Why Discipline is the Ultimate Form of Self-Love

TL;DR

Discipline isn't about restriction; it's the key to unlocking your potential in business and life. By building positive habit loops, you can transform every area of your life, from fitness to finances. #VentureStep #Discipline #SelfDevelopment

INTRODUCTION

What if a single trait could fundamentally improve your mental and physical health, accelerate your career, and strengthen your relationships? ¹That trait isn't a secret formula or an expensive course; it's discipline. ² While the concept is simple, the follow-through is where most people struggle, choosing the immediate comfort of instant gratification over the profound rewards of long-term commitment.

In this episode of Venture Step, host Dalton Anderson shares a personal and practical guide to building the discipline required to achieve your most ambitious goals. ³Recording on a day when he felt tired and unmotivated, Dalton uses his own experience to illustrate how discipline is not about feeling perfect but about showing up regardless. ⁴He draws on his background in data science and his journey as an entrepreneur to break down why we fail and how we can succeed. ⁵

This conversation explores the critical difference between external and internal discipline, the psychological power of "habit loops," and actionable strategies to build resilience. ⁶⁶⁶ Dalton explains how to reframe failure as feedback, use accountability to your advantage, and leverage discipline in one area of your life—like fitness—to create a powerful ripple effect across everything you do.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Discipline is the purest form of self-love, not a form of punishment; it is the ability to control your impulses to pursue a long-term goal. ⁷⁷⁷
• Trick your mind into doing hard things by starting small. Committing to a 10-minute task is less daunting and often snowballs into completing the full objective. ⁸⁸⁸
• Understand and re-engineer your "habit loops" (cue, craving, response, reward) to consciously replace negative behaviors with positive ones. ⁹
• Mastering discipline in one area, such as a consistent fitness routine, creates a powerful ripple effect that improves your career, relationships, and finances. ¹⁰¹⁰¹⁰
• Willpower is a finite resource that gets depleted by fatigue, whereas discipline is a system that ensures you follow through even when you don't feel motivated. ^11111111

FULL CONVERSATION

Dalton: Welcome to Venture Step Podcast where we discuss entrepreneurship, industry trends, and the occasional mock review. ¹²What if there was this one thing that could fix your mental and physical health, your career, your relationships? ¹³ How willing would you be to listen? Well, it's just discipline. ¹⁴ No secret, no course being offered. Just a simple word, discipline, but hard to follow through on. ¹⁵

Dalton: I thought it'd be fitting to talk about this one today because, well, sometimes these episodes are difficult to record. ¹⁶ This one, in fact, is. It was my birthday last weekend, and I'm quite tired. ¹⁷And so here I am, recording the episode, sharing my energy and time with you, as you are as a listener, sharing your energy and time to the show. ¹⁸ I'm your host, Dalton Anderson. I have a bit of a mixed background in programming, data science and insurance. ¹⁹Offline, you could find me running, building my side business or lost in a good book. ²⁰

What Is Discipline?

Dalton: Today we're going to be discussing discipline. High level view, we're going to be talking about understanding discipline as there's two types, the power of discipline, building good habits and talking about habit loops, and then some of my personal practical strategies of doing discipline. ²¹

Dalton: Okay, so the first thing that we need to describe is the different types of discipline and what is discipline? In my opinion, discipline is the ability to control your impulses, emotions, and behaviors in order to accomplish or pursue a goal or value. 22You're doing something for an outcome and for you to accomplish the outcome, you need to do a certain set of tasks or act a certain way. 23

External vs. Self-Discipline

Dalton: But there's two different types of discipline. This show is only going to be discussing one type. ²⁴ The other type we're going to throw out. So the type that we're going to throw out is external discipline, which is imposed by external factors. ²⁵This would be when your mom and dad are telling you you have to go to bed when you're young, and they're like, if you don't go to bed, you're grounded. ²⁶ And so you go to bed. But if your mom and dad were out, you probably wouldn't have gone to sleep because you didn't necessarily want to. ²⁷

Dalton: Self-discipline is internally driven. So in this same analogy, you're a kid, you've got training in the morning with the team or chess practice or whatever, and you know that your day is going to be pretty rough if you don't get enough sleep. 28So you enforce to yourself, "Hey, I'm going to go to bed early and I'll have a good day tomorrow." 29

Discipline, in my opinion, is the purest form of self-love. ³⁰

Discipline Is The Purest Form of Self-Love

Dalton: That's a really simple example that ripples throughout your life in many areas, your relationships, your work, fitness, financial goals. ³¹ There's a spectrum of different disciplines in different areas. There's work discipline, there's health, finances. ³²But if you're disciplined in one area, you could probably be disciplined in all of them. ³³So maybe you might be disciplined in your fitness, but not necessarily in your work or relationships. ³⁴If you can discover your habit loops on dealing with your emotions, then you could transfer those things to the areas where you're not disciplined. ³⁵

Pushing Through Discomfort: A Personal Story

Dalton: There was a period when I first started this podcast where I was sick. I lived in Mexico City for a month and I came back pretty sick. ³⁶I lost 20 pounds in a couple weeks, and I don't have much weight to give away, so I was definitely depleted, having issues making it through my workday, not enough energy to work out, not enough energy to do any extra activities. ³⁷

Dalton: I was just really struggling every week to get on here and record an episode because my throat was killing me. I couldn't stop coughing. 38 My nose was clogged. It felt like I was suffocating because I didn't want to cough and affect the quality of the episode. 39There were a couple of times I just really didn't want to do the episode. 40And so that could be an example of staying on schedule. 41Okay, I do an episode every week, but how do you do that? 42How do you convince yourself that this is something that you should be doing? 43I think that comes with discipline and I thought that's why I should be talking about it today. 44

Why You Might Lack Discipline

Dalton: There are some reasons that you may lack discipline and you should discover that within yourself. ⁴⁵ It could be the lack of motivation. The lack of motivation could be from not having a clear outcome and a measurable goal. ⁴⁶ So in this podcast example, I mentioned on an episode that I was sorry I hadn't recorded in a couple of years. I was traveling, I was in school, I just finished my masters. Now I'm ready. And I'm going to commit to you and the listeners to record an episode once a week. ⁴⁷I'm going to do at least 10 minutes. ⁴⁸ I didn't commit to something crazy. I didn't say I'm going to have Elon Musk on my podcast. ⁴⁹I made a very easy goal. ⁵⁰

The Power of Starting Small

Dalton: My advice on sticking to a schedule is to trick yourself a little bit. A little fib. ⁵¹"I'm just going to record this episode. It's going to be 10 minutes." ⁵²After you get started, you might have more things to say. ⁵³There's been a couple of episodes where I was like, all I've got in me is 10 minutes, and it winds up being a lot more than that. ⁵⁴

Dalton: What if you commit to 10 minutes? It's not that hard. 55Or if you don't want to go to the gym and work out you say, "Alright, I won't commit to an hour and a half brutal workout, but I could commit to one set of something." 56To do one set of squats, you've got to warm up, you've got to do exercises to get your legs warm, you've got to wait for a rack, you've got to put the weights on there. 57 There's a whole bunch of steps to get to that one set. And once you're there, you're not just going to leave right away. 58

If you commit to these small actions, you can really snowball into big outcomes. ⁵⁹

Dalton: Same thing with running. If you don't really want to run, maybe your goal is to run three miles a day. Your legs are sore and you don't want to be there. 60 Commit to half a mile. Before you know it, you ran your three. 61 You can trick your mind into doing things that you necessarily wouldn't do. You can do that without willpower. 62 I just break it down into really, really small steps to get me moving. And then once I'm moving, I'll complete what I originally came there for. 63

Using Accountability To Build Momentum

Dalton: Once you have a clear goal, then you have accountability. ⁶⁴Another thing that I did with this podcast where I announced I want to record episodes every week is I announced it. ⁶⁵ I put this public announcement to the very few listeners that I have: "Hey, I'm going to record an episode every week." And if not, then I let them down. ⁶⁶It keeps me accountable. ⁶⁷Not only am I accountable to myself, but I'm accountable to these imaginary people. ⁶⁸ They're real, but they're not going to contact me. But in my head, they're there. ^69696969 They're watching me.

Dalton: It's a bit crazy, but you could see someone that you're chasing, then you can keep pushing. ⁷⁰ I still do it to this day. I was a freshman on the varsity cross country team and there was a senior on there, his name was DK, and I could never beat him. ⁷¹So when I was training, I was always chasing him, hunting him down every practice, every race. ⁷²So not only did that push me, that pushed him. ⁷³ But when he was gone, I had no one to chase. So I would just imagine that he was in front of me and I would just keep pushing. ⁷⁴

Reframing Failure As Feedback

Dalton: You could have fear of failure. I think failure should be viewed differently. ⁷⁵

I would change out failure with feedback, where feedback from society or feedback from your professional colleagues, where if you fail, it's not necessarily a failure, it's feedback. ⁷⁶

Dalton: And say, "Hey, this wasn't the right approach to get this job," or "You don't have the right skills." It doesn't necessarily mean that you're a failure. 77It just means that you got feedback and that's an area where you can improve. 78Someone gave you an actual line where you yourself can attack. 79 So I wouldn't view failure as something bad. It's alright to fail. 80If your expectation is that you'll fail, you'll be really impressed when you succeed. 81

The Trap of Instant Gratification

Dalton: Another factor that people struggle to have discipline on is these long, delayed gratification objectives, versus instant gratification. ⁸²I think that really messes up things. ⁸³Instant gratification is related to maybe putting a post on TikTok and going viral or posting on social media and getting a lot of dopamine from that. ⁸⁴ Or when you're sad you go on social media or when you're upset you have a beer. Those are more like instant gratification for your emotions, where you're forming bad habit loops. ⁸⁵

Willpower Is a Finite Resource

Dalton: There's something that you can fight doing these things that you don't want to do, and that's willpower, but willpower depletes over time. ⁸⁶Your long-term goals are controlled by one cortex and then your decision-making is controlled by another cortex. ⁸⁷And those things have to interact with each other constantly to make sure the things I'm doing now enable me to do the things I want to do long-term. ⁸⁸

Willpower depletes over time... One way to fight your lack of willpower that you have after a fatigue is discipline. ⁸⁹⁸⁹⁸⁹

Dalton: Over time, your brain gets fatigued, and after that fatigue sets in, your cortexes no longer communicate as much as they should and you are not disciplined in your decisions anymore using willpower, as it's depleted. ⁹⁰One way to fight your lack of willpower that you have after fatigue is discipline. ⁹¹ I think you start small. Just get started and start working on whatever you want. ^92929292And while you're doing that, you'll build habits over time. ⁹³

How I Rebuilt My Discipline With The 75 Hard Challenge

Dalton: When I was doing my masters, it was a lot of hours doing coding projects and writing papers. I had work on top of that. ⁹⁴ I recognized that I had really depleted the discipline that I used to have, where it was difficult for me to just do things that needed to get done. I was pushing them to the side. ⁹⁵ I got concerned. I said, this isn't the person that used to be highly disciplined. It just came natural. ⁹⁶So I did a challenge, the 75 Hard challenge. ⁹⁷It's working out twice a day, one workout needs to be outside every day, you can't drink alcohol, and you have to read too. ^{989898989898989898}

Dalton: The 75 Hard is difficult because you have to work out twice a day and things come up. You've got all these factors pushing against you and you have to push back pretty hard. 99This could be family, this could be work, this could be whatever. 100And once you complete it, you're a bit more disciplined. 101

Understanding and Rebuilding Your Habit Loops

Dalton: This was talked about in Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. ¹⁰² She talks about truth-seeking groups and habits. Truth-seeking groups are important because if you have bad habits, those people will call you out. ^{103103103103103103103103103}That's huge because you might not recognize that you are doing something that doesn't align with yourself. ¹⁰⁴

Dalton: An example for myself was after my masters, I had horrible posture. It took my mom constantly calling me out, "Your posture's horrible," for me to recognize it and fix it. 105105105105 You want a truth-seeking group.

Dalton: And the second thing is your habit loops. A habit loop has a cue, a craving, a response, and a reward. 106A negative habit loop would be feeling bored or anxious (the cue), having a desire for distraction (the craving), scrolling through TikTok for 45 minutes (the response), and the reward is a temporary distraction, often followed by guilt. 107

Dalton: A positive habit loop: feeling tired after work (cue), craving relaxation (craving), going for a 30-minute walk (response), and feeling refreshed and less stressed (reward). ¹⁰⁸

If you don't have discipline to alter your behavior, you need to recognize if you're altering your behavior that you can't interchange that with something else. ¹⁰⁹

Dalton: When you're switching out your bad habits, you have to have discipline to make sure you're not interchanging it with something else that's bad. ¹¹⁰I see this all the time when my friends are like, "I'm spending too much time on Instagram." ¹¹¹So they delete Instagram and then they fill it in with Snapchat or Reddit or TikTok. ¹¹²You need to be disciplined and say, okay, I want to go to the source of the problem and have a positive feedback loop, not a negative one. ^113113113113

The Ripple Effect of Discipline

Dalton: Once you figure that all out, you have a ripple effect. ¹¹⁴I use fitness as an outlook to be disciplined and I use the Venture Step podcast to have this be a loop of discipline for myself where I record an episode every week. ¹¹⁵The fitness things, that ripples to the rest of my life. ¹¹⁶I'm disciplined and I control my emotions and I measure my responses. ¹¹⁷If you focus on one area, you can ripple it and do a direct transfer to other areas. ¹¹⁸

Practical Ways to Fuel Your Discipline

Dalton: So how can you fuel your discipline? You can do a challenge. ¹¹⁹You can do progressive overload, which is common in physical and mental exercises where you work on a small problem and it becomes more complicated over time. ^120120120120And then you can also find your "why." ¹²¹Your why could be your deeper purpose of why you're doing something and use that as a motivation and a way to be disciplined when you face obstacles. ¹²²

Motivation is a good shower. It's something you need to have, but really what gets the gears moving every day, day in, day out is discipline. ¹²³

Final Thoughts: Your Duty as a Citizen

Discipline allows you to do things that others would never dare to do. ¹²⁴
Dalton: Discipline allows you to be happy when you see yourself in the mirror. ¹²⁵Discipline allows you to be the loving partner that you've ever wanted to be. ¹²⁶Discipline allows you to progress in your relationships at work, to show up every day when you don't necessarily want to be there, and to be a good colleague, a good leader, a good friend. ¹²⁷To be disciplined allows you to do these things consistently. ¹²⁸

Dalton: There's a quote from Marcus Aurelius. He was saying to himself, "You are a citizen of Rome. It is your duty to carry these out without the prying eyes of others." 129129129129To do these things, you need to have discipline, obviously, but you need to recognize that you are in all parts of life and you need to do your duty that you have in society. 130

Dalton: On that note, I am going to close this out. I committed to 10 minutes as I didn't want to be here and here we are 46 minutes later. 131 I hope you tune in next week. Have a great day, a good night, a good evening, wherever you are in this world. 132132132132I'll see you next week, bye. 133

RESOURCES MENTIONED

• Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke
• 75 Hard Challenge

INDEX OF CONCEPTS

75 Hard Challenge, Annie Duke, Apple Podcasts, Dalton Anderson, DK, Elon Musk, Instagram, Juul, Marcus Aurelius, Mexico City, Pablo Escobar, Reddit, Rome, Snapchat, Spotify, TikTok, Thinking in Bets, University of South Florida, Venture Step Podcast, YouTube, habit loops, truth-seeking groups