The tools that built confidence, make the impossible possible liberating attitudes that ensure the good life with peace and comfort.
COMMITMENT
- Are you able to make commitments without missing them?
- Before making a commitment, check your self-esteem (do I want to do it?) and your self-confidence (am I able to fulfil it?).
- When you miss an appointment, do you feel ashamed?
If commitment is the rope that ties us to each of the important actions on our journey towards our purpose, responsibility is the force that pulls the rope until we achieve them, overcoming each obstacle with courage. Without backing down. It is the starting point for any change.
To achieve success, one needs:
- to have commitment, so as to act, and
- to find motivation (sense of shame ou fear), so as not to fail the commitment.
Commitments can be: to oneself, to others, to plans.
- Commitment turns promise into reality.
- It is, par excellence, the builder of trust in all its forms.
- With commitment, one trains each of the attitudes essential to a good life.
Only those who are committed to action are free. In the absence of commitment, they are certainly doomed to mediocrity. Those who do not know what commitment is are wandering aimlessly.
True commitment leaves no room for excuses.
Commitment is the leverage of those who are responsible.
Those who fulfil their commitments are unlikely to outsource responsibility.
Several studies have shown that long-lasting personal relationships are not the ones with the fewest problems, but those that are the result of responsible commitments.
Commitment leaves no room for half measures.
If it exists, it is meant to be honoured.
That is why, before you take it on, you have to ask yourself the question: “Will I be able to fulfil it?” The answer depends on how you see yourself. If you hesitate when answering it, the chance of failure increases. Your self-confidence on your own ability to accomplish the necessary tasks, determines the response.
DETERMINATION
How long does it take to do what is difficult?
How long do you sit indulging saboteurs?
Determination is the trigger of all action. The best force for overcoming inertia. Make determination your ally—it is the greatest weapon against laziness, procrastination, insecurity, cowardice, weakness, and uncertainty, all of which are true “killers” of any action.
Determination is indecision overcome. It is the power of now. It helps to kick action into gear, from triggers, conditioned responses. From now on. If it is to be done, do it now, with no room for thinking. No room for procrastinators.
Do not wait for a crisis to discover what is important in your life.
Determination is getting out of bed when you think it is impossible.
The effectiveness of its application is inversely proportional to time: if it must be done, do it.
We are all capable of making accidental mistakes, but it is hard to live with the guilt of not having tried.
Determination reduces activity in the amygdala, increases focus, and brings reward.
We now know, through the work of Dr Francine Shapiro, creator of EMDR, and neuroscientist Dr Andrew Huberman, among others, why having the courage to move forward, to face things, to go for it reduces fear and boosts confidence.
One of the most important differences between the various training systems is related to the way in which the actions are initiated.
In “behavioural” schools, everything important is triggered by clear and forceful triggers.
Do you need it done? Then be on your mark. Three, two, one, go!
Those who are determined do not wait for things to happen, for things to get better, for it to rain. They get out there and make it happen.
- They do not wait for the door to open, they push it open.
- They do not wait for the barrier to be removed, they find a way around it.
- They do not listen to the inner voice that builds doubt, they only listen to the voice that builds solutions.
Then, motivation ignites, and you just have to keep it going, fuelling the fire with persistence and the wisdom of imagination. This is also the best way to fight laziness and procrastination.
Determination is trained through successive overcoming experiences.
Create triggers for each of the important or urgent actions that you find difficult to perform. These triggers should go off in less than three seconds. Do not give your procrastination system the time it needs to argue its case.
DISCIPLINE
Consistent work, based on simple but indispensable actions, such as: finding meaning, motivation, training essential and necessary attitudes, organising the spaces where you live and work, taking care of your posture, hygiene, and apparel.
Having discipline means becoming better every minute. It is a daily campaign of overcoming pain and weakness, the temptation to have immediate pleasure, laziness, and procrastination. It is having the courage to resist your desires (temptations). It is doing what must be done. It is doing it consistently, improving continuously.
It is achieving more with less.
It is trading an immediate (ephemeral) reward for another (significant) one in the future.
Investing in it makes us masters of our own lives.
Discipline is the ability to carry out a command, however difficult it may seem.
It is about doing what must be done, at the right time. It does not allow for procrastination. No-one is capable of escaping the responsibility for the things they put off by procrastinating.
It is about getting it done, “in spite of”...
“Superior results are achieved through the disciplined management of behaviour.” (Aristotle) “Prosperous days do not come by chance; they are born of hard work and persistence.” (Henry Ford)
The freedom to not get it done, to put it off, is the guilt slavery that follows the satisfaction felt when we save energy.
There is no better satisfaction than that which arises from delivered results, performed work and achieved victories. And when these come from disciplined actions, the satisfaction is twice greater.
When you train to the limit of your abilities and succeed, you are highly motivated.
Nothing is more motivating than realising the impossible.
If you want to have a prosperous future, learn how to discipline yourself.
“Times are always hard for those who seek easy tasks.” (Eleanor Doan)
Being disciplined is not a “gift”. Discipline can be achieved by training. It requires organisation, cleanliness, and punctuality as basic premises.
How is it trained?
Discipline begins with doing small things: for example, making the bed, doing what we dislike. Carrying out tasks that we know to be educational or necessary for our growth. Organising the spaces where we live and work, creating an environment that clearly shows our efforts. Using our imagination to replace the words that make tasks seem more challenging. For instance, instead of saying “I have to get up early”, say “I’m capable of getting up early”.
Overcoming all justifications for not doing it.
Never justify your faults.
There are always excuses to justify yourself, but there is also your responsibility, be it direct or indirect. When you find the perfect excuse, you are giving up power over yourself.
Our brain wants to be right. Eliminating this compulsion is the basis for opening ourselves to learning.
The soul of unhappiness is seeking to prove a point at any cost, but you cannot be right and happy at the same time, always.
Set intermediate tasks.
You will hardly reach your goals on the first day, unless they are very small. Being disciplined is more of a “big picture” goal. Taking a step forward forces and trains initiative, but if taking one step is too easy, take one step and a half.
- Always work with a bit of discomfort.
- Overcoming yields more dividends than comfort.
- Exceed expectations.
- Do not make exceptions for the given tasks.
If your first goal requires you to get up at a certain time on work days, do not put your alarm clock on snooze: get out of bed as soon as it goes off. Be determined.
Never forget that it is one exception after the other that makes a man whose word has no value, who has no commitment. Our brain enjoys this because it gets to save energy in this way.
Embrace discipline with joy.
Think of the benefits, visualise the results, celebrate your victories, treat yourself to a gift. Remember these moments. This practice already makes your reward system compensate you. If you want to procrastinate, procrastinate on the things that harm you and take your focus away from you.
Do the hard parts first, at the beginning of the day, while you have plenty of energy.
No reward beats the satisfaction of having overcome some seemingly impossible hardship with a disciplined attitude. You have more love for that which you achieve with effort.
Discipline is the mother of honour, commitment, value, and victory.
PERSISTENCE
Remember when you started off and gave up?
Why did this happen?
Being persistent means not giving up easily. It is believing in the outcome. It is always trying again. It means building and maintaining habits. Overcoming obstacles and discouragement.
It is being able to go from mistake to mistake, without feeling discouraged, without failing, until you succeed. It is knowing that mistakes are something to improve on, starting over in a more intelligent way. It is searching until you find the best way to do it.
It is about converting models of thought into habits of behaviour. Educating the inner voice (just one more minute, a victory every second, minute, and day).
Persistence is the weapon of those who fight. It is the energy of “getting it done”.
Victory only exists for those who keep going until they reach the gates out of hell.
OVERCOMING
Competing with yourself, gradually raising the standards of your overcoming. It is a true school of emotional intelligence. It teaches you to take pleasure in pain, in order to improve your own marks every day.
TRUST
Trust is the best commodity you have to offer in life. It is through trust that you can achieve almost anything that has to do with security and freedom. On the other hand, trusting gives you the energy to get started.
There is greater prosperity in countries or institutions where levels of trust are high. Scientist Paul J. Zak discovered that trust increases the production of oxytocin, favouring interpersonal relationships and generating empathy.
Trust in yourself, trust in the group, in leadership and in life, without losing sight of reality.
Trust is believing and abandoning the fear of uncertainty. It is hoping for the best and knowing how to deal with the worst until it is done. Nothing sustains motivation better than trusting in oneself and one's tribe.
Trust generates commitment, quality, and excellence.
Without trust, one cannot realise that there is something worth risking for. There is no action without it.
Without trust there is no courage.
Gaining trust depends on integrity, respect for your neighbour, the institution, the hierarchy, and the group.
Motivation arises from feeling the things that work. The certainty of a positive result is consolidated, and so it generates the Reward.
To trust in yourself means to know that you can do it.
Trust in yourself is built on what you do daily, on feeling small victories worth celebrating, feelings that fuel the motivation not to give up.
Feeling like a winner by overcoming small obstacles shortens the time it takes to reach your goal.
Trust in yourself generates motivation, favours learning and Action defeats fear.
Trust in acquired habits helps to anticipate the future. Trust is not hope. Trust is knowing that it will happen. Hope is waiting for it to happen, it is uncertainty.
Trust yourself before demanding trust from someone else.
“It is the small daily events that make life spectacular.”
How is it acquired?
Successful experiences generate pleasure and build trust, and the applied solution tends to be repeated until it becomes a habit.
Every time you are in a situation where you are “doing well”, not only does your attention increase (focus), your memory also increases. In addition, there is an emotional regulation that makes you feel better prepared for new challenging activities in your life; you gain energy, confidence to carry on.
Trust is the result of observing successive results.
Trust arises in other people by praising and encouraging the effort and overcoming. And not the result: this comes as a consequence of disciplined effort and it builds trust.
Trust is built through training in “getting it done”.
Firstly, doing the hardest things when you have the most energy, while they are still easy, and doing the big things while they are still small.
Secondly, embracing practices whose results are clear and perceptible. Trust appears and is consolidated through practical observation of things that work.
In this way, your (conscious) thought is aligned with your (unconscious) automatic action.
Thirdly, implementing the habits necessary to the expected results.
Not giving up, especially in the final stretch.