“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit." – Aristotle. 

The great myth of willpower and training your self-control is that it’s often misunderstood. Discipline is associated with rigidity, when really, it exists to provide freedom. While it might seem a bit of a double-entendre to find freedom through structure, discipline exists to help you create a foundation to build systems that make life lighter, not heavier. 

GoBundance Women recognizes that high-achieving women (like you) often crave the kind of structure that supports without suffocating, and builds you up instead of holding you back. 

The human brain values and thrives on clarity—without the discipline of structure, your brain may face decision fatigue that leaves you feeling exhausted, distracted and overwhelmed. 

Motivation isn’t always enough. Instead, you need to focus on creating discipline for yourself through practice and strategy. 

It’s time for you to become the woman who does the habits because it drives her identity. According to an article titled How to become more disciplined: 7 tips for self-discipline published by Calm, discipline is “about making conscious choices that align with your long-term aspirations.” In order to reach long-term goals, you have to show up when it’s uncomfortable, navigate uncertainty and find a sense of stability within yourself and your capabilities. 

Discipline is a system that will set you free; you just have to get started building. 

Pinpoint Your North Star

Having the motivation and desire to do something is a great starting point. Think of this motivation as your driving force, and the end goal as your North Star—the destination that discipline will guide you toward reaching or accomplishment. 

To pinpoint your North Star, first consider your values, then your priorities, and finally, your non-negotiables. Keeping all of these facets aligned will help you succeed as you allow your north star to guide you. 

Ask yourself, “If I could succeed at only three things this year, what would they be?” Use your answers to this question to help you figure out what you want to get disciplined about. Your North Star will become the filter for deciding how and what you need to focus on to become more disciplined. 

Define Your Keystone Habits

Keystone habits are the repeated tendencies or practices central to your morals, principles or beliefs, essentially comprising your identity. They can happen consciously or subconsciously, but they help to shape who you are as a person, and can help you transform into who you want to be. 

Shifting even just one habit can transform multiple areas of your life. Calm suggests utilizing “techniques like time-blocking, setting deadlines, and rewarding yourself for completing tasks” to help you form actionable habits that creates the kind of discipline that guides you toward accomplishing larger goals. 

For GoBundance Women, examples of some of these areas of your life that might experience a shift toward improvement with keystone habits could be your morning planning, strength training, financial reviews, creative time or power hours for working. 

Choosing 1-2 keystone habits that you’d like to focus on to help you stay more disciplined as you work toward your goals will help the concept of discipline seem less daunting. 

For example, time-blocking might help you balance your morning plans with strength training and leave time for more creative, personal hobbies too. 

Build Micro-Systems for Your Daily Discipline Architecture 

Break down systems into smaller, more approachable sections:

• Triggers: What causes or starts the habit?
• Micro-actions: What small, simple action do you want to accomplish routinely?
• Safeguards: What backup plans will you have when life gets chaotic?

As an example, let’s say you’d like to write each day. If you start too big, it will be hard to remain consistent in achieving this goal. So let’s start smaller:

• Trigger: Open up your laptop at 8:00 a.m. 
• Micro-action: Set a timer and write for five minutes 
• Safeguard: Use a voice memo if you’re on the go, or write at a different time of day if something happens and you can’t write at 8 a.m. like you usually do 

Create and Implement Weekly and Monthly Rituals

Having a weekly and monthly ritual will help you keep track of your and reflect on your progress as you learn to be more disciplined and dedicated toward the things you’d like to achieve. 

Think about the year in a business sense—there are four quarters for checking in, with their own set of tasks in between. The rituals you perform both weekly and monthly will help to stabilize your personal growth across the year. 

A weekly review will help you track smaller progress that will add up over time. In your weekly review, make sure to include room for scheduling out your next week, setting trackable, actionable habits to help you build discipline, and also allow yourself time to recalibrate anything that didn’t quite go as planned. Think about how you can take what you learned and complete everything you want to do differently the next week. 

Having a monthly review as well will help you capture the bigger picture of your progress. During this review, reassess your goals and make note of any successes or celebrations you have. Calm suggests, “[choosing] rewards that are meaningful to you, whether it's taking a break, enjoying a favorite meal, or engaging in a hobby.” 

 It’s important to make your celebration of progress meaningful to you, whether it helps you decompress or stimulates a part of your mind you don’t get to use very often. 

Track Intentionally—Not Specifically 

When you’re setting your North Star, forming habits and setting weekly, monthly or quarterly reviews for yourself, it’s imperative to have reasonable standards for tracking everything. Being intentional about how you move forward is useful, but remember that being intentional doesn’t mean being specific. 

Avoid trapping yourself in statements such as, “I need 20 habits to be disciplined.” This is probably too specific, and might not be realistic. Set yourself up for success by keeping a low-friction tracking method instead by choosing a few key performance indicators (KPI’s) to track, such as health, connection, and wealth. 

Your KPI’s should be specific to you, and should help guide your weekly and monthly reviews, while being related to your North Star—the thing or things you’d like to accomplish or improve. Tracking intentionally will help you celebrate your milestones (or stepping stones), and shouldn’t be a place of self-judgement, but a space for positive reflection. 

When Systems Break (and How to Gracefully Reset)

Remember the fable with the three little pigs and the big bad wolf who blows the house down? Think about the straw houses—they weren’t built with the kind of hard work, strategy and preparation that takes discipline. They were built based on momentary ease and convenience. 

So what happens if it feels like the discipline you’ve worked to build is crumbling away? 

If you do find yourself spiraling about missed deadlines or messed up schedules, allow yourself room to gracefully reset. You’re building brick by brick, which is a process! Expect that it takes time and that a brick or two might fall down. 

Expect that you’ll have to pause and reset, push shame to the side. You’re still making progress. Know that it’s okay if things don’t go according to schedule—trial and error is how we find out what works best for us. If something doesn’t happen right away or correctly, it isn’t bad, it just means you need to readjust and do things differently next time.

Give yourself some rules, like allowing time for a 48-hour reset to get back on track. Take time to assess what present you might need, and once you’ve done that, ask yourself what future you will need. 

The Role of Accountability

As a high-achieving woman, you likely already know that it helps to have a strong community of supportive women walking with you every step of the way. Sisterhood accelerates discipline by offering peer accountability to keep you moving forward. 

Successful accountability will amplify the best version of you through constructive and judgement-free feedback that pushes you to keep going. GoBundance Pods are a great way to help hold yourself accountable. Each pod is a group of 4-6 like-minded women who hold each other to standards of high accountability while fostering deep connection and maintaining honest communication. 

These circles offer reflection and forward momentum that helps you achieve both personal and professional goals! Join a membership today to get started with your very own GoBundance Women pod. 

Discipline is Your Liberation 

When you take the time and energy to show up for yourself despite everything else happening in your life and build systems that support your identity, discipline feels like power, not pressure. All of the work you put in to becoming more disciplined will someday feel routine and second-nature, helping you free time to feel more like yourself 

The best time to start learning how to be more disciplined (and finally feel liberated) is now—choose one micro-system you can implement today!