Hi Reader,

For most of my life, I felt like I was undisciplined and lacked willpower. Then, I realized it was more about how I applied the willpower I have. I hope this post can help you in the same way. Happy New Year!

The Myth of Self-Discipline

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​Read on the Blog​

“We first make our habits. Then our habits make us.”
John Dryden

I am undisciplined. I’ve known this all my life but have tried to ignore it. When I compare myself to John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, I feel like the slacker that I am. Wesley typically arose at 4:00 a.m., began every day with prayer, and accomplished more in one day than most of us achieve in a week.

According to one account, Wesley traveled 5,000 miles per year by horseback and preached not less than 15 sermons per week. He journaled daily and kept a diary that marked his activities by the hour. He fasted twice a week. In between his daily routines, his travel, and his preaching, Wesley managed to write prodigiously, visit from house to house, oversee the establishment of schools and chapels, and raise funds to care for those in need.

Wesley was methodical. That’s actually where the term “Methodist” came from. It was not meant originally to be a compliment. But Wesley’s methodical ways were powerful.

Maybe you also believe you are undisciplined. You tell yourself that if you tried harder or had more willpower, you would grow spiritually, eat better, exercise, and accomplish more.

Here’s the problem: Self-discipline is not about trying harder. The truth is, self-discipline or, more correctly, willpower, is an exhaustible resource.

​A now famous experiment in 1996 by Roy Baumeister and his Case Western Reserve University colleagues demonstrates this. They subjected participants to the aroma and presence of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies. Some of the participants were allowed to eat the cookies. Others were told they could not and were told to eat radishes instead (these participants were not happy).

Both sets of participants were then asked to go to another room for what seemed to be an unrelated challenge. There they were asked to solve a puzzle. What they didn’t know was that the puzzle was unsolvable.

The result?

The radish-eaters made fewer attempts and spent less than half the time attempting to solve the puzzle compared to the cookie-eaters or to the control group, who had faced neither cookies nor radishes.

The conclusion of this experiment is that self-discipline, self-control and willpower are exhaustible resources. The more you use them, the less you have available. The students who had used their willpower to abstain from chocolate chip cookies had less available to apply toward solving the puzzle.

In their book The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results, Gary Keller and Jay Papasan list the factors that can deplete your willpower:

• Implementing new behaviors
• Filtering distractions
• Resisting temptation
• Suppressing impulses
• Taking tests
• Trying to impress others
• Coping with fear
• Doing something you don’t enjoy
• Selecting long over short-term rewards
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This explains why you can’t resist that quart of ice cream or bag of chips after you’ve had a taxing day.

The authors go further and contend that self-discipline is not something that is available at our beck and call. So if you think you are not self-disciplined, you’re not alone. Sometimes we have self-discipline—when our willpower hasn’t been depleted. Other times we don't.

Here’s the key: People who get the results they want aren’t more self-disciplined than others. What they are able to do is concentrate their efforts long enough to develop a positive habit. Once that habit is developed, they are able to do it without thinking and without depleting their willpower. Then they do it again to add another positive habit.

If you apply this process to your life, you will be doing amazing things without depleting your willpower much at all. This leaves that willpower available to deal with the many challenges that each day brings.

We can apply this process to our spiritual lives. Prayer, meditation, reading scripture, and journaling are habits that, when developed, keep us focused on what really matters. That’s a must for effective leaders.

We can apply this process to our professional lives, too. Reading, writing, research, sermon preparation, planning, and learning new skills are habits that can boost our productivity tremendously.

We also can apply this process to our physical lives. Eating right, exercising, flossing, and drinking plenty of water are habits that will help us feel better, live longer, and work more effectively.

Keller and Papasan maintain that research supports the idea that it takes an average of 66 days to develop a new habit. They also caution against trying to develop more than one habit at a time. Focus on just one until it really becomes a habit, and it will no longer require any willpower. You’ll just do it! (That would make a great slogan.) Then you can focus on a new habit.

Just imagine if you developed one new habit every 66 days. That would be five new habits a year. What if you did that for five years? That would be 25 new habits. Do you think your life would be different?

The good news is, you can do it! I’m proof.

The thing is, I didn’t even know that I was doing this at the time. It just happened. My prayer life improved. I started exercising. And then I realized that there was a common process.

I dug into the learning behind this process and began to apply it to other areas of my life. I started several new initiatives in the ministry I serve. I started a blog. I wrote a book.

In the following pages, I will share with you what I learned. What you do with it is up to you.

Summary:

• Willpower is an exhaustible resource. Much of what you face during a day will deplete your willpower. Learn to live with this and give yourself a break.
• Self-disciplined people do not have more willpower. They just use the willpower they have to develop positive habits.
• Habits are powerful because they enable you to achieve meaningful things without using up your willpower.

This blog post is an excerpt from the book One New Habit, One Big Goal: Change Your Life in 10 Weeks.

Recommendations

If you're looking to improve personally or professionally in 2025, this week's recommendations can help.

​New Year, New You by Greg Rosalsky. The research cited in this article shares a surprising conclusion about how you should set New Year's Resolutions. Worth considering.

​New Research Reveals 8 Secrets That Will Make Your New Year’s Resolutions Succeed by Eric Barker. Much of this is consistent with my book (referenced in the above blog post), but I think it's helpful to get different perspectives. Short on time? Scroll down to the summary at the bottom.

Podcast

Episode 311 of The Non-Anxious Leader Podcast, The Year End Review (with a Family Systems Take – Rebroadcast), is now available.

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading.

Peace,

Jack

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