how do I fix my discipline if I'm an ill-disciplined person? Understanding what discipline is is the most critical element. And I define this differently than most people. So I define discipline as your ability to prioritize the needs of your future self ahead of your own, present self.
And that's it. That's all that discipline is. I'm prioritizing the needs of future me. You're trying to think of a...
No, I was thinking of two scenarios. Scenario one is I go home tonight, right? Because I go to sleep, I get to bed early. And there's this other thing I'm thinking about doing after I switch to the gym.
And I'm like, as you're saying, I was thinking both help future me. I was surprised. I was like, then we go back to where am I getting my dopamine from? And I want past tense me to be a source of dopamine for present tense me.
Because most of us look back with regret. I shouldn't have drank that much. I shouldn't have mouthed off at the family reunion. You know, whatever it is.
I shouldn't have overslept. If I can start looking backwards with gratitude, that's the fastest way to make discipline dopamine generating. So the tricks are to start small. So like when I go to bed at night, I will pop open the little Keurig coffee thing and stick the thing in there, put a cup under there.
Everything's like ready to go. So when I wake up in the morning, I just go, bam, and everything's ready. I'll get my clothes out, a butler for future me. So when I wake up in the morning, all this stuff set out, my laundry's laid out, my checklist for what I need to do for the day.
All the stuff I've got to get on a plane is all laid out by the back door. I can grab it and jump in the car. Everything I could possibly do to make my future self go, oh man, that's awesome. And look backwards with gratitude.
I'm going to do it. I'll take a hundred dollar bill or maybe a few hundred dollar bills every spring or summer and I'll stick them in a jacket pocket that I'm not going to use until the winter. And I'll forget about it. And the winter I'm looking and now I become a source of dopamine.
Past tense me is becoming a source of dopamine for present tense me. That forces me to look in the future along with like printing that old me photo and putting it all over the house. But everything that I can possibly do to make myself look backwards with gratitude is what I'm going to start doing. But you have to start small.
It's like just going overboard is going to be crazy. And even writing a little post-it note to yourself and sticking it in a jacket or maybe a dress shoe that you're not going to wear for a few months, it means so much to find that. And it's from you. It's not from a loved one.
You did it. So you're looking backwards with like, wow, that's amazing. So you're now getting love and sending gratitude backwards, which automatically means that what's going forward is concern and care. The moment I'm always looking back with gratitude, the concern is always going forward in the future.
And the concern for present goes away. And I'm going to push that concern to the right out in the future. People struggle even with the small things, right? Like again, because it's funny because I watched a video last night about a lady that went to YouTube and started her like journey of weight loss and whatever.
And she was very, I think she was 400 pounds or something. And she was trying to get down. And in the video, you watch some people who I'm referring to over the space of a year or two years, she actually gains weight. So she gets, I think, 500 pounds or something.
And as I was watching it, you're watching someone who's saying, I want to change my life. But then it's coming on every day and I'm just gaining three pounds and I'm just gaining another three pounds. And there's almost this visible dissonance that you're observing between this person saying they want to change their life. But clearly the actions that they're then taking are different to that.
And many people can relate to that feeling of, I want to be this person. I mean, we're coming up to like, we're at the frame that doesn't know we're recording this in December. So New Year's resolutions are around the corner. Everyone's going to say to themselves who they want to become.
But it's easier said than done. I think what, 7, 8%, 9% of New Year's resolutions will stick. So is it just a case of starting small or is there any other tricks to discipline that you can offer? It's starting small and realizing that all of our lives are about habits, not goals.
But what are the habits that make my goal a byproduct? Everything is about byproducts in your whole life, whether you know it or not. So instead of setting goals, set like the byproduct. What are the byproducts I want to have for this year?
And then what are the habits that make that up? So what the big mistake most people make is they see somebody like you. You go to the gym very often. You probably eat really clean.
I know you don't drink alcohol because I brought you a flask and gave it to your team. But basically they did. It's a habit. So you're not like forcing yourself to go do something.
You're doing something that's a habit for you. The discipline only is necessary. You only need like a teaspoon of it at the very beginning to get this habit started. So start micro habits first and then bigger habits.
So the discipline is not something that you should be seeing if you're seeing someone eat healthy and go to the gym, do all the stuff you want to do. Those are habits. And that person, you're not seeing a discipline at work right there. You're seeing a habit.
The discipline was just at the beginning. And I think if more people knew that, that you're just...