It’s always easy at the start, right?
There’s the excitement of a new strategy and the boundless hope that empowers you to begin. That energy surges inside you and lets you commit wholeheartedly to a plan that could change your life forever…
…but then everything stalls.
Fast forward a few weeks from the initial energy burst, and you start questioning why you ever thought this would be worthwhile. You’ve only made life harder for yourself this whole time and you barely have any evidence to show for it, so what’s the point of doing so any longer?
This, my friend, is a very common experience. Real improvement doesn’t happen overnight. It takes the sustained effort of habits and systems to see drastic results, or in other words, it takes discipline.
Discipline is simply acting the right way even when you’re influenced to do otherwise. So how can you possibly stay disciplined when all you see are disappointing results?
The 6 tips here will show you how.
6 Tips to Stay Disciplined Despite Your Disappointment
Tip 1: Commit for 60 Days
One of the most common reasons why improvement efforts fail is that we end them too quickly.
Almost every meaningful, long-term change happens over the course of months (or even years). Expecting obvious changes within weeks sets you up for disappointment. That’s why my biggest rule to help me stay disciplined is to commit for at least 60 days before I change things up.
I force myself to follow a strategy for 60 days before I ever second-guess myself. This gives me a 2-month sample size to evaluate later and hopefully see obvious improvement.
Smaller sample sizes are too sensitive to plateaus, rollercoaster variance, and misleading outcomes that require more context to understand.
Your daily and weekly progress won’t always be linear, but the overall trend should be if you follow a good strategy, so commit yourself to your chosen experiment long enough to cut through the noise.
Tip 2: Recognize and Celebrate Your Hidden Effort
If you’ve ever made a change like weight loss for example, you know results become apparent in an outwardly growing pattern.
You typically notice your body’s changes first in a few weeks, your close friends and family notice them in about two months, and the general public becomes aware around the three-month mark.
No matter if it’s weight loss or any other improvement, your results won’t be obvious until at least a few months later. What you shouldn’t ignore, however, are the initial changes that are only apparent to you.
A lot of us overlook our small improvements because the obvious ones we crave don’t come fast enough. Ignoring those changes though is how we quickly lose motivation.
We all need to recognize when we’re improving even when our progress appears to stall:
- You should be proud of yourself when your jeans feel loose even though the number on the scale hasn’t budged.
- You should appreciate your improved management skills on the job before worrying about a potential raise.
- And you should celebrate your increased production as a content creator before thousands of viewers validate your work.
Those small changes become clear to us before the rest of the world notices. Instead of being greedy for more results though, we should be grateful for those checkpoints and use them as fuel to stay locked in.
Tip 3: Realize Outcomes Aren’t Tied to Emotions
Did you do what you were supposed to do?
That question is all that matters.
Work is the cause and results are the effect. Your emotions may change how you feel about the work, but our feelings don’t directly affect our outcomes. Begrudging effort can be just as effective as inspired effort, and that’s an incredibly encouraging fact.
We all have days when we doubt what we’re doing, we’re tired of showing up, and we’re convinced our discomfort isn’t worth it. While those feelings are tough to endure in the moment, however, they don’t actually affect our results.
The principle of cause and effect, sowing and reaping, or whatever else you want to call it isn’t affected by how we feel. All that really matters is how we act.
Work done with a bad attitude still moves you forward. That’s why it’s okay to feel disappointed. It’s just not okay to give up.
Tip 4: Remember Waiting for Proof Makes You Late
If you have to see it first, you’ll always be behind.
The cause of good results usually occurs long before those effects are clearly seen.
There’s a concept in astronomy that makes for a great comparison here—the idea of light speed is both remarkable and mind-boggling to me. Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second, but due to the vastness of our universe, even that isn’t fast enough for all light sources to instantly reach our eyes.
When we peak at the sun for example, we actually see how it looked a few minutes ago. And if we observe stars that are much further away from Earth, we see how they appeared months or even years before.
The story is similar when it comes to improvement. We know great results don’t happen overnight, but the delay between cause and effect is staggering when you experience it.
Waiting for proof will make you late in so many areas of life, so don’t let yourself get too down about what you see now—your effort probably has a long way to go before it’s evident.
Tip 5: Make a Habit of Winning Small
It’s easy to get disappointed when you’re too focused on the big picture. If you’ve already chosen a strategy though, you have to leave that high-level thinking behind.
What’s important now is that you execute. And to do that, you have to focus on what’s directly ahead.
Can you give 30 minutes of work today? Can you hit a small target even though you’re tired?
Those small challenges are opportunities to win right now.
Winning small is the secret to making some of the most incredible changes in life. Those small wins stacked on a consistent basis are far more impactful than sparse Herculean effort.
Every great improvement is just the compounding result of many small wins. That’s why we have to train ourselves to snatch small victories even when we aren’t inspired to keep moving forward.
Tip 6: Use the Flow of Time to Your Advantage
The most helpful realization that keeps me disciplined is the fact that time will pass no matter what.
Days and weeks will flow by whether I stay disciplined or not, so what’s the point of giving up?
Would you rather have the opportunity for change later or be stuck in the same spot down the road? Being lazy doesn’t buy us more time to spend. Relaxing may give the illusion of happiness through comfort, but it doesn’t make anything better. Our feelings might get a boost in the short-term, but is that worth leaving life-changing opportunities behind?
None of us are guaranteed good results if we keep giving effort, but we are guaranteed nothing will change if we don’t try.
Your 60 days will pass whether you take advantage of them or not. So why not do right by your future self and at least secure a fighting chance?
A Disciplined Spirit Endures Till the End
There’s no need to despair when your actions appear to be fruitless. No improvement effort is really about your results anyway—it’s about you.
Can you develop character that naturally causes the outcome you seek? Can you foster discipline when almost anyone else in your shoes would have quit?
Being able to say “yes” to those questions is the real goal.
Great rewards are reserved for those who endure great trials themselves. So will you make the right choice when it seems the whole world wants you to cave?
I sure hope so.
Because that’s the only way any of us will do great things.
-Drew
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