneself for the sake of improvement. Now, I don't know about you, my dear passenger, but let me tell you I have struggled with self-discipline every single day of my life. Why? Because it means that you have to constantly be correcting yourself. And who wants to do that? Actually? Who has time to do that? Nobody. And yet we all have to do it. But is there a way that it can be easier on us? Absolutely, and that is exactly what this episode is going to be covering today. For today's episode, I will be using three articles that I found online to be super helpful when it came to developing my self-discipline. The first article is by Forbes, and it's titled 8 Powerful Ways to Cultivate Extreme Self-Discipline. The second article is from Calm. com, and it's called How to Become More Disciplined. And the last article is from Score, and this one is titled 7 Simple Ways to Develop Daily Discipline Success. As a reminder, I don't cover all three articles through and through, but I do put them on the episode's description, so that way, if you want to go and read them, you have the opportunity to go ahead and check them out. For the podcast episode, the thing that I usually do is that I read the articles and I summarize them and combine them in a way that makes it easier for you and I to focus on the topic of the day.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 2:27

Let's get down to the first step. The first step is actually quite easy, in a way. I mean, it depends on how well you know yourself. But the first step is determining what are your strengths and what are your weaknesses.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 2:39

Now, my dear passenger, for me, I can tell you my biggest strength and I can tell you my biggest weakness. My biggest strength is that I am a very determined individual. When I set my mind on a goal, I put my everything I'm talking my time, my resources, my energy, my focus, everything. Why? Because once I set my eyes on a goal, I want it and I'm going to do everything to get it. Now, what is my biggest weakness? I leave everything for the end. Yes, that is right, I am a huge procrastinator and even with this podcast episode, this specific one, I waited until the end to do it, even though I could have done it weeks ago. But you know what? This is the good thing about doing a podcast episode where I'm able to not only create content for you to feel related to, but also create content for myself, to inspire myself to do better, because, at the end of the day, that is the purpose of this podcast. Like, I want to help myself and I want to help you guys become better individuals.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 3:48

The second step is also easy-ish. It depends. It depends on how you are, but it's to set clear, achievable goals. Okay, let me repeat that because this is very important Set clear and achievable goals. Now, why did I have to repeat that? Because I don't know about you, my dear passenger, but I have the tendency of setting goals that are ridiculous, not because I could never reach them, but sometimes I expect my goals to happen within a very small time frame, or I don't know, like I think that I am a superwoman and I'm going to be able to accomplish every single thing, and it's like that's not realistic. I think that right now, our focus should be on becoming more realistic with ourselves, which is why it was important to know our strengths and our weaknesses, because by knowing our strengths and our weaknesses, we're better able to understand what we can realistically achieve right.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 4:49

So for me, for example, some of the goals that I have is I want to write daily, I want to exercise daily, I want to meditate daily, I want to work daily and I also want to work on my creative projects daily. Is this realistic? Absolutely not. I think that, of all the things that I just mentioned, there's two things that I can do realistically every single day, and that is meditate and write. Those two. I'm pretty sure I can do them every single day, but when it comes to exercise, it's not like in the summer. In the summer, I had all this free time and I could go to the gym every single day. Now I don't have that happening. So it's kind of hard to adjust myself to this new reality in terms of, like, wow, things change, but it doesn't mean that just because it changed, I can't make it work for me. I just have to fix those goals to make them achievable. So now it's not going to look like I go to the gym every single day. Now it just looks like I do something active every single day, and it might be walking, it might be swimming which, as you can tell, I'm wearing my swimsuit and I'm going to be swimming soon or it might be something as easy as jumping rope, which, by the way, apparently jumping rope is like super fun and also helps with, like, building your muscles. So give it a shot. I haven't tried it yet, but I am going to.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 6:20

The third step is to develop a structured routine. Now. If you listened to last week's episode, you should have this down already. If you haven't listened to last week's episode, this is my time to invite you to go ahead and listen to last week's episode, just because it goes a little bit more in depth than what I'm going to be doing right now But essentially, when you develop a structured routine, you want to look at what your current routine looks like and in what areas you're able to adapt or change in order to accommodate, being able to seek those achievable goals that you have now set for yourself. So, for example again I'm using myself.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 6:58

I wake up every day around 5.30 am, and it used to be that during the summer, that time I would go to the gym and then I would come back and I would meditate and I would write. Now, however, because I have to be at work before 7 am, it doesn't look the same way. So I'm not able to wake up at 5.30, go to the gym and do all of these things. Now. For me, in a structured routine, it looks like waking up, getting ready for work, going to work and then, once I get back from work, taking that time to go to the gym or do something active and writing and meditating or whatever else I want to do. But you see how your reality is going to keep shifting as the time goes by. But if you keep realistic goals, you will be able to adapt your routines to accommodate for them.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 7:53

Step four, my absolute favorite and the one that I do the worst in avoiding temptation. Oh my gosh, like I mentioned in one of the other episodes, when it comes to FOMO and YOLO, I have it. I'm constantly have this fear of missing out and I also have this mentality of you only live once. So I want to do everything and anything and all that once, just like that movie, you know, and I just I love it. I love the fact that I'm so spontaneous and that I'm able to shift my mind from one thing to the other.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 8:32

But, realistically speaking right going back to realistically speaking I do need to start avoiding my temptations, and it's because, a lot of times, what I don't realize is that when I am endorsing those temptations, I'm taking away time from focusing on the things that I really need to focus on. So, for example, again like I mentioned earlier, this podcast episode, I left for the end. Up to this point, I had pre-recorded my episodes like weeks ahead of time, and now it's like I'm doing this the day before and I know it's still going to be a good podcast episode. But the reality is, if I had avoided temptation temptation and if I had stuck to my schedule, then none of this would have happened and I could still endorse my desire to spend time with people and do fun things and cool things around town that I don't normally get to do or maybe I do normally get to do, but I want to do more of.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 9:33

So I think it's important for us to sit down and really analyze what is tempting for me, like what is it that I cannot say no to? I mean, you can, but you struggle to say no to. What is it that gives you a lot of instant gratification and might take you away from working on these goals that you also want to achieve? But they might take a little bit longer, and once you're able to have that list of things, you're better prepared to say no to them. Now I'm not saying that you're going to be able to say no to them all the time and that it's going to be perfect. Because, again, look at this episode as a beautiful example of how I let temptation get me, but there will be times where you'll be able to kind of recenter yourself and say no, you know what?

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 10:31

I do want to go to that drag show and I do want to spend time with my friends, but I know deep down that if I go to this event tonight, I'm not going to get some work done for my podcast, and that is also very important to me and that is what I need to start doing more of, and I will be doing it more of. Why? Because step number five seeking accountability from others and I know this is kind of questionable in a way because we want to be able to, like, determine for ourselves hey, I'm doing the things that I'm supposed to be doing, but that doesn't mean that we have to do it alone. You can have friends and you can have family that help you along the way by doing things that will help you stay on track, like, for example, with me.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 11:13

Ellen is one of my closest friends and when it comes to the podcast, she'll ask me or she'll text me or she'll call me. She has all these different ways to reach out to me, right, and she'll be like, hey, when's the new episode? Or are you excited about the new episode? Or hey, I've heard the new episode and I loved it. So that helps me stay grounded and it also helps keep me motivated to keep doing more stuff.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 11:38

But, for example, when it comes to filmmaking, I have my friends Rebecca and Lily, and they literally will sometimes offer their help because I just procrastinate a lot when it comes to filmmaking. And they'll be like hey, do you need help with the script, do you need help with the storyboard, do you need help with this? And just having that type of support is so important, because sometimes I don't know about you, my dear passenger, but sometimes I want to give up. It's just human nature. Sometimes it feels very overwhelming and feels very unachievable, but really what's happening is that when I have these friends check up on me and kind of push me forward, it allows me to give myself grace and also give myself that motivation and that determination to keep moving, because it's like it's not just me that is watching. I have my friends and my family right behind me pushing me forward, telling me hey, keep going. No, no, don't even take a step back, girl. Don't even Just keep going, keep moving. You got this Well, my dear passenger, the time has come for the last stop of the day. That is recap time.

Frances Marie Rivera Pacheco: 12:50

Today's episodes discuss self-discipline, which is the regulation of oneself for the sake of improvement. We now know that, in order to boost your self-discipline, you need to recognize and understand your strengths and your weaknesses. Why? Because, once you do, you're able to set clear and realistic expectations that will allow you to develop a structured routine that will then hopefully help you avoid temptations. And hey, if that doesn't work, having the accountability from your friends and family can always help you stay on track. Remember, self-growth is an endless journey towards self-improvement. However, you don't ever have to do it alone. As your tour guide, my goal is to guide you with the best intentions and the best research available. Make sure to follow me on Instagram, facebook and TikTok at the Self-Growth Train Podcast, and to also follow my new website, theselfgrowthtrainpodcast. com. As always, all the resources used today have been added to the episode's description. Well, until the next stop, dear passengers, safe travels. Bye!