Peter Hollins - The Science of Self-Discipline: The Willpower, Mental Toughness, and Self-Control to Resist Temptation and Achieve Your Goals

When I was younger, I was bullied about my weight.

This might sound like a familiar story, but mine is a little bit different because I was constantly picked on for being skinny as a pole. Once when we had a large windstorm, I literally left my feet because of the wind.

Beanpole, feather, stickman, skeletor, the skeleton, boneboy. These were just some of the nicknames that were hurled my way, and luckily, none of them stuck for more than a few days. I thought when I went to university, the teasing would stop because we werent children anymore; we were real adults living on our own and running our own lives. Now, there are a few fallacious parts of that statement, but most relevant to this story, the teasing only intensified. I had severely underestimated the ego of the male aged 1822 years.

So I spent my first year of university hearing many of the same nicknames I had heard when I was younger. They really hadnt evolved much since. When I moved into the dorms my second year of university, I was lucky enough to be randomly assigned a former football player as my roommate. This roommate, Mike, went on to become a fairly successful personal trainer, which is relevant to the story because I believe I was his first guinea pig. I told him I wanted to gain weight and stop being teased, and he made it his goal that year to make my wish a reality.

We discovered that I simply didnt eat enough, even when I thought I had gorged myself three times in one day. We tracked calories rigorously and found that I needed, on average, an extra 1,000 calories a day to gain weight at a rapid but healthy pace. If youre wondering where self-discipline comes into the story, its right here. Unlike many people struggling with weight, I had to discipline myself to eat on schedule five times a day. Yes, for some of you, this sounds like a fantasy. But for anyone skinny trying to gain weight, it is just as much a nightmare as only being able to eat one meal a day. Its veritable torture trying to stuff yourself multiple times a day, only to have to do the same thing the next day and the next.

I probably would have given up after the first week if it werent for Mike. Luckily for me, we were in most of the same classes, and he was my constant companion in reminding me to eat, asking me how much I had eaten that day, and even taking me to get ice cream when I still needed calories. I didnt know it at the time, but I had created an environment for myself that forced self-discipline. Whenever I didnt have it myself, I had Mike to push me and remind me exactly what I was working so hard for.

Two months later, I had gained 11 pounds. The journey continued for years, but this was my first introduction to the intentional exercise of self-discipline. I saw where it could get me, and I now see that its a necessary trait in everything we do. For whatever goal you want to achieve, there is discomfort along that path. Self-discipline drives you through this discomfort and allows you to achieve and attain. Its an essential component of mastery, and nothing great was ever accomplished without it.

But it doesnt live within a vacuum. Oftentimes, we have the best of intentions, only to be distracted by an errant shiny object or dog. Just grinding your teeth and pushing isnt always enough. In this book, I discuss and teach how to increase your baseline level of self-discipline, as well as how to engineer your life as to not need self-discipline at every twist and turn.

You might get lucky just like me and already live in close proximity to someone that enforces your sense of discipline whether you like it or not. But if you dont, there are countless ways to decisively take control of your life and to no longer fall prey to your wayward impulses and distractions. Self-discipline is not only the goal, but also the journey.