How To Stay Consistent WITHOUT Discipline (What They Don’t Tell You)

Tell me if this sounds familiar.

You’re watching a David Goggins Instagram reel, late at night, and you suddenly feel this burst of motivation to change your life. You stare off into the night sky and say: “this time will be different.”

And for a while it is!

You’re on a roll, you’re making so much progress in whatever it is you’re doing. You’re riding the high of this transformative wave.

But whether it’s a few weeks, a few days, or even a few hours later, you always come crashing back down in the inevitable fall.

Back into your old habits, those grooves of comfort that fit so well in the moment, until you’re back in your room. At night.

And you realise - f*ck. It’s happened again.

You’ve fallen victim to the cycle of motivation and despair.

Now this cycle is so easy to slip into, and so hard to break out of - but no one seems to talk about it.

You know the value of consistency - every guru online has parroted the same cookie-cutter line of “just keep showing up, just stay consistent bro”.

Not that it’s not good advice, but this obviously reveals the next question:

How?

Because you’ve seen the compounding graph, you understand just how important consistency is - you’re not stupid.

But you still can’t do it.

You want to start building muscle, getting good grades, earning money, whatever it is. You want to push your potential, but inevitably you will slip up.

And when you do, it can be devastating.

You start thinking “maybe I just don’t want it enough. Maybe I’m just weak, I’m just not good enough”. I know, because I was there.

My self-esteem would come crashing down every time I failed, because I didn’t understand the correct way to go about it.

You can’t use just your emotions to push yourself through, because your emotions were what got you into this mess in the first place.

Brute forcing it is not the answer. Discipline is part of the answer, but not the entire thing.

You need a more strategic approach.

I’m gonna share with you my 3-step action plan that I personally use to stay consistent in everything that I do - and if you ever feel like as soon as you mess up one tiny part of your day, everything else falls apart too, you’re gonna want to hear the last one.

The Simple Questions

The universe works in cycles. Your dopamine levels naturally fluctuate.

There are times when you feel like taking on the world, like you’re ready to do anything to improve yourself - everything is going your way.

But there are also times when you feel shit, when everything is going against you.

You can’t just rely on everything always being good, because it won’t always be. You must prepare yourself for the inevitable low points.

Think back to the last time you failed, you tripped up on your journey to consistency. Maybe you skipped studying to instead go on social media, or you broke your diet by eating that donut.

What was your mind saying to you at that point?

When you make plans to improve yourself, to better your life, it’s always the rational side of your brain that is doing it, your prefrontal cortex. The part of your mind that plans for the long term.

But when you trip up, when all your consistency gets destroyed, it’s the other part of your brain speaking. The amygdala, your lizard brain, the monkey brain, whatever you want to call it.

And 99% of the time, the reason you fall back into the things that you know are bad for you is because your monkey brain tricks you.

It rationalises the negative behaviour, convincing you just enough to fall back into temptation. “It’s not really that bad for you anyway” “You deserve it” “treat yourself”- do these sound familiar?

And in that moment, that split second decision, your monkey brain knocks out the rational part of your brain, and hijacks your system. Literally in the brain, it shuts off your prefrontal cortex, so all of a sudden all your long-term aspirations disappear - and that instant dopamine hit looks so so good.

When you’re in the deep end, your mind will throw these simple questions at you. “Why are you doing this?” - and if you can’t answer those simple questions, you will quit. You will fail.

You must be prepared.

This is the first step: get out a journal (you can use your Notepad on your phone, but I prefer a physical paper journal) and answer those questions for yourself.

Visualise the last time that you failed. What did your mind make up to try and trick you? Break that down, and counter every objection.

For example, if your monkey brain told you “but you’ve been so good, you’ve studied for a couple hours, you don’t need to workout now, just treat yourself, go play on the Xbox for a few hours” - you need a pre-prepared weapon that you can pull out in the heat of the moment.

Something like “this isn’t a reward, this is a punishment by taking me further away from where I want to be in life”.

It can go into much more depth than that, but then boil it down into a short affirmation that you can instinctively throw at your monkey brain and save yourself from the cycle of depression.

Create Contingency Plans

You’ve probably heard of visualisation.

A lot of professional athletes use it, where they imagine making the play, winning the trophy, to fill their mind with the positive emotions it will trigger and get themselves in the zone.

Something you probably haven’t heard of is negative visualisation.

It sounds weird, but it’s also one of the most powerful techniques out there to mastering consistency.

Instead of just visualising success, I’ve found it really helpful to actually visualise things going wrong. To visualise all the potential mistakes or trip hazards along the way, and prepare solutions or contingency plans in advance.

For example, a few weeks ago I was preparing for my mock exams at school. As usual, I had begun all motivated and hyped up, making progress for the first few days.

But soon, life gets in the way. I have to go somewhere with my family, so I have no time to revise that day.

In the past, I would have just said “oh, well, fuck it, it’s not my fault” - I would have obviously not studied that day, but I would have also let it completely derail my momentum and destroy my consistency.

But this time, I was prepared.

I had already created a contingency plan for a situation exactly like this. I kept a spreadsheet on Excel of how many hours I studied for on each day for each subject.

So I had planned that if a situation like this ever came up, I would wake up 1 hour earlier to at least get an hour of focussed revision in, to keep that forwards momentum going. Or if that wasn’t possible, then using my spreadsheet, I would just allocate an extra hour or so across the next few days, to make up for the day I missed.

Even something as simple as this meant that when something inevitably came up in life that could have wiped out any momentum I had, I could minimise the effects it would have on me long-term.

Some other examples could be that if you’re going to the gym, you also have a planned bodyweight program or dumbbells at home, just in case your car breaks down or the gym is closed for whatever reason.

Or like with my studying, if for example you get sick and have to miss a few days of training, create a contingency plan - slightly alter your workouts or create a short “comeback program” that gradually ramps up the intensity so you can get back on track as soon as possible.

You can’t prevent every bad thing in life from happening.

But what you can do it prepare for the worst, and minimise the effect the negative situation on your momentum going forwards.

No “Zero” Days

Have you ever been on a roll?

You’re having the most perfect day, you do your whole morning routine, you’re ready to take on the world. But as soon as you slightly mess up one tiny thing, you just say “fuck it” and everything else falls apart too.

You’re not alone bro - this is one of the most common pitfalls almost everyone experiences when starting out, but it’s also one of the biggest consistency killers out there.

The problem is, you have adopted the wrong mindset. Your ego has convinced you that you must have absolute perfection, and nothing less will do.

What I used to do when I was younger is as if I was trying to close a door - but as soon as the door slightly opened even a tiny crack, I just said “fuck it” and ripped the door off its hinges.

I’d think “well, I’ve already failed my goal of no junk food today by having that one piece of chocolate, so I might as well eat this whole massive cake” or “I’ve already failed my goal of no social media today, so I might as well binge scroll YT shorts for 4 hours” (again, your monkey brain rationalising).

But this is where the key underlying problem reveals itself - you have set the wrong goal.

Your goal shouldn’t be to have the most perfect day, and nothing less will do. Now obviously we must all strive to become as good as we can, but the problem is that you are not at that point yet.

You are not good enough yet to be able to have the perfect, most productive day with no slip-ups every time.

I’m not either. No one is.

Instead, shift your mindset from defensive to offensive. Always try and at least do something to move towards your goals. You should just try to never have a “zero day”.

Even if this means you used to have 6 donuts a day, and now you have 4. If you’ve already wasted your whole day, and made absolutely zero progress towards your goals, at least hit a few push ups. Or read a book for a few minutes.

Just something so that your day isn’t an absolute “zero day”. Something to keep the momentum moving forwards.

Just one more step forwards. You can always take one more step.

The Theory Of Momentum

And that really is the key to mastering the consistency game.

Momentum.

Whatever you do, keep that momentum going forwards, and be mindful about which voice is speaking to you at which time - the monkey brain, or your rational mind.

In my own life, these strategies really have been life-changing. You actually start to make exponential progress in whatever venture it is that you’re pursuing - getting the top grades, building muscle, making money.

You actually begin to enjoy yourself - when you see that progress, you get addicted to it, and real life almost becomes your very own video game.

But the most crucial aspect is that I actually began to like myself more. By proving to myself that I am able to stick with something difficult over a long period, even when it gets difficult, I started to gain self-respect.

This is how you build your own confidence and self-esteem, that isn’t reliant on anybody else’s validation.

And that really is the most powerful thing.