Building Better Habits Without Motivation

What if the secret to personal growth isn't about waiting for a lightning bolt of motivation? Join us as we explore the profound difference between motivation and discipline in this eye-opening episode. We share our own struggles with maintaining simple habits, like staying hydrated or braving the cold for gym sessions, and reveal how discipline, much like training a muscle, can become a powerful autopilot for your life. Dive into stories of persistence that highlight how commitment to discipline not only enhances your health and sanity but also leads to genuine personal fulfillment.

We also tackle the idea of discipline as a profound form of self-respect. With personal anecdotes about using social media and habit trackers, we illustrate how these tools create an honest mirror for accountability, steering us away from excuses and toward growth. Discover practical strategies for planning habits into busy lives, ensuring consistency even when chaos strikes. We're here to show you why relying on discipline rather than motivation is the real game-changer for steady progress towards achieving your goals.

Chapters

• 0:00 Season of Growth
• 12:48 Embracing Accountability for Growth

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Oh we could, we could fly. Welcome to this new season of the have a Cup of Chahani podcast. So I want to title this new season that I'm embarking on with I'm growing, so this is going to be the season of growth and that's what I'm going to share with you throughout the season. So I thank you for coming over here and sitting with me and I hope you enjoy. Hola vasitos, and welcome to another wonderful episode of have a Cup of Johnny podcast, where we sip, chat and dive into the stuff that actually makes life work.

Speaker 1: 0:39

Today we are getting real. We're getting real about habits, not the fluffy oh I feel so inspired kind of habits, but the grit and grind kind, because, let's face it, motivation is overrated. Don't come for me. Don't come for me because I'm going to explain. Discipline, my friends, is where the magic happens. Are you ready? Of course you are. I mean, why else would you be here? So let's brew this conversation. Okay, show of hands.

Speaker 1: 1:23

How many of you have felt super motivated on Monday, but by Thursday it's like what happened? That's motivation for you? It's fickle, unreliable, to say the least, and very much mood dependent. Take that from me. Motivation feels awesome in the moment, but it's like fireworks right, bright and exciting, but short-lived. On the other hand, though, discipline. Discipline. If you read romance book, that's low burn romance that keeps the engine running even when you don't feel like it.

Speaker 1: 2:11

So I'm going to use my hydration habit for a minute as an example, and I'll use another habit as well. So I wake up every day excited. In my mind, everything is happening perfectly, but does it? Absolutely not. When it comes to my hydration habits. There are some days where I'd rather pick up my coffee first, or I'd rather pick up something else that is going to give me energy because I had a rough night as opposed to water. But here's a big but I know what will happen if I skip it. I know I have been there. I have faced the consequences. I have had headaches, bad moods and just feeling sluggish and without much energy. So that's where discipline kicks in, because it's not about that. I want to do it that every single day. I want to grab my Stanley cup and drink all that water. It's about doing it consistently, because I know it's good for me and I know it's gonna make me feel better. You see, when it comes to the gym, this is real life, ongoing right now, as I'm sitting here recording this, I have my car warming up outside, because guess what I'm doing? Right after I record this, I'm going to go hit the gym. Do I feel like it? Absolutely not.

Speaker 1: 3:44

It is 31 degrees here in good old El Paso, which I don't know what's going on, what gods we have pissed off, but it's really cold and if you know me or if you don't, I'm going to fill you in I hate the cold. I'm not a cold weather girly at all. I'm from the Dominican Republic, folks. I love my tropical climates, the reason why El Paso is one of my favorite places to be and why I call El Paso home. Yes, the summers are just disrespectfully hot, but it's constantly warm here and I appreciate that quite a lot.

Speaker 1: 4:24

Whenever it's really cold, like today, it's hard for me to wake up. I don't want to leave the house, but I went to bed yesterday and I told my husband and this is so, that way it stays in my head I was like you know. I know tomorrow is going to be cold, but if I don't make my third day going to the gym, I will lose my streak. And today, Wednesday, is my third day of going to the gym. I already know tomorrow and the next day is going to be super busy, super hectic, so most likely I would not have time to go to the gym and do that kind of workout. I will have to condense it, you see. So I know for me to get my three a week workouts, I need to do it today, even if it's absolutely disrespectfully cold.

Speaker 1: 5:17

Today I'm doing it and you see, that is a discipline for you, because it's like it's the autopilot that steps in when motivation has gone AWOL. And you have to look at it as discipline is a muscle, totally a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets. Just like I said, right, it becomes just this thing that you do without thinking, because, like any muscle, it just it grows through repetition and resistance.

Speaker 1: 5:47

When I first started doing these workouts that I'm doing now, where I do strength training three times a week at the very least, it was very hard. I had more misses than I had hits and I remember even at one point I had such a long streak and then I fell down that rabbit hole again and I lost my streak and I started back at zero and that was so demoralizing workout shoes and have gone back to the gym. It was discipline that got me to get back on that metaphorical horse and continue on going, because I know that this is a habit, this is one of my core habits. That is good for me, that keeps me healthy, that keeps me sane and, for my vanity sake, it keeps me looking good. So you see, so the first workouts for me were awful. I totally didn't get it. I was not a weightlifter or a strength trainer at all, like. My workouts consisted of mostly running and ab work.

Speaker 1: 7:01

I've always run, run, run, run, run, run. It's a solitary thing, it's like my favorite thing to do. I don't need any sort of like super complex techniques. Yes, there are techniques to run, but not like don't whip this this way or you pull a muscle, kind of thing. You know, as I stuck to it, to the strength training routine, and I kind of disciplined and like bulldozed my way into doing it more often than not.

Speaker 1: 7:31

Then, that discipline, muscle started growing and then I started building momentum, you see, and that momentum then got me motivated, you see. So motivation did not come first in this equation. Discipline came first. Joannie telling herself you got to get up because you know you want to do this and you know this is good for you. That's discipline, that's what got me up, even when it's hard, even when it's 31 degrees outside. And now that I've been doing it for so long, it has become easier to stick to them. It has become automatic, and to a point where, if I don't do it, I feel lost, disarranged in a way. I know something is missing if I miss any one of these core habits that I have because I've been sticking to them for so long. So it's become an automatic thing. And you may be asking yourself so how do you build discipline? Let's break it down. You start small, and you heard me say this on the last episode about starting small. Right, you can dream big, dream big people, okay, but start small, because you don't want to overhaul your entire life overnight.

Speaker 1: 9:01

Pick one habit, pick one habit first. My first habit that I picked was drinking water as soon as I got up. So instead of grabbing my phone, I grabbed my bottle of water. That was the first habit that I put into play, and once I got consistent with that, then I incorporated the writing habit, and I did it, for let's just write 10 minutes every day before you go to work. So then I started with drinking my water right, that first bottle of water and then going over to my computer and then typing for 10 minutes on whatever work in progress I was doing, and then I started stacking the other ones.

Speaker 1: 9:48

Now the next thing that you should do is create systems, not goals. Goals are great for direction. Goals tell you where you should be heading, but systems are the things that get you there. So, for example, instead of saying I want to be healthier okay, it's a little vague, right, but that's a direction, that's a goal. You want to be healthier okay, but what system have you built to achieve that? And then that system should be habits. You see what I'm saying. So do you have a system of prepping your meals on Sunday? Do you have a system of a daily step count or a daily climbing count? Do you go up the stairs as opposed to the elevator? So goals are great, but you want systems underneath, as the foundation, to get you to achieve those goals.

Speaker 1: 10:55

Then you want to focus on consistency over perfection, and that's something that I had to let go of, because I am such a perfectionist that I tend to have an all or nothing mindset or way of thinking and as I grew older, I saw that as something that I needed to overcome, to work on, because I noticed how many missed opportunities I was having because I just I wanted things to be perfect as opposed to just done. And you heard me talk about the gym and how it was so hard, when I lost that streak, to get back on that metaphorical horse, because I have a perfectionistic tendency and I know that about myself. So I had to talk myself through that. Okay, you lost the streak, get up, you're going to try again. You see, and that was discipline talking to me. That was discipline pushing me to continue on and telling me that consistency matters more, because discipline is not about being perfect, it's about being persistent. You know, like being this, this bull, this stubborn bull, that no matter what, you're going to continue on, that's discipline. So if you're like me, I'm going to warn you don't hold on to perfectionism. Okay, that's not discipline. Discipline is just you keep going, trying again, being persistent, getting after your habits, your systems. That should be the foundation of your goals.

Speaker 1: 12:48

And finally, I will say get accountability, whether it's a friend, your partner, even your social media followers. I remember I used to do the challenges online and say, like the ab challenges and all of that, and say, like day one is done and I'll put in there the exercises that I did for day one, sometimes I will take a picture of me in the gym to show. And that was my accountability. Now you have heard me say I have a habit tracker that I X out or I fill in the days where I have completed my habits. That's kind of like my accountability. That's how I keep track of these habits, because when others or when this spreadsheet tells on me, it's kind of harder to lie to yourself. You know, it's harder to skip out because you're like either your friend knows or your partner knows, or your social media followers know, or caught on that you have missed a day or two or a week or whatnot. Or when you look at your habit tracker, you're like, oh shoot, have this entire line like blank, it shows, it shows. And when you do that, when you leverage accountability, you can't turn away from the hard truth. And that's what you need. Okay, that's what you need to keep going, that truth, so that way you can step outside of your comfort zone, face it, know what you need to fix and then, boom, get back in and do it again.

Speaker 1: 14:35

Because here's the thing discipline isn't punishment. And you may have heard me talk about how my discipline, that voice kind of talks to me, but I will tell you that it doesn't talk to me in a demeaning way. It talks to me in a respectful way, reminding me why this is good for me and why this is good for future. Johanny, because when you honor your commitments to yourself, you're saying I value my well-being, I value my goals, I value my growth and that mindset. It's empowering, you see. So discipline is not about belittling, bullying yourself or punishing yourself. It's self-respect. You're doing this because you respect yourself, you respect your body, you respect your soul, your mind. Every time you choose discipline over excuses, you're proving to yourself that you can handle discomfort, you can overcome resistance or 31 degree weathers and prioritize what truly matters to you. Because, let's be real, you're going to need that.

Speaker 1: 15:51

Life is going to get chaotic, chaotic and we can talk about how you can tailor habits when life does get chaotic so that way you can continue doing them and sustaining them. But it is what it is. Life will be lifing. Work deadlines will occur, family responsibilities or emergencies will erupt out of nowhere and other unexpected curveballs can throw off your routine, but discipline is what keeps you grounded On those hectic days.

Speaker 1: 16:29

Sometimes I don't stick to my habits perfectly, sometimes they're sporadic throughout the days, sometimes I come up short on drinking eight cups of water, but I make sure that I do the bare minimum or I tailor it Like when I get really hectic. In the next three days, my workout is not going to be the one hour long workout that I do. It's going to be shorter workout. It's going to be a workout where I don't need free weights, so it's going to be a body weight workout, you see. So there are certain things that you can do and it's good to plan ahead as well.

Speaker 1: 17:13

If you know that certain things will happen or if you don't know certain things will happen because that's what happens with chaos sometimes and with unexpected things at least have in the back of your mind or your journal how you would tailor your habits when you get busy, before you get busy, and that can be your break class kind of thing that you use. So on those days, on those epocas or eras where life is lifing, you go to your minimum habits and all the other days where life is quote unquote normal for you, right? Or what is normal for you, or average for you. Then you're back onto your regular habits, your regular scheduled programming, you know, kind of like that. But think about it because small wins whether you tailor your habits when life is lifing or you do the full-on habits, you are winning. You are winning because you are sustaining those habits that you know you need and you're keeping the momentum alive. So here's your takeaway, vasitos Do not wait for motivation to show up.

Speaker 1: 18:35

If you didn't get anything out of this, get that. Don't wait for motivation to show up. Show up for yourself with discipline, whether it's drinking water, writing that book or showing up to the gym. Remember, it's not about how you feel in the moment. It's not. It's about who you're becoming in the process, about who you're becoming in the process. Thank you so much for hanging out with me on have a Cup of Johnny podcast. If this episode gave you that extra push to prioritize discipline, share it with a friend who needs it. And, hey, dm me what's one habit you're committing to this week? I'd love to hear it. Until next time, stay disciplined, stay hydrated and, as always, keep growing. See you next Wednesday. Bye, thank you so much for listening. I want to hear from you. Leave me a comment. Do a rating, if you can. Much for listening. I want to hear from you. Leave me a comment. Do a rating if you can on the podcast. Share it with somebody you love, but, most importantly, come back. See you next time. Bye.