Discipline vs Motivation

Many people believe being motivated every day is discipline. I beg to differ. Being motivated is a feeling of being inspired. You can be motivated or inspired but it doesn’t stay with you for your whole life. An example of this is Motivational videos and podcasts. Once you watch one motivational video you want to watch another and another one. So, motivation is temporary. Whereas discipline is not a feeling or emotion. Discipline stems from habits. Habits are nothing but doing an activity every day regardless of what day it is and how you feel. Discipline is ingrained in you. Discipline is when a person wakes up every day at 6 in the morning and goes to the gym, discipline is when basketball players shoot 500 baskets in one session. They don’t have to do it, but they still do it. Discipline leads to consistency.

The Difference

Motivation is just a feeling that comes and goes. It’s addictive. If you really dive deep and study motivation you realise it just gives you a dopamine high. As you keep consuming motivational videos and songs you get used to it and it doesn’t quite motivate you the same way. You must watch more motivational content to feel motivated. Discipline on the other hand doesn’t give you dopamine highs it often causes a lot of pain and suffering. But it builds mental fortitude. Discipline often makes the present hard but the future better. Many people get too attached to the feeling of doing something instead of focusing on what they are doing.

Two examples to understand motivation and discipline.

Scenario 1 :
One day you and your friends are hanging out. And you see a commercial of Usain Bolt running and beating records. All of you guys decide that you are going to start running and get fit. Instead of starting at that very moment when the motivation is high, you all decide to meet at 6 am the next day and start running together. The next day one person shows up but when he sees no one else, he goes back home. In a week everybody is back to their old lifestyles.
Another example of motivation is New Year’s resolution.

Scenario 2 :
You are sitting on the couch. Let’s say you are overweight and lethargic. You are eating chips and drinking soda. You see Usain Bolt on the TV breaking world records, and you think for a second and reflect on your life compared to Usain Bolt’s life. It doesn’t quite feel nice. You decide you want to be better. You know that the chances of you being able to run like Usain Bolt are quite low. Instead of being influenced by others, you make this decision on your own and decide that you are going to change. You toss away the junk food and get off the couch. You start making better decisions instantly. You know you can’t just start running cause you’re not in that kind of shape. Instead, you get on a diet and start exercising slowly in your house. You slowly improve your habits day by day. Instead of watching videos for entertainment, you start consuming educational content to make yourself fit and a better runner. You start alone based on your insights and opinions and then you start meeting like-minded people and take advice from them.
In about a year you can run quite fast and are fit. You’re still not as good as Usain Bolt but are better than yourself a year ago.

Breakdown

These examples highlight the difference between a motivated person and a disciplined person. A motivated person first chooses a time when he will change instead of assuming the identity of a changed man or woman like a disciplined person. In the first scenario, we see that each friend is influenced by the other to start running like Usain Bolt. Instead, they should have had realistic goals like in Scenario 2 and slowly developed habits that would form the foundation for their goal. “Rome was not built in one day”, which means that greatness or anything worthwhile cannot be achieved in days it takes years and even decades. Discipline helps you navigate through these years as a journey and keeps you away from formalities and distractions of this day and age. I am not discounting motivation, but it can merely be the beginning of your journey to greatness, it will not stay with you throughout your life. It’s always better to create habits and follow them religiously because they will guide you when motivation is down. It doesn’t matter where you start it matters where you end up. The disciplined person in the 2nd scenario even though in worse shape will exceed the friend group in their running abilities because he was disciplined and pushed through.

People who improve their habits slowly but consistently over time live disciplined lives. Motivated people often make drastic changes in their life that they can’t keep up with. The people who search for videos on how to get six packs in a week are often motivated until they understand that getting a good physique actually takes months and even years. Discipline is a virtue, often achieved by a few.

Conclusion

Motivation is not reliable. It’s like putting all your money in a stock everybody is talking about and seems to love. Then ten years later you realise that the company went bankrupt, and you lost all your money in that stock. But when you invested, it was skyrocketing. This is because the sentiment for that stock was temporary, like motivation. Because they both are emotion driven which means they are temporary. You cannot trust emotions; therefore, you are better off going with discipline. You do things diligently and consistently which will stick with you throughout your life, Discipline will improve your life because you will do things which are good for you consistently irrespective of your mood or emotions. Discipline will also make you better at taking responsibilities.

“Motivation gets you going, but discipline keeps you growing.”
–John C. Maxwell.

On to the next.

-Akash-