Why Self-Discipline Fails Without Identity — The Hidden Reason Your Habits Keep Collapsing

Well, hello there, my friend.

Jonathan Doyle with you once again.

Welcome back to the daily podcast.

I'm glad you're here.

I hope you're doing okay.

I hope I can bring you something useful on this journey of personal

growth, self-development, motivation, inspiration, whatever you wanna call it.

We are all on a journey if we want to be towards optimization, towards becoming

all that we can possibly become with the gifts and talents we've been given.

Why?

So that we can live a full, abundant life, blessing and serving other people,

encouraging other people, and enjoying the best of what life has to offer.

That is what we're gonna try and undertake, bring to birth,

instantiate as your reality.

I love that word instantiate, one of my favorites.

That's what we're gonna try and do together today.

Today, I wanna talk to about another crucial principle.

I wanna talk about self-discipline habits and why they fail without identity.

First thing I need you to understand today, if you haven't heard this before,

is that willpower is a finite resource.

You know, about 20, 30 years ago, a whole bunch of studies, uh, using

fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imagery, where they would put people in

those machines and scan their brains.

We actually discovered that there is a part of the brain that controls

willpower, and this-- and they can test it because they get people to

do these sort of willpower tasks and self-denial tasks, and you can see the

actual part of the brain that pings when we're trying to practice willpower.

And what they discovered is that this actual part of the brain, uh,

depletes at different times of the day.

So the neurochemical aspect of this part of our brain is not,

you know, sort of exponential.

It's not in, uh, infinite.

The more that we use our willpower, this part of the brain neurochemically

depletes throughout the day.

So there's a way to think about this.

I just thought about this coming into the studio, and it's that imagine that

you've just done an awesome workout.

It's first thing in the morning, and you're standing on the beach,

and you feel fantastic, and you just feel healthy and alive.

And somebody walks up to you with a massive tub of ice cream and says,

"Here you go. Why don't you eat this?" Now you, I don't know you.

May- maybe you're like, "Thank you," but I'd be like, "Nah, man,

like I've just finished training.

That's not what my body needs right now.

Not, uh, I love that stuff, but I don't want it now." So

it's not difficult, is it?

You know, to sort of say no at that particular point, 'cause your

environment's kind of constructed in a way that you're not gonna give in easily.

But then of course, flash forward to the end of a really hard week of

work or something, you're sitting on the couch, and you had a massive,

you know, dinner, and somebody comes up to you with this big tub of ice

cream, and you're like, "Well, well, I have, I have worked hard this week.

I've earned it." And your willpower is different 'cause the environment

conditions it differently, right?

So this is the first kind of thing, is that for so many people, they try to run

their productivity systems, their habits, their morning routines on pure willpower,

and eventually it collapses at some point.

And it's not because people are lazy.

It's not, my friend, because you are lazy.

But if you build, if you try to build habits and disciplines outside of

the issue and construct of identity, you're going to eventually fail.

One performance expert refers to this as the invisible force.

You can get so organized, you can plan perfectly, you can do everything, a-

and you can fall apart because there's something missing, and that's what

we're gonna get to in just a moment.

So the real question isn't how do you build better habits?

Sometimes people are like, "Oh, Jonathan, you know, I, I really, I, I look at

all the stuff you do, the exercise and this, and you do this, and you're

always active, and you're doing this.

How do I build habits like that?" And my first thought usually is, I don't know

if I can help you, and I want you to understand why For any habit to stick,

for any habit to become a long-term part of your life, there's a very simple

switch, and it needs to become not something you do, but someone you are.

And this is the qualitative difference.

Because if your habits are something you have to do, that will take you

a certain distance, that will get you a certain way down the line.

Because we've all got a little bit of willpower, and we can all make some

changes, especially if you're at rock bottom, like if you've put on a ton

of weight or you're struggling in some area of health or business or finance

or relationships and you're like, "Oh, I want it to be different, I've had enough."

And I've seen so many people will, will have a run at something for like

a day, a week, maybe a little bit longer, and eventually it collapses.

So if you see me on Instagram, especially Instagram Stories, you'll

see from about 4:00 a.m. most mornings, you will see these same patterns

flowing out through my day almost every single day unless I'm traveling.

So around, sometime, b- like, depends on what I'm doing on a given day,

but from 3:00 a.m. to 4:00 a.m., something like that, you'll see

me either in the gym or I've got a morning prayer ritual that I have.

You'll see me doing, you know, running or cardio, and then I'll

do other stuff during the day, and then I'm usually at golf in the

afternoons and a few other things.

And you see these, these repetitive things showing up every day.

Why?

Because for me, they've been something that I've committed to for so long,

they've become an aspect of identity.

I am someone who prays.

It's central to my identity.

If you took it away, I would feel very ungrounded.

I am somebody who trains and keeps really fit, 'cause I grew up, God rest

his soul, with a father who wasn't very healthy and had a massive effect on me.

So there's this strong sense in me of I'm somebody that, that takes a

massive accountability for energy, for health, for, for training.

So my identity is kind of rooted in some of these key things.

And then, you know, I'm not gonna tell you that I get up

every day and it's always easy.

You know, it's not.

Like, I, I still have to sometimes… Well, like I said in a podcast

last week, one of the X Factor skills that I've developed is

I never negotiate with myself.

I never negotiate with myself So I've learned over many years that I don't

start a conversation each day of, "Oh, do I wanna do this?" It's just what

I do because it's an identity thing.

So for you it could be different.

Like, you know, for me with golf, it's like I love the game.

So I'm somebody-- I see myself as somebody who's pretty good at the game, play with a

low handicap, always trying to get better, love the people, love taking friends out

on the course, love the beauty of it all.

And so there's a sense of who I am as a person.

It's not my entire identity, but there's an aspect of I'm somebody who is, you

know, committed to the game, who loves the game, is reasonably good at the game,

and wants to practice it and get better.

So it's an identity thing rather than, "Oh my gosh, I gotta drag myself to golf

again." Now it's something I love because it's something central to my sense of

myself, as are all these other aspects.

So if you're struggling to put in place New habits, new disciplines,

then I would suggest to you that you're gonna have to serve a little

bit of an apprenticeship with yourself for a certain period of time.

That's a good lens, actually, the concept of apprenticeship, 'cause if

you think about somebody who wants to become a plumber, for example, right?

They, they start off as a trainee, and they turn up every day for

several years, and they're learning more about it, and they have to turn

up, and they have to be committed.

And at the end of this process, they become a plumber.

They-- their identity changes.

So they get up every day and do plumbing things because they've

done it a lot of times, and it's a central part of who they are.

So we serve an apprenticeship in our habits, and sometimes that

apprenticeship's difficult, and it's tiring, and we gotta stick at it.

But if you do it for long enough, it becomes part of who you are, and

once it becomes part of who you are, then you've won a lot of the game.

There is a guy who lives near my house here, and I spoke about this

a long time ago in another episode.

He must be now in his maybe mid-70s, and I see him every single day.

Literally in-- This morning I was out running.

It was minus five.

And I'll see him in minus five, and I'll see him in the rain.

He shuffles.

When I first moved here, we, we bought this house years ago, then,

you know, I would see him then.

And all these years later, he's still going, and I've

noticed that he's slowed down.

He shuffles along.

And one day, I actually was running past him, and I stopped to speak to him, and I

had a great discussion with him about why he does it, and it was, it was this stuff.

It was just like, "Oh, well, I've always done this," you know.

"This is what I do." And yeah, maybe he's doing it a little slower now,

but he's probably not negotiating with himself each day going, "Oh, I

really should take up some exercise."

It's central to his identity.

All right.

So that is the heart of this message.

You know, there's a great quote that you've probably all heard,

and it's attributed to so many people, it's become apocryphal.

But it's that old quote, "Sow a thought, reap an action. Sow an

action, do something, reap a habit. Sow a habit, reap a character."

If you get a habit, over time you become somebody.

It shapes your character.

"Sow a character, reap a destiny." Your life becomes this aspect of

the things that you do repeatedly.

So the first thing we need to do as humans is choose good things to do.

So that's why, you know, we talk about bad habits.

We talk about people that drink too much or smoke too much or eat too much or…

W- we notice that some habits take us away from our potential and some

habits take us towards our potential.

So it's not complex, right?

But the doing is hard because we've gotta drop the negotiation piece,

that's gotta go, and we've gotta get into this habit of doing the things

that are difficult, and we do them for long enough, and they become who

we are, and then they're baked in.

Okay?

So I want you to think about that.

Please, if you're listening to me and you're going, "I get it, I get it, but

I don't really have those habits," just, just, just get this thing, one idea, that

there is an apprenticeship to be served.

It's gonna take you a little time to stick at them till they

become central to who you are.

All right, that's it for me today.

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God bless you, my friends.

This has been The Daily Podcast.

You and I are gonna talk again tomorrow